The Spell of Morpheus

Julia Sutherland

268 pages

NZ$22.95 incl. postage

US$29.95 incl. postage overseas

The Spell of Morpheus – a story of women and drugs in one New Zealand town – was adapted by author Julia Sutherland from her psychology thesis while she was a PhD student at Otago University.

She describes the novel as “a journey in and out of a fairytale”, and she based the book around the extended interviews that she made with 10 women from the Methadone Clinic.

The subtext of the novel is concerned with the incongruities of current drug legislation, and the morality and hypocrisy of what’s legal and what’s not.

Southerton is a thinly disguised Dunedin in The Spell of Morpheus. Based on author Julia Sutherland’s PhD thesis about the drug scene,especially as it affects mothers and their parenting, and interviews with women recruited from the Methadone Clinic, the book aims to explore and make sense of the drug culture as a mythical world.

Otago Daily Times

Excerpt...

1. •The pathway of drug research has often been trod but usually within a research paradigm which disregards the value of the subjective world of the imagination as being a great cultural treasure house from where all search for the truth and the telling of research stories begin. Objective truth rules in the university setting and it might be seen that the ultimate aim is the perpetuating and recycling of the right kind of truth, which is an impossible dream when truth is illusory and partial and often baffling to reason’s searching eyes.
   

2. • This research adventure has been a personal and mythical journey into the subjective realm. The quest has been to find and express truth which is multi-faceted and open to multiple interpretation... Within a mythological world the concept of drug addiction takes on a different meaning when couched in language from the world of myth and dream, image, symbol and archetype. Drug addiction in these terms becomes enchantment or possession by women who fall under the spell of Morpheus, the spirit or god of dreams, from the tasting of forbidden fruit. This results in the rest of society branding or stigmatizing them as the evil ones. The challenge has been to not only explore and make sense of the drug culture as a mythical world, but also to bring a light of understanding of both the women, who are branded as the addicted, and also the people who do the branding and who serve the punishments to the transgressors of society’s moral laws.
   

3. • It is hoped that by stretching the imagination, readers might consider ways in which we are all implicated in keeping safe the societal secrets and mythologies which enable suffering of women and their children to be perpetuated, and which may be implicated in addictions or sufferings of many kinds. This story is as much about oppression and unfulfilled destiny as it is about drug abuse...
   

4. • The Spell of Morpheus aims to dispel some of the fear that grips the imagination whenever the words drug addict are used in multimedia. It aims to portray an antithesis to the mythology that drug-using mothers are the archetypal bad witch, or a contaminating force in society that is often portrayed by the justice system. Instead, as can be seen by the accounts of all the women in the story, women in general and mothers in particular are often at the mercy of cultural forces which render them powerless. One interpretation of this story might be that some women choose the taking of drugs as a way of gaining power in their lives, and yet others as even further relinquishing their power to the drug pusher, the boyfriend who she protects and enables at her own cost, or the spiritual and divine bridegroom who might be called Morpheus... As can be evidenced by their accounts, this particular group of women or addicts are our own family and neighbours with children who suffer the consequences of our blindness, in the name of justice.
   

5. • The overarching and dominant negative power in the lives of certain drug users must be seen as drug laws which have not only failed to prohibit the taking of certain illegal substances but also enable a whole dealing, helping and research industry to act with righteousness to increase powerlessness and dependence. At present it can only be said that these laws cruelly discriminate and impact on the live of some citizens who choose to indulge in certain substances for uncertain reasons.