Tales from the Underworld

I had thought Burroughs the first to chronicle addiction and the eternal chase in modern society. But Hans Fallada was doing it all decades earlier.  His depiction of two mates out on a hunt for prescription pads, croakers or easy chemists - it's all fresh and very realistic.  Sure, it's morphine (monacetyl not diacetyl) that they chase, but that's probably all there was back then.  I am always amazed at the connection between the paltry lives of junkies a century ago, and their lives today - in some ways worse, as the sources HF had back then are long dried/wised up. It's all crime and dealing now to score, the thought of a doctor assisting in a health issue is laighable, in Australia at least.  Healthcare is for cosmetic surgery and money genrating 'procedures'.  Heroin addiction is a criminal issue in this backwards land.