Drugs are bad, m'kaaay?

There was a programme on last night that had me thanking my lucky stars that I had my really, really bad drug experience fairly early on.

I smoked my first joint at fifteen. We were in a Vauxhall Chevette outside a friend's parents house in Oxfordshire. It was fucking brilliant - everything was all sort of fuzzy and cosy and I had never laughed so much in all my life. Pot and me became good friends over the next few years. When I lived with my psychotic boyfriend, a dealer lived across the road. He would bring "samples" of gear over on a free-of-charge basis and we would slump around our living room doing bongs and giant bottles of cheap white wine. Actually, now I think about it, I smoked pot pretty much constantly at that point. Get up in the morning, smoke the remains of the last doob of the night before over a cup of tea....get a lift to work (having a smoke in the car).....meet pothead supervisor behind the container in the yard for a quick smoke....reconvene at morning break for another one...see also lunchtime...see also afternoon break.....get home and smoke a joint while waiting for the dealer to come round.....smoke pot all night....repeat for six months. I have never giggled so much or eaten more biscuits than I did during that period. The only adverse effects that I noticed (apart from being really fat owing to the constant munchies. Oh, and having no short-term memory because of the...ooh! look! a cat! um, where was I?....) was a vague feeling of disquiet unloading the washing machine. It was all shiny in the drum, you see. And it had black holes in that things might poke through. And it sort of put me in mind of a Dalek. That aside, dope and me were pretty good friends.

When I finally came to what was left of my senses and left the psycho (five weeks before a massive church wedding. So satisying.) I moved in with an ultra-straight guy I'd worked with. He is the unfortunate boyfriend in the "worst thing I ever did" post, and he really, really disapproved of drugs. Really. He made Mary Whitehouse look like Jim Morrison, so severe was his aversion. Naturally, on spending a weekend away (alone) with my oldest friend and various bikers, I jumped at the chance of a Saturday night on LSD. Can you say "mistake"?

I am here to tell you, should you not already know, that acid is a bad, bad thing. I knew I would jump at the chance if offered as it was on my list of things that I wanted to try at least once in my life. And once it was. Vehemently. It started off nicely enough - bit giggly, bit wobbly, just a really good laugh. When the seven of us went out for a walk and saw a dog getting run over, however, it started to go a bit wrong. Two members of the party spent the following six hours under a hedge in a blind panic, and when everything I could see started to kaleidescope I was taken back to the flat where, bored of trying to talk me down, my friends buggered off to the pub leaving me alone in a strange flat, with a bottomless (honest. I tried to get my toothbrush and gave up) rucksack and a sofa cover with evil pixies on it. Brr. Fourteen hours or so later I had come down sufficiently to go home. All was okay until about three weeks later when, having arrived at a friend's flat after an evening in the pub and being too drunk to skin up, I ate an eighth of dope. Not Good. At All. I tripped for twelve hours. Seriously. It was hideous. After that the problems really began . What started off as occasional panic attacks soon developed into full-blown agoraphobia. I could get to work - leaving the flat I was living in, getting in the car, following the yellow line in the road on the walk from the car park to the office (mustn't look up. no. too big), sitting at my desk, doing it in reverse at the end of the day - it was more or less doable. After a month or so, however, even this became intolerable and I resigned before I could be sacked. I seriously thought I had lost my mind. I obsessively replayed the acid trip, and couldn't let go of the fervent wish that I'd never done it. It took me a long, long time to get back on my feet. I smoke the occasional joint now, but only if I've had a drink. That feeling of being stoned after a beer is great. That feeling of being stoned when sober is really fucking scary. My LSD experience was (ulp) nearly fifteen years ago and I still get the occasional flashback. I'll always regret dropping that tab.

On the other hand, the programme last night featuring three or four people trying to get off heroin made me sort of thankful that I had my bad experience before I ended up getting into something I really couldn't get out of. The only drugs I've ever done are pot, acid and alcohol. Thank god I never tried speed, or ecstasy, or heroin (and all these things were easily accessible within the crowd I hung out with). Things could have been a whole lot different.

There. That was cheerful, wasn't it? Here endeth the lesson.