on the cover / By Bob Doran

Fighting Demons

The Placebo Harm Reduction Collective and how it came to be.

(Feb. 8, 2007)  The guitar player is dressed head to toe in black. Flanked by a drummer and a key-board player at a Eureka coffee-house on a Saturday night, he rips into a set of music he describes as “zombie surf rock.” He starts with a number called “Zombie Songs” and works his way through “Haunt This World” and “Snakes in Your Head,” among others. The songs are dark and heavy, but not without humor. You’d have to know something about James Harken, leader and songwriter for The Invasions, to realize how personal some of them are.

For years, James has been fighting an army of demons: binge drinking, addiction to drugs (primarily prescription narcotics) and anxiety and other mental problems, including suicidal tendencies. He says: “I see zombies as a metaphor for everything that’s going on - obviously with the drug scene, but also the state of the world with all these people working jobs they hate, living like zombies.”

‘Happy’ by Robb Rierdan.

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While he perceives his zombie-themed songs as a “fun” way to touch on serious issues, it’s not hard to see a song like “Haunt This World” and its chorus - “I don’t want to haunt this world alone” - as a direct expression of what’s going on in his head, snakes and all.

A few weeks earlier, James shuffled papers as he prepared for the weekly Tuesday night gathering of the Placebo Harm Reduction Collective. The burly 28-year-old, wearing a loose jacket and a military-style cap adorned with a red star, seemed just a tad nervous as he looked at the clock and announced the start of the meeting.

The collective’s intent is to provide a support group for those facing problems with drugs and alcohol - it’s billed as “an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous,” but the structure is akin to A.A. James kicked things off with the traditional introduction (“Hello, my name is James”) and noted that he is the founder of the group. He then read from a mission statement explaining that the collective is not a 12-Step organization; instead, it is “about choice.” Without going into detail, he described the group’s goal as “harm reduction rather than abstinence.”

James didn’t delve into much personal history or explain why he put the group together. Suffice to say, he was there because he doesn’t want to “haunt this world alone,” and because he hopes that he can help others like him battling their own demons.

What happened to Dave

James was far more talkative when we met in that same room at the Eureka Co-op a few days prior. He explained that he’d been trying to get his life together since he landed a job at the Co-op five months ago. He found a kindred spirit in Dave, who was hired a couple of weeks after James.

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