Around November last year, we were visiting our friends David and Flora for our near annual firework festival. Its a “lad” thing dating back to a drunken night on a traffic island in 1989 or 1990, with fireworks and still with drink. The first time we were emptying bottles to fire rockets from. My liver was younger and stronger.
We meet at their place or ours with offensively large display fireworks and David and I compete a bit. Our respective wives look on with mild amusement and toleration these days. I guess the health and safety culture is catching because they have also started to insist that we stay relatively sober until we’ve set off the lot.
I have watched David’s youngest son Adam grow up in freeze frame. It doesn’t seem long since he started walking. Now he is as tall as me, paints his nails black and has a room full of very high spec computer equipment. This November after the fireworks, the ladies retired. David and I stayed up until the early hours putting the world to rights and getting the right side of a fine bottle of V.S.O.P. David’s living room was made for this with a lot of well stuffed sofas and a massive open fire. Adam stuck around drinking Coca-Cola and as he is well past the point of asking birds and bees type questions, he asked the next best for flummoxing elder male relatives and their friends
“Dad, Uncle Jack, have either of you ever done drugs?”
What follows is the executive summary
David and I were both living in London during the 80′s and working in well paid jobs in the financial sector. We feel it is time to give you, Adam, the benefit of our collective wisdom filtered by half a pint each of finest cognac.
People do drugs because they are fun and it usually feels good to be high. No getting round that. If it wasn’t true, people wouldn’t buy or take drugs. We wouldn’t be sat here with the offensively large brandy glasses doing a fair impression of Statler and Waldorf on a particularly patronising night either.
Cannabis will do things to your listening of music that are amazing. There is a bass line at the bottom of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” that you can only hear properly when stoned. Without cannabis, the entire canon of Tangerine Dream is absolutely unlistenable. It doesn’t seem to be addictive but the evidence is in that if you are likely to be schizophrenic or psychotic, using high THC yield cannabis strains may bring out those tendencies. I’m alright, David’s alright. Maybe we were lucky.
Amphetamine and its posh pall Cocaine will make you feel mighty awake, highly amusing and very very interesting. Everyone else around you will think you are a git unless they are on it as well. Amphetamine is not now, nor has it ever been a study aid. Cocaine does not make you more attractive unless you are sharing. This puts it on a par with alcohol. Both drugs are a long run for a short slide.
MDMA / Ecstasy is a failed combat drug cleverly marketed. Given the risk of cooking yourself on an adverse reaction and re-wiring your brain so that your serotonin receptors start acting up, its a lot of risk for a mild effect.
Ketamine is a pig tranquiliser. Ask yourself if you really need to be taking veterinary drugs to improve your night time experience.
Never ever ever under any circumstances do LSD by yourself. If you are going to do it, do it with someone that has taken it before and make sure that they stay straight. It will not expand your mind, Buddha will not appear on a cloud of enlightenment, you will not come down knowing the secrets to life but you will appreciate why paisley pattern was so popular in the 60′s and why certain colour shades are referred to as “Acid”.
Heroin / Opium is an absolutely pointless drug. The thought process seems to go “Hmmm my life is poo. How can I make it worse? I know, I’ll develop a heroin addiction.” There is absolutely nothing to be said in favour of using it recreationally at all.
Crack cocaine / Crystal Meth – See previous on heroin
So chances are that Adam will experiment with some or all of the above
Having given Adam our drugs 101 all that seems reasonable to add was that David will be watching and Uncle Jack will be watching and if Adam starts getting out of his depth, we will know and we will try to intervene. I hope he doesn’t because he’s a good young man. He probably won’t because the odds say that most that experiment come out the other side more or less OK. That won’t stop me watching and worrying though.
Thought provoking post, buddy.
Thanks.
He’s lucky to have people who care looking out for him.
My Dad described his lsd trips to me and the nightmares and hallucinations they bought on for days after. That was enough to put me off for life!
I liked to point out that at some point it could have been up someone’s bottom – especially crack coke (no pun meant) and heroin
Very well said that man.
Good post Nightjack, i had that conversation with an older relative of mine when i was little, and in turn passed it on to a younger one.
Re:Tim’s comment – oddly that’s one of the reasons i cited for steering clear of crack/heroin too. If you are going to use drugs at least use ones that haven’t been in someone’s stomach or arse!
Yes indeed, tim and TBS. Yuck! On a par with concealing other people’s urine in the foreskin to pass drug tests, which I gather is the latest fashion in jail.
Off for another hit of caffeine, my drug of choice!
I just stick to yeast poo nowadays…
Well, Marmite, yes…
Sorry to revive an old thread, but it only took me 15 minutes googling things like alcohol correlation schizophrenia to discover that alcohol’s effect is worse than cannabis’s. Given the huge increase in the use of hash and skunk since the early 80′s, where is the surge in schizophrenia ? There has been a slight decrease, in fact, in the UK.
Ecstasy seems to be something that works differently for different people – it doesn’t do much for some. Fair enough. For others it’s pure gold, and I don’t recognise “the risk of cooking yourself on an adverse reaction and re-wiring your brain so that your serotonin receptors start acting up”. What’s that about ?
Behind most of the media scare stories on these two can be seen the dark hand of the drinks industry (Brain damage & liver disease, Inc – even with above-board manufacturing and no problems with purity, identification or dosage) or the pharmaceuticals industry (Ecstasy’s long out of patent, see ? Can’t have you feeling good on that).
Moderation in all things is a good place to start. That and loving your kids, of course.
As a side note to the dangers of cannabis use, I used the drug extensively from the ages of 18 to 20. I stopped playing sport, stopped socialising with all but a few fellow users and stopped attending university lectures leading to the calamitous faliure of my Chemistry degree. I sincerely regret the whole miserable episode.
On the bright side, having got myself together, I’m now a serving Police Officer which I enjoy very much.
Condemning Ketamine solely on the gounds of its veterinary use doesn’t look so impressive when it’s still listed in the British National Formulary for use on humans.
As for MDMA/Ecstasy (apart from the “combat drug” fallacy), with the Home Office still touting the figure of 500,000 instances of use each weekend (i.e. 26 million per year), the “risk” is tiny.