Anne Marlow is a writer who has worked on Wall Street as a financial analyst and a management consultant. She could have spent her money on a Ferrari or Chanel suits. Instead, she chose to spend it on heroin. In the following extract from her book How to Stop Time: heroin from A to Z Virago Press 1999, she examines the relationship between addiction and crime and deviance. Read it over and write in to let us know your thoughts on this:

NEED

Not for a minute can I subscribe to the popular view, encouraged by writers like William Burroughs, of addiction as uncontrollable need. Still less can I take it as an excuse for bad behaviour. No one would condone stealing or child abuse on the grounds of feeling the effects of the flu, and all but the severest dopesickness is no more rigorous than a nasty flu. Unpleasant? Yes. Sufficient explanation for amoral selfishness? Scarcely. Heroin eventually made me bad-tempered and remote, but it didn't make me beg, cheat or steal. Had I done these things, heroin would have been no excuse