Palika Aked - obituary of a junkie
                                       
   Palika died in Melbourne last week of a heroin overdose. She was
   twenty.
   
   Palika's biggest problem was her ability to rub people up the wrong
   way. She was honest and open and told you what she thought and how she
   felt - and tough shit if you couldn't handle it. That was one of the
   things i liked most about her. It's rare to find an honest person in
   this society and honesty is unacceptable to most people. It scares
   them and confronts them with things they prefer not to think about.
   And it's particularly unacceptable in a woman.
   
   We're supposed to ignore how we feel - or hide it if we can't ignore
   it. We're supposed to pretend we're happy when we're not and suppress
   our anger and disgust at injustice, environmental destruction and the
   selfish and uncaring attitudes of people around us. But Palika
   wouldn't pretend - and that scared and alienated a few people.
   
   Like a lot of us, Palika felt a deep despair about the disgusting mess
   our race has made of the world. She felt angry and she felt helpless
   in the face of mass apathy, greed and complacency. And when you feel
   like that there are two ways to deal with it - you can ignore it and
   try and pretend it's not happening, in which case you end up going
   quietly crazy, or you can take whatever means of escape is available
   and avoid having to deal with it all day every day.
   
   Like a lot of people who care deeply about the world, Palika ended up
   a junkie.
   
   Of course there is a third way to deal with it - you can try and fight
   it and change the world into a better place. But, because so few
   people take that path, there's no end to the work you have to do and
   you inevitably burn out. Then you have to resort to one of the other
   two methods to deal with it anyway.
   
   People use all sorts of drugs to deal with the ugly mess that
   surrounds them constantly. Alcohol, heroin, tobacco, marijuana,
   coffee, speed. And despite what we're told, there's not a lot of
   difference between alcohol and heroin really. Except, of course, for
   the fact that one's illegal and the other one, in our society, is
   virtually compulsory.
   
   In countries where alcohol is prohibited, it kills people in the same
   way as heroin does here - they never know how strong it is or what
   it's adulterated with. Add to that the need to take it in secret - and
   therefore probably alone - and you've got a potentially deadly
   combination. In both those cases it's not the drug that kills people,
   it's the illegality of that drug.
   
   Palika died because she cared. She was killed by the Australian
   government and their slavish obedience to the prohibition of heroin by
   our U.S. imperial masters.
   
   Will Kemp
   Lismore, NSW,
   26th September, 1998.