Oil, Gas and Cocaine. How the drilling for oil has left a void in the morals of the workers
I just had a visit from an old friend who I haven't seen or talked with in several years. He and I grew up together in a small city in north eastern British Columbia, Canada. A region know for its wealth of natural resources - Oil, Gas and Hydro.
Some of our friends moved away after high school - myself included - and some of us stayed put and went to work in the natural resources sector. Of those who left home to go to school, there are some moderate success stories but no one person is raking in large sums of cash or leading people to the promise land. Of those who stayed, most are making an easy six figures a year, have several children, own their own homes outright and have toys to fill several garages. They are now in their early thirties and set up pretty well. My friend told me one other thing about their lives in northern BC, almost everyone I know from my home town is living life with severe cocaine addictions.
This is of course heartbreaking news. I knew it was going on and I also knew that it was a part of life for many people in the area, but to see friends that were such strong spirits earlier in life, throwing it all away for this drug is devastating.
This got us talking at the bakery, about what the cause may be that such a drug, cocaine in particular, is taking such a grip on so many people in that part of the world.
There are several reasons that we came up with straight off the bat. Firstly, they all make a lot of money. Secondly, it's a cold ass place with nothing to do other than work. Thirdly, there is already a very strong drinking culture and lastly, we couldn't help but think that the work itself may have a lot to do with it.
Now lets just take a minute to think about just how far away Northern BC is from the cocaine producing regions of the world. Almost from the arctic circle all the way down to the equator. That's half a world away. It's not like they are all using crack of meth either. They're all using the "good" stuff. So this drug is traveling that far without being watered down or busted on a regular basis...how? why?
The jobs that these men and women are doing on a daily basis are gross. They're raping the planet for all it's worth. Many of these people had other dreams for their lives before the lure of money became too strong. They are essentially whoring themselves and the planet for the all mighty dollar. This is the main reason I moved away from home at 18. I had no desire to get sucked into the vortex of Big Oil. You would have to put blinders on everyday you went to work, knowing what it was and who it was that you were working for. Yet everyday, tens of thousands of people go to work to help feed our insatiable need for fossil fuels and other forms of eco-terrorist energies.
The question we started to ask ourselves was; Has Big Oil created a pipeline of cocaine to the oilfields of Northern Canada in order to erode the moral fabric of the people needed to do the work?
It makes perfect sense. No other drug is know for more effectively taking a persons moral fabric and very quickly destroying it. It also has the benefit of being extremely expensive. What better way to re-acquire wages spent on employees that to sell them an expensive and highly addictive substance. Cocaine is also going to get those troops moving when it's -40C and there is a month of work to do with no days off. You can't have a bunch of people on Heroin sleeping through the day now can you.
I've seen marriages and young families fall apart, lifelong friendships ruined and bankruptcy, both financial and more importantly, moral. From high school graduation to just over a decade later, people I was friends with have gone from zero cocaine use to daily users. Why is this not happening to myself or any of the friends we had that moved away? Why have we found other things to occupy ourselves with? Is it that we are better or stronger people? I know that that's not the case. These were people that I loved and now I can't trust them to be around my family.
In the same way that Wall Street has an insatiable craving for Cocaine so to do the people working in the extraction of oil and gas. Both of these professions are linked through the stock exchange but also through the moral void it takes to show up to work everyday and knowingly fuck over your planet and your fellow man.
For so many of us, we drive our cars and heat our homes without a second thought. We choose to ignore the obvious damage that these fossil fuels are having on our planet. What no one sees is the people who are getting these fuels for us. There is a whole different drug war going on. There is an amplification of our shame and guilt for the people doing the dirty work. It has started to creep into our lives in the rest of the world. We should all take a look at the toll that is being taken on the people in the epicenter of this global destruction because it is only a matter of time before we all start feeling and living the same way. We're all going to need stronger drugs to help cope with what is to come if we continue to embrace our dependence on fossil fuels. Our only option now is rehab, and time is running out.