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Drugs

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With the rush of nostalgia-fests in the posts of late, here’s one that may tax the massive, at least apropos honesty, the first amendment and, indeed, memory residuals. Happy thus for any blissed out anecdote to be “experiences of a friend”……
I’m intrigued really, by the relation between narcotics, music and popular culture. Let’s face it, drugs have often been portrayed as “cool”, whether all the nodding out junkies of the 60s, the weedy all-pervasiveness of marijuana, the addled freaks of psychedelia, the coke hoover years of Berlin and everywhere else, pills on your tongue, all recurring, repeating and attractive to the innocent. And, however much we know the downside, nobody ever thinks, it seems, it will happen to them.
One a wuss, always a wuss, my DOI is that I was and always have been terrified of the idea. Sure, I have drunk my body weight time over in licit liquid, but have always said no to anything much else. Perhaps as never a smoker, I was not in the right company to jazz up my tobacco. I have tried it, perhaps a handful of times, a spliff to fit in at Glastonbury and, a few years later as a a brownie or three. Never did owt for me, beyond, rather than the munchies, an almost immediate take off yer crunchies, as in needing swiftly to poo. I’d sooner say no.
I ask purely in curiosity. I have no desire to make anyone uncomfortable or start a spat between opposing opinions. I have to say that, in the line of my job, I have come across many a fiend to powder, potion and pill, finding them often interesting company and likeable people. OK, and often fucked up to the nth, but they are the iceberg needing help.
Drugs. Are they any good?

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Comments

  1. I used to be the same but was introduced to pot by my ex. Never smoked anything, but (legal) edibles are very gentle if you don’t over do them, very light pleasurable buzz and I sleep way better than when I have alcohol (not very often now) which I am pretty convinced is the real evil stuff. Never really does anything good for anybody after a while. Pot can help with lots of medical afflictions too where as alcohol will probably make them worse. It’s a terrible drug in general as I notice every time I visit the UK and find myself out on the weekend. I haven’t taken any stronger drugs than these but one appears to be good for me and the other is (generally) bad.

    Always been intrigued by LSD but a bit scared to take it, can’t imagine heroin, coke and meth have too many beneficial qualities, but have never tried (and doubt I ever will)

  2. Dope (as we called it, man) a-plenty. Social thing. Enhanced an already high crippling laughter factor. Music on dope: predictably, the Dead, Hendrix, the Floyd, also a lot of quiet, reflective albums. Acid, many times – life-changing experience, and in the best of ways. Music was an adjunct, not at all necessary, but the lighter, percussive stuff worked wonders – Terry Riley, some Indian ragas, that kind of thing. But music slipped away as you went down the rabbit hole, an experience better than music, better than sex, and for a few of us more a religious sacrament in a forest setting than a party buzz. Go ahead, enjoy your sneer!

    I tried speed and coke a few times, thought it was trivial and stupid, even while it was happening. Domestic magic mushrooms, very mild compared to acid.

    • More or less my experience… dropped everything apart from dope when the kids arrived. Water-pipe every Saturday with like-minded friends as a relief from baby-minding then dropped that too as the little rascals grew older.
      Smoked dope three or four times since but then one evening in an Amsterdam hash-cafe was given some new-fangled strain which induced acid-flashbacks, paranoia and the mother of all hangovers. I’m now content to continue my extensive sampling of Languedoc wines as a service to the local community.

      • The last time I ever smoked anything, and I was never a big dope smoker though I did enjoy it in my earlier life, was in Amsterdam about 8 years ago. I had already given up tobacco, so I bought something pre-rolled, making sure that I specified ‘not too strong’.

        I don’t know if the guy in the cafe was taking the piss out of a tourist, or ‘not too strong’ has an entirely different meaning in Amsterdam but thank goodness I took it back to the flat we were renting rather than smoke it there. After a few puffs I was flat on my back, barely able to move with my mind racing. Not an enjoyable or relaxing experience in any way.

    • Basically the same route…..Now (pot) it’s legal here in Canada, I have the odd joint on a Friday night. Edibles also work well..Cant stand cocaine and even worse being around people high on the damn thing. Music is the perfect match for being pleasantly stoned.

  3. I can post safely on here as I am a wuss just like yourself, retropath, and I have always shied away from trying anything particularly naughty. Probably just because I’m an incurable law-abider and a card-carrying member of the Catholic Guilt squad. So fear of being caught, probably (by the police or by God, whatever), is the thing for me.

    But the notion has always intrigued me, especially the idea of the sixties (which I missed – born in ’73, a Gen-Xer) being this revolution of the head partially driven by LSD and its mind-expanding capabilities. You can’t really be a fan of rock/pop/prog and fail to have an awareness of the importance of drugs as a social force at that time.

    What sticks out for me are the people who you would expect to be total stoners and who just aren’t. Terry Gilliam springs to mind: to my knowledge he has always denied dabbling in anything, which kind of reassures me that you can still be an imaginative, creative bloke with crazy visions but have no need to supplement it by narcotic means.

    Funnily enough, I’m (trying to) read William Blake just now (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) and I’m finding it a bit impenetrable and… well… a bit gibberish. Maybe it will sink in, but at the moment I’m starting to think the Blake worship as being all image and no substance. My overriding thought at the moment is, “What was he on when he wrote this?”. Try reading Blake and see why drugs are a bad idea, kids…

  4. Really not for me, given the inherent dullness.

    Plenty of booze in my younger days but stopped about 15 years ago as the Crohn’s got worse. Had a dope smoker of a GF in my 20s but it just made me tired, depressed and irritable.

    I used to go to Acid warehouse raves as an undergrad in the late 80s. Always avoided pills and stuck to the white van full of Calais’ finest Booze Cruise bottled lager. This served me well, until 808 State live in a Slough warehouse – the pounding bass drum punched my stomach until I performed an impromptu lager-fountain vom on the dance floor.

    My housemates once dropped acid and sat together on the sofa. I went off to lectures, came back at tea time and they were still sitting there, staring into space.

      • Us student engineers had a full working day every day, unlike those doing “Classics” or something who got out of their beds and wandered in for one tutorial every second week

        I took no drugs at university apart from copious amounts of alcohol, can’t believe how much actually

        • In one of the terms when I wasn’t doing 37 hours of lectures and labs a week, I once sat on a wall outside the Art department and waited for my chum who did History of Art. Out of the portal, ready for their lunch, came something an Engineering student rarely saw – gurls.

          I did wonder if I’d made the right choice on my UCAS form.

          • Think we had 5 females out of 120 or so on my course, 4 came from Malaysia, 1 from England, she ended up working for the BBC World Service IIRC. The ratio where I work now is much higher, probably 25% (all engineers).

            And to correct my previous post, we did get Wed afternoons off for sport, think I normally slept though instead. Did lots of sport before and after though.

            • Yes, so did I, but Tuesday night was Band Night at the Union. 1am finish, so I’d usually be de-rigging until 3am. Weds afternoons were a combination of sleep and record buying.

              Anything for a free gig. Not much has changed since.

  6. When I was working at the local college in the eightest we had a drug awareness course I found that when added up had taken the largest amount of different drugs.
    I met the local freaks (middle class kids with long hair) in the early seventies who were delighted to share the dope I had brought back from Morocco (I thought I’d got rid of it before travelling back through Spain I hadn’t).
    One of them was a habitual user of dope, he moved to Cornwall in the eighties and has had at least three drug induced psychotic episodes.
    Friends would call round every couple of weeks and we’d share a joint or two but stopped that about 12 years ago.
    Acid I took once at the Windsor Free Festival 74, the friend I was with got busted for internal possession of acid, I’d wandered off into the woods. Magic mushrooms I’ve tried a few times inducing much hilarity as everything seemed funny.
    Just tried other stuff once or twice, speed etc.
    But now about to enjoy a glass of red on the hotel balcony.

  7. With MY musical tastes? An awful lot of naughty moments, learning experiences, profound revelations, n shits n giggles over the past 45 years inclusive. Responsibilities, health, changing social circles, and the seriousness of adult life mean more recent explorations are necessarily more cautious and occasional. The mem wouldn’t like it, either. “Showing me that I’m everywhere then getting home for tea” is now avoided, given the shit that my life and work has filled my head with. It was a lot easier when you drifted through it like a scientifically-trained Donovan.

  8. Tried a few things in my youth, only shrooms I would willingly repeat – I found them unambiguously great fun, like being a kid again. The four times I took acid it was 1. Great, 2. OK, 3. Horrible and 4. quite staggeringly nightmarishly horrible. The smell of dope makes me feel sick, the smell of rolling tobacco makes me feel…. nostalgic.

    Generally I don’t want drugs or druggy people anywhere near me but anybody who drinks the way I do has no room to judge. As others have said, alcohol is absolutely the worst one going. Partly because it tastes so damn good.

  9. Thanks for the candidness thus far. Unlike Dai, I fear I have no desire to partake of other than the “absolutely worst one”, something I now handle with care. I like a mild buzz but no more and can then happily put the lid back on the bottle.
    The question that has always foxed me about pills, primararily, is how the hell do you know what you are ingesting? It all seems a bit russian roulette to me, not helped by TV characters who randomly hoover up bathroom cabinets of anything and everything. Hell, I’m wary enough of prescribed drugs, knowing what havoc they can cause: teenagers necking heart pills, anti-psychotics and animal tranquillisers for fun, um, doesn’t sound as if the desired result is ever that much likely. And that’s before mysterious packages, made in backstreet sheds and cellars, gawd ‘elp us.

    • This – no quality control. How would you know what the hell you were taking and would it be worth the risk? Also, I’ve never seen the attraction of a self-induced three day nightmare, like Moose’s bad trip times ten (ketamine)…

    • Yes. I have only starting taking cannabis with any regularity since legalisation here so I know a degree of quality control is there. It can be much worse when illegal alcohol is involved, that can kill you pretty quick.

  10. Only ever dope, with varying effects, sometimes nothing, sometimes completely out of my tree. I once found myself sitting by the Seine in Paris sharing several joints with noted Liverpool poet Brian Patten, who was there on some British Council jolly. I remember him saying, ‘The government are paying for this shit, so enjoy it.’ I remember being fascinated by the lights of the passing bateaux mouches shimmering on the water. Cosmic. I was always too scared to take LSD. I remember a flatmate busting in on me in mid-shag to announce that our drinks had been spiked, or so she thought. I nearly died of a heart attack, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

    I’ve had nothing but alcohol (and a bit of food), for about 30 years. Last time was when somebody gave me a brownie as I was leaving the office. Really weird coming home to the wife and kids completely out of it. I’m pretty sure I’d benefit from a regular dope regime these days – no shortage in northern NSW – but smoking is obviously out with my lungs.

    • Well I also had a drug (actually alcohol) related experience sitting by the Seine with a few guys from Liverpool.

      We bought cheapest wine we could find, about 7 French Francs a bottle (in 1983), think we had about 7 bottles between the 3 of us. We sat on a bench next to Notre Dame, drinking our of leaky paper cups watching those same boats go by. We had to drink fast as those cups were leaking so much.

      When the wine was finished we left that areas and grabbed a kebab (naturally) and a couple of pins of beer before ending up in a night club where we ordered another round of drinks. I needed the downstairs bathroom and on my way managed to fall down the stairs, banging my mouth and breaking both of my front two teeth. Got back to the table, said I felt ok before promptly throwing up all over it. Staggered immediately back to our hotel room where I ended up blocking the bidet with my vomit. Wow, what a great nightI No it was fucking horrendous, lucky I survived it, probably

      The teeth still give me issues to this day, had an implant last year for one of them, the other will need one at some point.

  11. Like Craig Ferguson famously said, I didn’t experiment with drugs
    I took the fucking things with great enthusiasm and regularity.

    In doing so, pretty much went through the whole card with the
    exception of Ecstasy.

    Despite having lots of opportunities and invites to do so
    from junkie friends in Manchester (if junkies can ever said
    to be anyone’s friends) never injected anything.

    Favourites were grass (for going out) and hash (for staying in).
    While still smoke grass can’t remember the last time I was able
    to get my hands on any hash.

    Annoyingly, since I gave up the harry rags about 10 years back,
    I’ve been forced to use herbal cigarettes in spliffs. They aren’t only
    a tad more expensive than regular piggies, they are as rough as
    anything on your throat.

    While only did acid three or four times, used to love mushrooms
    which Uni friends and I used to go and scoop up from on and
    around Beverley Racecourse just outside Hull.

    In my younger years, I was quite partial to surrendering odd
    weekends (and very odd weekends they sometimes ended up
    being, too) to sulphate binges.

    Having seen many people fuck their lives up on the stuff, was always
    very careful to not reach for a line come the inevitable Monday morning
    comedown. Was also very disciplined in steering well clear of the
    stuff for a few weeks thereafter.

    While only took it four or five times, always found coke to be an
    arsehole’s drug which was always cut to shit with stuff like baby
    powder (if you were lucky) or Vim (if you weren’t).

    One Xmas about 40 years ago just before I left Manchester, a friend
    of a close friend gave me a wrap of what he claimed was incredibly pure
    Peruvian flake and almost had my head blown off. Given that my friend’s
    friend later got sent down for 15 years for being one of the biggest dealers
    in the North West, I would imagine his claims were true.

    • Oh – I see. I was given a packet of herbal, nicotine-free fags as a joke for in the 1980s. Gave one a go and hated it, “what is the point?” and threw it away. I didn’t consider that they might be useful for pot-smokers who have given up fags.

      I have had mixed experiences smoking whatever someone had. The last time involved vomiting and a firm belief that any laughter in the room was directly at my expense. One Saturday afternoon on a sunny day we smoked something and everyone sort-of passed out. I felt OK, got a bit bored, and decided to go to the pub by myself – where the others joined me later. When they arrived I eventually realised that I’d been there for three hours and my one pint of Guinness was flat and untouched. I didn’t pass out or anything – I must have just been staring into space.

      Never touched pills or acid or cocaine – had every opportunity – but I didn’t want to get into trouble with the police.

      • Smoking anything is pretty dumb behaviour. I say this as an ex-smoker of both cigs and spliffs. Your lungs are just not designed to inhale smoke and stay healthy.

        I was an enthusiastic drug user from my mid-teens to my early 40s. Quite discriminating towards the end.
        I was almost completely indiscriminate in my teens except that I never injected.
        Alcohol, pot, hash, pills (both uppers and downers), cough linctuses, antihistamines, acid, mescaline (only once), opium and heroin (smoked). Oddly, alcohol was very much frowned upon in the circles I mixed in then.
        I narrowed down my activities to smoking pot and hash, mushrooms and acid, little bit of coke in the ’70s and early ’80s. And (in moderation) alcohol.
        Pot and alcohol only for a while into the ’90s.
        My drugging activities always had a social element to them.

        Discovered pot smoking was incompatible with earning a steady income and it also made giving up the cigs impossible. I stopped both.
        These days I like a mild alcohol buzz a few times a week. I can’t remember the last time I was properly out of it on anything.

  12. I resisted taking any drugs until in my mid-20s, simply because I know what I’m like. I took some stick of my mates for not wanting to smoke done, all A&E nurses like me funnily enough, but just gentle ribbing and nothing I couldn’t handle. Then one day I thought what the hell…and it was brill. After that, despite never being a smoker, apart from the odd cigar on special occasions (the day Barnsley got promoted to the Premiership we were at the bar and my brother in law, also a non smoker, suggested we have a cigar with our pint. It was only when we sat down we saw that practically everybody in the bar was sat down with a pint and a cigar!), I (fairly) regularly smoked dope for about 6 years. That stopped one night when my mate had given me a couple of joints that were way beyond anything I was used to. Me and the ex both got really paranoid and were making each other worse. I was hallucinating and couldn’t think straight. Haven’t touched any illegal drug since, about 20 years ago.

    This was after I had the major spinal cord surgery, so after the permanent pain began, over 20 years ago. It did seem to help with the pain, but so does the medication I am currently on, so I’ve never felt the need to start taking cannabis oil, or whatever it’s called.

    Apart from that I only really dabbled with other stuff, which was just speed and ecstasy. Stuff like cocaine was further than I’d ever be prepared to go. With my asthma, the idea of snorting powder holds no appeal anyway. The speed I took was in the form of speed bombs. I first took ecstasy in the Electric Ballroom the night England beat Scotland in Euro 96. It was brill. It was a great day anyway. I think I took it about another dozen times or so afterwards and it was always brill…until the last one, which most certainly wasn’t. Although that day I had overdone it on booze and had had some dope and some speed, and then the tablet I took was from a friend who was a hardcore drug user, so I shouldn’t have taken his advice on what was nice. I got in a bit of a state, but got home with no lasting effects and it was enough for me to just say that’s that and I’ve never been tempted since.

    So when it was good it was good, but the first time it wasn’t good I stopped. I certainly wouldn’t put myself in the same category as some of my mates, a few of whom went on to have problems. Only a couple of my mates really carried it on beyond the age of about 30. It was an eye opener when I moved to London and saw how rife it was, particularly with my hospital colleagues. It’s not something that I came across when I worked in Liverpool or Brighton, but then again, the average age of the staff in London was far lower than in other places. And it was predominantly A&E staff, but we were always out in the pub. It’s probably because it’s a different kind of environment than elsewhere in the hospital. I hasten to add, everybody was clean and sober whilst working, if that’s any sort of defence!

    Years later, as I had more and more problems with my stomach, I drank less and less. I was having a lot of issues with reflux and woke up choking around 20-30 times. Alcohol seemed to be a trigger factor, like fizzy pop, spicy food and other things, so I had reduced my post-match skinful to a few pints, then a couple of pints, a pint and finally half a pint, but I was still having problems, so I just stopped altogether a few years ago. I found it easy to stop, just as I did with the drugs, and can’t ever envisage a time that I would drink again. I would say that never waking up with a hangover again is a bonus, but I wake up feeling shocking most mornings anyway! I just wish I could be as strong willed when it comes to chocolate and puddings, but that’s my last vice. Having said that, I started a diet again a few weeks ago and have done alright since then…

    But that all said, I am on quite a lot of medication for my pain, including mild opiates. I stop short of taking enough for it to affect me negatively though, so I am quite able to function. In fact, it helps me to function, as that is the point of it. If ever I am particularly bad, like I am today, cos I did the lawn yesterday, I just take a couple of paracetamol, rather than extra Tramadol. Paracetamol increases the effect of the Tramadol (best advice I have ever been given), so it works really well when I have bad neck pain/migraine type pain, without spacing me out, which happens if I take any Tramadol above my usual dose. Every time I see a new GP they start on at me to ‘reduce the medication’ on the premise that eventually I will need more and more, so I have to reassure them that the medication regime was set up with the help of a Pain Management Consultant and I haven’t increased it in 6 years and have no intention to. I’d rather be in a bit more pain than take so much pain meds that I can’t function as a father to my kids. I have to be in a great amount of pain to take extra Tramadol, and that is no more than a couple of times per year, as I can generally feel it coming, so can take steps quickly to avoid it getting too bad.

    When I was in intensive care, post surgery, I had a morphine pump. I was pretty euphoric anyway, because there was a low, but higher than I would like, chance that I would be totally dependent (like Christopher Reeve after his accident) following the surgery and an uncomfortably high chance that I may be unable to use my arms/legs. So with the surgeon managing to get the tumour out, with me still being able to move my arms and legs, albeit not a great deal at that stage, and with the surgeon being very confident it wasn’t cancer, I was feeling very chipper. I wasn’t in any pain at that stage and was wide awake and bored, cos I was unable to even roll over. I could, however, coordinate my hand just enough to use my call buzzer (by pressing the buzzer between my hand and my head!) and to press my morphine pump to give myself a dose.

    Now, as a nurse, I know how the morphine pump works and that it’s impossible to overdose, so I thought I’d have a few hits to see what it was like. It was horrible. My head was all over the place, I really didn’t like it. So when the nurse came into my room the next morning the first thing I said was to take the morphine pump out because I wouldn’t be having any more!

    • I’m in the ‘Tramadol spaces me out’ camp. Took it after hernia surgery, watched Dirty Harry on the telly one afternoon, the following day Amazon delivered The Complete Clint Eastwood DVD box set. I had no memory of ordering it. I had cold turkey when it ran out, and nothing beyond paracetomol since.

      I had fun and larks recently as my GP retired and the replacement took one look at my bloods, decided my white cell count was abnormally low, and blocked repeat prescriptions. Given that I’ve been on immunosuppressants for eight years, a low white cell count is hardly surprising. I’m seeing the hospital consultant for a review next week, to take the medication decision-making out of the hands of the new GP. As you say, long-term meds are perhaps less than ideal, but day-to-day they allow me to function.

      • When I was first prescribed Tramadol for a brief period I got a bad tooth infection a few days later, so I took extra for a couple of days. It was so bad I missed a home match (0-0 v Watford, cold winter’s day, so no biggie) to go to the emergency dentist. On the way home we called in at Tesco. As the ex put all my goodies through the checkout she decided that no more am I allowed to go food shopping under the influence of Tramadol. Super munchies!

        • I took the tramadol pills my wife had left unused following her C-section to get me through excruciating tooth pain so that I could get through some travel/work presentations over a couple of days.

          I learned two things; Tramadol is amazing and I must never use it again in this way and dentists are miracle workers who deserve every penny they earn.

          • Tramadol took a bit of getting used to, and I had several side effects, some of them quite unpleasant, but I don’t any more. I don’t get spaced out or trippy with them unless I have more than 4 in a day, which is why I try to avoid it. Taking paracetamol with it can make me a bit spaced out, but if I do that it means I’m in a load of pain, so I’m not functioning well anyway. It’s only 2-3 times per month though. I used to take 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, and then I found the most productive part of the day was in the evening, when my pain was under better control. Mornings were hell. But then I started taking them at bedtime and lunchtime and found getting out of bed and up and about way easier and it maintains a steady level which helps with pain control. The only problem, with having been on them for such a long time, is if I forget and I’m late taking them I certainly know about it. It gives me a tiny glimpse of what Lennon was singing about in Cold Turkey.

            I’m on all sorts of stuff though, as the pain can be horrendous. The nerve pain is the worst, but amitryptilline and pregablin takes care of that. It took some working out to get the regime right, but we managed to get it so I’m treading that fine line of (relatively) pain free and able to function (albeit limited). To be totally pain free with medication alone I’d be off my face all day, which is no good, so I have to combine the medication with exercise, rest, good posture, etc, and pace my day. Such is the knackered nature of my spinal cord, however, that if the little sac of spinal fluid that I have in my neck all decides to press on the spinal cord, no amount of exercise, rest, etc is going to help. Those are bad days!

            But for all that, the worst pain I’ve had over the past 5 years or so, whilst I’ve been on all this medication, was tooth pain. Turns out I’d got an infection under one of them, so the dentist tried to fix it. I don’t have anaesthetic when I have dental work done, as I’m pretty good with pain, being used to it and all, and a couple of minutes of pain is better than 6 hours of not being able to feel my mouth. My face is the only bit of me that I can feel 100%. Well, this particular time was quite painful in the dentist chair, I must admit, as he drilled right down to the root and the tooth was painful to start with. I was relieved when it was done.

            But the next morning was horrendous. I’ve never had toothache like it. The slightest touch of it with my tongue was like having it wired to the mains, and this despite all the medication I’m on. Fortunately the dentist fit me in at lunchtime (I said I’d be prepared to come and sit in his waiting room all day if I had to) to take the tooth out. I paused before I got in the chair and before I’d even opened my mouth he said “yes, I’ll give you the anaesthetic this time. I thought you were very brave yesterday, because it was a very deep filling”. I just thought ‘yep, and if you had told me exactly what you were going to be doing I wouldn’t have been so sodding brave!’ So if you ever hear someone say “I’d rather have root canal work without anaesthetic than watch James Cordon/listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers” etc, politely tell them that no, they really wouldn’t.

            • As a prescriber, and only as infrequently as I can, I would agree tramadol a filthy drug. Before my own flirtation with back surgery, extremis led me to giving them a go, prescribed for me, of course. I don’t remember that day: I babbled non stop and was more of a pain than usual. Did they “work”? I haven’t a clue, I was too busy being bonkers. It is said that is the main thrust of their analgesic efficacy, to make you sufficiently out of it as to not really be bothered by niceties such as pain. Codeine did similar to me, leading me having to leave work and go home for a lie down. The journey home? No idea……

              • Until I got used to it I was having hallucinations, night terrors and my head was all over the shop. I sold something on eBay, posted it, two days later received a parcel, couldn’t remember ordering anything, opened it and yep, I had posted it to myself! My Pain Specialist convinced me to carry on though and I eventually got over that stage.

                When I was first prescribed it, several years earlier, I was still working and regularly going to the office in Leeds. It was quite scary waiting at the station, because I have poor balance anyway and I was very lightheaded and just not with it, so I had to stop and just put up with the increasing pain for several years until the neuro side of things stopped me working. Then I was able to get through the tough bit with no pressure on me. Crikey, the first time they also prescribed gabapentin for me and I was already taking amitryptilline, as I have since my surgery 19 years ago. I started the gabapentin on the Saturday, to give myself a weekend to get used to it. Yeah, right! By Monday I knocked it on the head. I couldn’t get out of bed, totally out of it.

                The directive I gave the Pain Specialist several years later was to find something that managed the pain and enabled me to function as a father and, well, as a human being, and we got there. Fortunately, as my neuro issues have continued to deteriorate (full brain and spinal cord scans next Saturday after the recent dip), the pain hasn’t really increased, or not by much anyway, because I have no intention of ever upping my meds on an ongoing basis.

                And whilst I’m being so cautious like this, my step-brother (who I only see about once per year) gobbles them like smarties, 8 at a time. He’s now also on pregablin and is doing the same with them. God knows how he is getting his GP to prescribe so many for him. I don’t even know what he is being prescribed them for, as the only thing that’s wrong with him is the addiction to these tablets and a rapidly deteriorating sense of reality. He has now been taken in to hospital twice after convulsions and the inevitable surely isn’t far away. It’s terribly sad, but all efforts by my dad and his brother and sister to help him have led to nothing.

              • I’ve just realised the worst drug I took was Prozac, prescribed after a low time in my life breakdown in a partnership, would I still see my son, father had cancer.
                Completely zoned out on it, didn’t feel anything and didn’t sleep.
                Asked to come off it prescribed something else (not sure what, something milder I suppose) stopped after a few weeks as I decided it wasn’t doing any good.
                Decided not to take the painkillers prescribed after two back operations, as it didn’t hurt much. What they didn’t say was you may become ‘blocked’ after surgery. That was extremely painful, had to get a late night prescription for pessaries to ease the situation (At least it wasn’t peccaries).
                I’d learned what to do for the second time.

      • I can probably beat you on the low white blood cell count (not that it is a competition). In blood work done in Emergency a few years back I managed the lowest score the nurse had seen in 40 years! After 3 blood transfusions and a Christmas spent in hospital I felt a bit better @fentonsteve

        • Crikey, Dai.

          New GP being over-cautious, I think. We had a long (way longer than the prescribed 10 mins) phone call.

          “Your last two blood {something or other} were 0.49 and 0.48. Normal range is 0.5 or above”.

          “But normal people aren’t on immunosuppressants, are they? And it has been much lower than that in the past, hasn’t it? So do you want to prescribe the Mercaptopurine I’ve been on happily for the past eight years and allow me to carry on functioning, or come and see you in a few months because I’ve been hospitalised again?”

          “Well, when you put it like that…”

  13. Nope, nada, apart from booze. Never even been a tobacco smoker. Several of my best mates at Uni smoked dope regularly and a few still do, as did my girlfriend at the time, but I was just too straight I guess, and too terrified of the old message they used to try to ram down our throats that if you even smoke one joint, you’ll end up a heroin addict within a fortnight.

    The really interesting thing for me is to what extent drugs enhance, or hinder artists in their work. Not sure it helped Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the end, or John Lennon, or Bob Dylan. Maybe we wouldnt have Kubla Khan or A Day in the Life or Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, but surely in the long run drug use ends up inhibiting rather than releasing creativity?

    • Well Macca has been imbibing something all his working life (mainly pot since 1964), has been pretty good for his creativity I guess, may have affected his vocal cords though …

      In my limited experience of hanging out with musicians cannabis is pretty much obligatory.

  14. I first go stoned at university and giggled uncontrollably for what felt like hours the very first time. ‘I’ll have some of that, I thought’. The best of it was Glastonbury 1989, my first festival – watching Pixies on the main stage, someone passed me a spliff and the music went from something that was on stage to a complete surround sound experience, with every instrument clearly articulated and vibrating in my ears and my head. I loved cannabis for the effect on music listening – it made even Shakin Stevens sound amazing.

    The worst of it was the paranoia from too strong hash or too much in a brownie – at a later Glastonbury, I was convinced if I didn’t keep active I was going to die (like in that Crank film). In fact I was just really tired and needed to sleep.

    I haven’t done it for years, as the frequent 2 week hangover of general lethargy after a session wasn’t much fun, and dope culture is very boring and tends towards Gong-style whimsy and irrelevance.

    That is – except as a treat at a Dreadzone concert for my 50th birthday (thanks to some lovely lifelong friends) – my third eye opened and I saw and understood the oneness of the universe – every question that came to me I could answer. An immense sense of peace and transcendence.

    Nothing else, I accompanied someone else who was on an LSD trip, which was quite interesting. Sometimes it felt like I was tripping on cannabis, and that was enough for me.

  15. My first drug of any kind was at my first ever gig when I was 15, Spacemen 3 of all people, when someone shared their spliff with me. I felt soooo cool. I also fairly quickly felt very sick.

    Then at Uni I tried a fair number of things you can smoke, things that come in pill form and things you snort. But only a couple of times each because the one thing they all had in common was awful, overpowering paranoia which I can still remember.

    I’m very glad that none of them worked because nicotine and alcohol both got their claws into me and only tightened their grip as the years went by, so I’m aware I’ve a bit of a weakness for anything that’s addictive or habit forming.

    Finally gave up the fags thanks to vaping about 4 years ago. And after an unpleasant struggle, brought on by a dire, and long avoided, medical check-up and long overdue acceptance that I clearly had a problem, I managed to knock the booze on the head more recently. So these days my drugs of choice are green tea and the occasional vape as a treat. And, surprise, surprise, I feel all the better for it. Just a shame it took until almost my 50th birthday to work that one out! But better late than never I suppose…

  16. Barbiturates and booze alongside dabbling in dry cleaning fluid inhalation when I was fourteen. I smoked my first joint when I was fifteen which started a daily dope habit that carried on until I hit my fifties. I tripped on acid and shrooms more times than I can remember and I’ve flirted with speed, coke and MDMA. Booze of course, though I never really took to serious drinking until my twenties. Has it done me any harm? Probably but it was damn good fun. No regrets. Nowadays I don’t drink, smoke or take any drugs apart from those prescribed by my doctor.
    As for the musical enhancing effects of certain substances, yeah some drugs notably good weed or hash do add to the enjoyment as does MDMA. The others less so.

  18. Booze and fags for me.
    A couple of sliffs in the past had no noticeable effect, so what’s the point of trying again.
    I know other people enjoy it and best of luck to them.
    Used to hang around with a group that would try anything, but peer pressure never tempted me. Plus someone had to be sober to drive to the off licence and kebab van.
    I did think there must be better ways to spend an evening than sitting in a room with 4 blokes dosed up on ketamine just staring into space.

  19. Plenty in my youth. No interest now – last had a spliff nearly 20 years ago and haven’t wanted to since. I think it’s a rare heavy weed-smoker indeed that isn’t a right mess by middle age if they don’t kick it. But like the bottle-of-Pinot-a-night middle class alcoholic, it’s never a problem in their own mind. (You can usually tell when it’s gone too far: they quote John Pilger with a straight face, that kind of thing).

    As a kid, I liked hash, which is all we could get, because it was a nice calm buzz. Skunk, on the rare occasions it was available, gave me the fear and was a much harsher, more jittery high. It’s apparently more or less all there is in the UK now, so I feel well out of it.

    Like @h-p-saucecraft, the best time I ever had on drugs was acid. Did it a few times, had a lovely, magical time every time. Very difficult to explain in terms that don’t make you sound like that wife-beating bloke from that band.

    Speed was the available club drug when I was at uni – coke was for London. Speed is genuinely nasty shit: makes you feel like someone’s used your veins for an ashtray for a week or so, and not sleeping for 48 hours is really not fun by day two.

    Coke has a reputation as being for twats, because it turns everyone into a twat, without fail. Horrible. Like necking 100 espressos in a second: jangly, aggressive. The profession of estate agency, powdered.

    E I only did a handful of times. It sort of doesn’t do much, but feels wonderful. Subtly removes worries and negativity, perks you up in a low-key euphoria, makes you like everyone. It’s the closest to drunken bonhomie of anything other than booze, but much less sweaty, much less out of control, no chance of aggression. The perfect dancing drug.

    But I’m convinced booze is my fave. I don’t drink that much, and while it can be awful, so can anything. Drugs were fun when I was a kid, but I’m done long since. Chin chin.

    • Last time I dropped acid (man) was … oh dear … over a decade ago, anyway. At Angkor Wat, which was the full-on angels in the architecture deal. Since then I really enjoy the beautiful peaceful buzz of one cold beer (other temperatures are available), very occasionally. Getting pissed is the real abuse of alcohol. Any fool can wake up in his own vomit (and possibly, if the tales told on the Afterword are true) with a trucker’s penis in his ear – how did that get there? – but recognising and nurturing that subtle, transient contentment is an art, much undervalued.

  20. Drugs by Talking Heads is very good indeed. Better than most real drugs. The boys are worried, the girls are shocked. Nobody knows what they are talking about. I feel mean but I feel ok, I’m charged up…electricity. I still play that, I don’t do them. Just a bit of booze Friday and Saturday. A glass of good wine tastes much better after a little abstinence.

  21. When I smoked, I smoked. So not for 30 years, apart from some chocolate brownies a while ago, which were…interesting; not ones I’d made. Have tried other things, never hallucinogens. Reading about use of those in small doses/medical conditions sounds interesting, but I’m too much of a wuss to go there without hand-holding. Things that fast-forward everything or make you feel invincible or interesting; I quite like 1x speed.

  22. When I was a younger man I would enjoy mushrooms, acid, and a few spliffs (not on the same night). The hallucinogens fell by the wayside a long time ago, and I haven’t had a joint for knocking on ten years (and that would have been the first for a good while). I never made a conscious decision to stop – it just kind of drifted out of my life and I don’t really miss it, much like the music of Marillion.

    I suspect that’s probably me done for life now, although I do sometimes daydream about the days to come when I have discharged all my obligations – child left home, mortgage paid off, etc – and how nice it would be to be a thoroughly psychedelicised pensioner. I’d certainly rather spend my seventies tripping my bonce off and opening my third eye than I would writing those dreadful Facebook poems about how we all had rickets and outside toilets but we were happy, not like children today with those dreadful mobile telephones.

  23. I’m a daily marijuana smoker. In my schooldays I tried speed a few times. It was ok but nothing worth continuing with. Then later I tried cocaine a few times. I found it much like Tequila slammers, a real wake up when you want energy. But it never really interested me. I used to drink, especially at uni, but got very bored of alcohol a couple of decades ago and decided to give it up completely. Don’t miss it in the slightest. (I can’t stand being around drunk people now. Ugh.) Never tried anything else. But like Crosby and Nash, I’m still a daily spliff smoker. I like being lightly stoned all the time. Nash was recently quoted as saying that even today much of his joy comes from the way dope enables him to focus on the world’s beauty rather than its horror. “I’m glad that I got to know marijuana when I did. It changed my life completely. I get up every morning and I’m glad I’m alive.” Yep, I know that feeling. If you’ve got sun, sea and spliff it’s hard to be miserable.

  24. Tried lots of different stuff when I was a teenager, smoked dope intermittently until the kids were born. Tempted to have a bit of a puff every now and again but haven’t so far…

  26. The short answer to the OP question is ‘yes, they are any good’ or people wouldn’t do them.
    They are certainly not right or good for everyone, but the fact they exist at all & folk seek them out seems to point to an urge for altered states of mind that is near universal.
    I’m hilariously abstemious these days, having had my moments in the past that I don’t regret at all, but have no time for puritanical attitudes on the subject. I wouldn’t advocate universal legalisation but really wish it was possible for objective information that could be trusted to be freely available to those who are curious. Proper non judgmental health assistance available for those that need help would be a huge leap forward. However, we struggle as a society to address booze in adult terms, so drugs seem very unlikely to be on the agenda.
    What is certain is that demand is huge & it is not purely the domain of the bereft or misguided & that tons of ‘normal’ functioning people take tons of drugs. Just acknowledging that would perhaps be a start.

  27. Lots of dope smoking in the 70’s, but stopped when I gave up the fags around 1978, which coincided with a lot of other changes in my life. A couple of LSD trips which were a bit scary. Never went anywhere near harder stuff, thankfully.

    Oddly, I had a weird experience about 10 years ago on a night out. I had had around 4 pints, and I was persuaded to go on to a nightclub. Almost as soon as I was in there, I started feeling really strange, and had to leave pronto, and I hadn’t had another drink or anything. I managed to phone my wife to pick me up, but could hardly string a sentence together and she says she has never seen me like that before or since. The only conclusion was that someone spiked my drink in the pub, but goodness knows why, or indeed who might have done it. A terrifying experience.

    • They don’t so much spike drinks any more. It’s progressed to using needles. A friend of my daughters was injected in a pub in town last year. Fortunately she was with her friends when she started to feel unwell and an ambulance was called. They found a needle stick injury on her. I believe they caught the guy, who had done it to several girls. As the father of a 16 year old daughter it terrifies me that people are doing things like this, but apparently it is a common problem nowadays.

      • It’s not a common problem and there is a *lot* of online misinformation about it.

        “very unlikely that GHB, the drug most commonly associated with drink spiking, could be used in an attack involving a syringe due to the relatively large volume of liquid needed to effectively drug someone. An attacker would either have to use a very large needle, which would be immediately noticeable to most people, or would have to inject very steadily over a longer period of time—potentially up to 30 seconds—while remaining undetected in a busy nightclub or bar.

        The fact it would be very difficult to administer GHB at a high enough quantity to incapacitate a victim means a would-be attacker could use a different type of drug such as a type of benzodiazepine. GHB occurs naturally in the body, which often makes detecting it after a spiking incident very difficult, but benzodiazepines are far easier to detect.

        However, Mr Slaughter explained injectable benzodiazepines are not available to the public.”

        https://fullfact.org/crime/spiking-by-needle-injection/

        The TLDR version: it’s possible that it’s happened in a small number of isolated incidents, but it’s very hard to verify. People make these stories up and/or exaggerate them, and there’s little evidence that it’s common, or could become common. If you Google “needle (or injection) spiking conviction”, you see a lot of reports and almost no convictions. It feels a lot like your classic “razor blades in the waterslide” panic story to me.

  28. No, unless you count second hand smoke. In my late teens, early twenties I was hanging with a bunch of hash smokers, they’d politely offer but I’d always decline. Never been curious about drugs, and a drink and a Marlboro were my party treats at the time.
    A few years later the gang split up, after a few of the guys got into heavier drugs and some unpleasant incidents occured thanks to that.

    I used to drink a lot when I was young – or rather: when I got drunk I’d drink a LOT, but it would only happen maybe twice per month, and in between those binges I’d hardly ever drink at all. The only reason why I’d drink so much when I did was that it takes me twice as much booze to get half as drunk as everyone else, and I hated being sober among drunk people!
    Still do, but now I just don’t hang out with people who get drunk…
    Lots of alcoholics on my mum’s side of the family, and they all shared this difficulty in getting drunk, also never got hangovers (neither did I), so they just kept going.

    Quit smoking at 30, the drinking sort of trickled out. At first I stopped getting drunk, then I stopped drinking to be sociable as well, and since being diagnosed with diabetes (LADA) I perhaps drink two mouthfuls per year (especially since alcohol free alternatives are plenty and most of them not bad at all).

    I’m glad I didn’t get into hash, I have an ex-brother-in-law who did lots of it in his youth and he gets paranoid episodes every now and then, thinking that the police is spying on him through his TV etc…

  29. Aged 15 to 18 I smoked joints 4 or 5 times per week. Never progressed to anything else although a couple of mates tried LSD. I was always worried about having a bad trip.
    I tried twice in later years. Once when I got divorced from my ex wife about 28 years ago and I was violently sick.
    Then I tried 2 years ago – I had sunk 4 or 5 pints and just couldn’t resist. I have to say I have never felt so ill in my life. My legs turned to rubber and the colour completely drained from my cheeks. Never again.
    I believe modern day weed is considerably stronger.
    I have always been drawn to the idea of coke but never took the plunge.

    • Cannabis after enough alcohol to feel intoxicated was always guaranteed to have me throwing up, and throwing up on cannabis and alcohol is a lot more unpleasant than from just alcohol. A lesson it took me a stupidly long time to learn.
      A drink or two at a party, AFTER getting stoned, was usually fine. Starting smoking when already pissed was not at all.

  30. Drugs and alcohol don’t agree with me. Cannabis sends me to sleep. Speed and coke do NOT help me to dance all night. I once had toothache on a school trip and a teacher gave me codeine in a small dose. I had to be carried everywhere. I have also been spiked with a purple heart. I spent the best part of twelve hours hallucinating. Alcohol just turns me into a monster.

    The good news is that the likes of Ibuprofen burn my stomach and gabapentoids and tricyclics render me non-functioning. When my time comes, I guess the best option is an opiod coma.

    What a cheerful thread!

    😂

        • A psychologist writes: what is “normal consciousness”? We have many mental states, and they flow into one another endlessly. Some are more fun than others. Altering consciousness by dancing, eating chillies, kissing, running around in circles, smoking seasickness tablets (yes, I’ve known the desperate do that), etc all change mental states. Some of these methods are more fun than others. Other mental state changers are bad for you, and skunk, spice, GHB, and whatever new shit will emerge next year from someone’s lab in SE Asia should be avoided. (This list is not all-inclusive.) Some people should be kept away from Typhoo tea, let alone other intoxicants. But yes, people want to alter their mental states, and love, laughter, constructive activity, and the sense of having done something well are pretty harmless. Frank Zappa recommended the sound of a bass saxophone, strong black coffee, and cigs. Two out of three ain’t bad.

          I’d like to be treated as an adult, and have the option of being able to buy decent grass that didn’t blow your head off and had a decent CBD percentage without risking a criminal record.

    • How do I know that your normal is the same as my normal? Normal doesn’t mean we all start from the same point. There is huge variation around the average. Besides, ‘normal’ consciousness has evolved in response to survival. Sitting under an acacia tree watching the air vibrate to the rhythm of the universe is likely to make you vulnerable to lions.

  32. I started taking magic mushrooms when I was 13. By the time I was 17, after a truly hellish bad trip, I had given up on LSD, but by this point I was hammering the amphetamines and ecstasy (and indeed booze).

    I had something approaching a nervous breakdown at 20 and gave up everything apart from dope. Rediscovered red wine and Guinness in my mid twenties. Gave up dope in my early thirties after a trip to buy some which involved me sharing a spliff with the dealer’s 12 year old son. I was pressured into that and finally had my “for God’s sake give this up” epiphany.

    I am now 48. I like red wine and real ale. I no longer hammer it.

    What I now know is that, in my youth, I was extremely poor and bored out of my skull with my hometown and my friends who lived there. I spent as much time out of my head to blot it all out.

    When I was a bit older, I was basically concealing extremely low self esteem.

    I now have a career which fulfils me. I live in a pleasant area. I love my wife. My children bring me joy.

    Drugs were an escape from misery, when I stopped being miserable I stopped the drugs, or perhaps when I stoped the drugs I learned how not to be miserable? Who knows?

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