Most of what the average person hears about Norway is positive in nature.  Norway is the land of the midnattsol (midnight sun), fjorder og fjell (fjords and mountains), havet (the sea), a country of magnificent beauty.  Norway is also very well known for taking care of its people with excellent health and social welfare programs.  Life expectancy, literacy, and income are all unusually high in Norway.  But there is a dark side of this country that most people are unaware of.  Norway is the drug overdose capital of the Europe. 

The reason I even began to think about drugs in Norway is because the town I live in has a serious problem with illegal drugs.  Heroin is the hot item.  6 adults in their 20s have died of heroin overdoses in Northfield in the last several years.  Most people in Northfield knew at least one of them.  An old high school friend of mine just died early this week of a heroin overdose.  It seems to  be hitting every class and hitting every social network.  So, hard drugs have been on my mind and I got to thinking about the drug culture in Norway.

I remember when I lived in Oslo a couple friends and I went to the east side to an area in the city that seemed like a nice place to have a little barbecue by the river.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure why we picked this area, but we weren’t aware that the far east side of Oslo is the area of the city with the most crime.  We were offered drugs several times from complete strangers in broad daylight.  We passed several people smoking pot in public.  Definitely saw prostitutes. It was kind of an experience and we didn’t feel like we were in danger, so we did our thing, barbecued, ate, and returned to the safer west side of the city. 

After that I thought to myself ‘Ok, so that’s the rougher part of Oslo.  Every big city has areas like that.  No big deal.’  I didn’t think much about drugs in Norway because no one I knew supported drugs in the slightest.  Narkomenn (druggies) were highly looked down upon by all of the people I encountered. Here in the U.S., smoking marijuana is extrememly commonplace during the teenage and college years and people who smoke pot once in a while are not necessarily considered druggies.  Whether you smoke pot on rare occasion or shoot up heroin, in Norway you are considered a narkoman (to be P.C., the Norwegian language should really consider a similar term for females who use drugs…)

Now I’m confused when I find out that Oslo is the European capital with the most heroin overdoses.  There are several potential explanations for the abundance of heroin in Norway and the rate of overdoses.  Norway is a seafaring nation that imports and exports a great deal of goods and therefore has easy access to illegal drugs.  As I’ve mentioned numerous times in my blogs, Norwegians on average earn a decent income, so affordability isn’t necessarily an issue for them.  Lastly, Norwegians have long survived with the attitude of self-sufficiency.  If you have a problem, then fix it yourself.  In terms of drugs, this means that users are less likely to pursue methods of sobering up that are proven to be effective.  Heroin users who receive treatment are given methadone as a sort of safer replacement drug for heroin in the transitional period between using and sobriety.  One possible reason that there is such a high rate of overdose in Norway is because of the fact that users don’t want to replace one drug with another.  They think they should just be able to quit.  For most people, it’s not that easy, and without proper treatment, they will keep using and likely eventually overdose. 

Although there are treatment clinics to help users on the path to sobriety, most Norwegians, and I would argue Scandinavians in general, are fairly un-sympathetic to drug users and even more broadly, people who are depressed and don’t seek help.  I won’t tell the story in its entirety, but I lived with 6 flatmates in Oslo and one of them was extremely depressed and suicidal, or at least wanted us to think he was the latter.  Another flatmate and good friend who is Finnish, told me several times when I would express worry and anxiety about living in the same apartment with this guy that “hvis han vil ta selvmord, sånn er det.  Ikke bry deg om det” (if he wants to commit suicide, so be it.  Don’t worry about it).  And it was that simple for her.  She didn’t worry about it or try to talk to him about it.  She figured if he was really that depressed and wouldn’t get help, then just do it already.

It’s that attitude that I think is so engrained in the Norwegian mindset that (help yourself) that I believe perhaps plays a big role in the amount of hard drug use in Norway.  Let’s hope political power in Afghanistan changes soon so opium production can be more regulated.  It’s always best to hit the problem at the source, right?