Anthony Loyd is a war correspondent for the The Times. He talks to Alice Fordham of his experiences in Bosnia, his concurrent problem with heroin addiction and his struggle to cope with normal life after the war ended.
Going by choice to someone else’s war is a way of escape. You find yourself very removed from whatever the roots of your life are. Heroin is another escape and the two fuelled each other. The war ended, I came home and was stuck with just heroin. I think it’s trite to say that war is an addiction but many of the same qualities become apparent in one’s life in war as with an addiction.
From drugs and war, you can often get the same adrenalised rush, there are the same essences of escape, the same unhealthy manifestations in character and behaviour in the two experiences. It’s a comparison which can become contrived, it’s just something that happened to be going on in my life at the time.
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