It’s Saturday night and I’m having dinner at a friend’s house. After dinner has been cleared, someone produces a small bag of cocaine and begins to cut it into lines at the table. I take a gram of cocaine and another of MDMA. I smoke some weed and drink three to four glasses of good red wine.
We dance. The 15 of us who have gathered – old friends, some of whom I’ve known since school – push aside the coffee table and twirl around the living room, holding hands, laughing and marvelling at how lucky we are to have these exact friends and to be exactly here, in this moment. “You lot are the best,” we say over and over.
I feel as though I’ve never been so happy, so lucky, so brilliant. I am the very best version of myself. I have a deep sense of compassion for every person in the room. I can reveal any part of myself, say anything, no matter how personal or banal.
At around 4am, high as kites and exhausted from dancing, we all sit down and play charades. “Film!” “Two words!” “Jumanji?” It’s not exactly Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
At some point, I think around 9am, we call the dealer again. The prospect of the comedown, an achy, twitching sadness where you can’t stop thinking about a bad thing you said three-and-a‑half years ago, seems too awful to bear. Because he won’t come for anything less, we order another 2g of coke and another 2g of MDMA (total cost £180). At 2pm on Sunday, almost out of white powder and with the working week looming large on the horizon, we go home to nurse our heads. On Monday, we each crawl into work clutching triple-shot americanos and pretending to our colleagues that we’ve had quiet weekends.
Take that model, and repeat – sometimes as much as every weekend for a few months, sometimes as little as once a month – and you’ve got a pretty accurate picture of how I’ve spent my 20s. I’m now 28 and a writer on a national magazine. I grew up on the outskirts of a city in the north of England, but I’ve lived in London since 2011. I enjoy reading and going to the gym. I take drugs most weekends, but I wouldn’t call myself an addict, any more than someone who spends their weekend drinking gin and tonics and doing shots would call themselves an alcoholic.
But then, I do wonder. My own father died when I was 19 because of complications that arose from his chronic alcoholism. In the bad times, he would drink a bottle of vodka a day. He would steal and lie and get unspeakably angry. Other times, he would be lovely and affable and completely sober. I can’t help but wonder when the habit became an addiction for him. I’ve never allowed myself to linger too much on his memory, because in the end he wasn’t a nice man; but every so often, going past a mirror, I catch a glimpse and pause. I can see him in myself and think that maybe it’s time to stop, or slow down.
Perhaps I’m hiding behind excuses; in denial, on the steady downward spiral of someone not ready to admit they’ve got a problem. Of course I don’t think that’s the case – if it were, then almost every friend I have who is living in a major city in the UK has a serious problem.
Are we – me, my nearest and dearest – actually the happy, dancing-in-the-living-room, social users we see ourselves as? Or have we begun to push through that flimsy membrane?
One conversation from last week’s party has stuck with me. Bella, 29, is a financial consultant. We’ve known each other since meeting in halls at university. I was bemoaning the fact that we’d been too busy to go to an exhibition and now it was finished. “Well,” she laughed, “we’re not that busy. We just fill our time doing this.” She gestured to the line of coke I was fashioning with the edge of my gym membership card. “There’s no time for exhibitions when this is your hobby.”
I would truly hate to tot up all the midnight cash withdrawals I’ve made throughout my 20s, the time spent making shady deals late at night in the backs of cars with men you don’t really want to bump into after dark. In a heavy month, my drug spend can be around £400. That’s a quarter of my income. “But it’s great,” Bella continued. “Can you imagine me mountaineering or something? I’d rather be here, with you guys, having a good time.”
Bravado is easy when you’re high: you’re on top of the world, so of course it’s worth it. But what about after, on a Wednesday night, when work worries are made all the more worrisome by an unshakable anxiety, a feeling that lurks at the edges of your consciousness for a few days after a heavy session. “Did I actually say it was that great?” she laughs a few days later. “Yeah, I guess so. But it’s not something I’m overly proud of.”
Like me, Bella has gone through periods of less and more regular usage. I’ve never been able to ascribe a certain mental state to either – usually, I take more drugs when there are birthdays or other reasons to celebrate – but for Bella, who in the past has dealt with social anxiety through a combination of CBT and medication, it’s more obvious. “Whenever I’m most anxious, I tend to have heavier weekends, drugs-wise,” she says. “I don’t do it consciously, but looking back I can see the pattern. The fact is, taking some coke, or whatever else, makes me feel better, even if that’s short-lived. It’s fun. I feel my stresses fall away for a night. And it’s brought me much closer to all of my friends – closer than I thought I could be because of my anxiety. I’ve always found it hard to open up because I worry about what people will think of me. In the past, that might have made me seem standoffish, but spending time in these situations has been really liberating.”
But the relief can be short-term. “My comedowns are worse than most people’s, from what I can tell. I get a thought stuck in my head, usually something I’ve forgotten to do that’ll get me into trouble at work, and it’s really hard to get past it.”
After a few days, though, those feelings abate. “Friday rolls around and I’m ready to go again. It’s a running joke. Monday to Wednesday you tell yourself you won’t do it this weekend, Thursday you feel OK, Friday you’re back on form.”
Alcohol, she agrees, is the gateway drug, and two drinks – where you feel just tipsy enough to be reckless – the golden quantity. “After two drinks, I want to cut loose,” Bella explains. “In the way that others might crave a glass of wine to unwind, I want a line. Not every weekend, but usually when work has been stressful. It’s a guaranteed good time.”
Bella uses the same dealer every time. Like me, she met hers through friends. We each have a few numbers of reliable guys (it’s always men) whose product is of an OK quality. Bella’s dealer has branded loyalty cards, much like the ones you get at coffee shops. For every pick-up, she gets a stamp. She texts the amount, he drives to meet her wherever she is, and five stamps equal a free gram of cocaine; it’s an audacious but effective method of marketing. “When I’m out with a certain set of friends at the weekend, it feels almost inevitable that we’ll do it. Before I know it, one of us is popping outside to meet the dealer and the next few hours are brilliant.”
I wouldn’t call this an addiction – I’ve seen drug addiction. I grew up on an estate, and while I’d be loth to paint too predictable a picture of it (I had a nice childhood and have friends who still live there), drugs were everywhere. My mum still lives in the semi-detached I grew up in, and just last year her neighbour’s house was raided by police. The people living there were dealing heroin (“He always helped me bring in my shopping, though,” Mum said when I told her I was worried). And it was easy to spot the hollow-eyed, desperate-looking types who would hang around waiting for the dealer to let them in. I can’t relate to that kind of physical need. But then, my friends and I never thought we’d still be doing this within touching distance of 30. And instead of becoming firmer, our self-control has just become more slippery. The older we’ve got, the less we’re inclined to curb our appetites.
We dance. The 15 of us who have gathered – old friends, some of whom I’ve known since school – push aside the coffee table and twirl around the living room, holding hands, laughing and marvelling at how lucky we are to have these exact friends and to be exactly here, in this moment. “You lot are the best,” we say over and over.
I feel as though I’ve never been so happy, so lucky, so brilliant. I am the very best version of myself. I have a deep sense of compassion for every person in the room. I can reveal any part of myself, say anything, no matter how personal or banal.At around 4am, high as kites and exhausted from dancing, we all sit down and play charades. “Film!” “Two words!” “Jumanji?” It’s not exactly Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
At some point, I think around 9am, we call the dealer again. The prospect of the comedown, an achy, twitching sadness where you can’t stop thinking about a bad thing you said three-and-a‑half years ago, seems too awful to bear. Because he won’t come for anything less, we order another 2g of coke and another 2g of MDMA (total cost £180). At 2pm on Sunday, almost out of white powder and with the working week looming large on the horizon, we go home to nurse our heads. On Monday, we each crawl into work clutching triple-shot americanos and pretending to our colleagues that we’ve had quiet weekends.
Take that model, and repeat – sometimes as much as every weekend for a few months, sometimes as little as once a month – and you’ve got a pretty accurate picture of how I’ve spent my 20s. I’m now 28 and a writer on a national magazine. I grew up on the outskirts of a city in the north of England, but I’ve lived in London since 2011. I enjoy reading and going to the gym. I take drugs most weekends, but I wouldn’t call myself an addict, any more than someone who spends their weekend drinking gin and tonics and doing shots would call themselves an alcoholic.
But then, I do wonder. My own father died when I was 19 because of complications that arose from his chronic alcoholism. In the bad times, he would drink a bottle of vodka a day. He would steal and lie and get unspeakably angry. Other times, he would be lovely and affable and completely sober. I can’t help but wonder when the habit became an addiction for him. I’ve never allowed myself to linger too much on his memory, because in the end he wasn’t a nice man; but every so often, going past a mirror, I catch a glimpse and pause. I can see him in myself and think that maybe it’s time to stop, or slow down.
Perhaps I’m hiding behind excuses; in denial, on the steady downward spiral of someone not ready to admit they’ve got a problem. Of course I don’t think that’s the case – if it were, then almost every friend I have who is living in a major city in the UK has a serious problem.
Are we – me, my nearest and dearest – actually the happy, dancing-in-the-living-room, social users we see ourselves as? Or have we begun to push through that flimsy membrane?
One conversation from last week’s party has stuck with me. Bella, 29, is a financial consultant. We’ve known each other since meeting in halls at university. I was bemoaning the fact that we’d been too busy to go to an exhibition and now it was finished. “Well,” she laughed, “we’re not that busy. We just fill our time doing this.” She gestured to the line of coke I was fashioning with the edge of my gym membership card. “There’s no time for exhibitions when this is your hobby.”
I would truly hate to tot up all the midnight cash withdrawals I’ve made throughout my 20s, the time spent making shady deals late at night in the backs of cars with men you don’t really want to bump into after dark. In a heavy month, my drug spend can be around £400. That’s a quarter of my income. “But it’s great,” Bella continued. “Can you imagine me mountaineering or something? I’d rather be here, with you guys, having a good time.”
Bravado is easy when you’re high: you’re on top of the world, so of course it’s worth it. But what about after, on a Wednesday night, when work worries are made all the more worrisome by an unshakable anxiety, a feeling that lurks at the edges of your consciousness for a few days after a heavy session. “Did I actually say it was that great?” she laughs a few days later. “Yeah, I guess so. But it’s not something I’m overly proud of.”
Like me, Bella has gone through periods of less and more regular usage. I’ve never been able to ascribe a certain mental state to either – usually, I take more drugs when there are birthdays or other reasons to celebrate – but for Bella, who in the past has dealt with social anxiety through a combination of CBT and medication, it’s more obvious. “Whenever I’m most anxious, I tend to have heavier weekends, drugs-wise,” she says. “I don’t do it consciously, but looking back I can see the pattern. The fact is, taking some coke, or whatever else, makes me feel better, even if that’s short-lived. It’s fun. I feel my stresses fall away for a night. And it’s brought me much closer to all of my friends – closer than I thought I could be because of my anxiety. I’ve always found it hard to open up because I worry about what people will think of me. In the past, that might have made me seem standoffish, but spending time in these situations has been really liberating.”
But the relief can be short-term. “My comedowns are worse than most people’s, from what I can tell. I get a thought stuck in my head, usually something I’ve forgotten to do that’ll get me into trouble at work, and it’s really hard to get past it.”
After a few days, though, those feelings abate. “Friday rolls around and I’m ready to go again. It’s a running joke. Monday to Wednesday you tell yourself you won’t do it this weekend, Thursday you feel OK, Friday you’re back on form.”
Alcohol, she agrees, is the gateway drug, and two drinks – where you feel just tipsy enough to be reckless – the golden quantity. “After two drinks, I want to cut loose,” Bella explains. “In the way that others might crave a glass of wine to unwind, I want a line. Not every weekend, but usually when work has been stressful. It’s a guaranteed good time.”
Bella uses the same dealer every time. Like me, she met hers through friends. We each have a few numbers of reliable guys (it’s always men) whose product is of an OK quality. Bella’s dealer has branded loyalty cards, much like the ones you get at coffee shops. For every pick-up, she gets a stamp. She texts the amount, he drives to meet her wherever she is, and five stamps equal a free gram of cocaine; it’s an audacious but effective method of marketing. “When I’m out with a certain set of friends at the weekend, it feels almost inevitable that we’ll do it. Before I know it, one of us is popping outside to meet the dealer and the next few hours are brilliant.”
I wouldn’t call this an addiction – I’ve seen drug addiction. I grew up on an estate, and while I’d be loth to paint too predictable a picture of it (I had a nice childhood and have friends who still live there), drugs were everywhere. My mum still lives in the semi-detached I grew up in, and just last year her neighbour’s house was raided by police. The people living there were dealing heroin (“He always helped me bring in my shopping, though,” Mum said when I told her I was worried). And it was easy to spot the hollow-eyed, desperate-looking types who would hang around waiting for the dealer to let them in. I can’t relate to that kind of physical need. But then, my friends and I never thought we’d still be doing this within touching distance of 30. And instead of becoming firmer, our self-control has just become more slippery. The older we’ve got, the less we’re inclined to curb our appetites.
by Anonymous, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Corey Bartle-Sanderson
