Joe Stone: ‘Drugs ain’t all they’re cracked up to be, kids’
The Global Drug survey 2015 was the biggest of its kind ever conducted. It spoke to 100,000 people from across the world, but one of the reasons given for quitting drugs felt delightfully British. Rather than giving up because respondents died of an overdose, woke up naked in Tesco wearing a Croc as a codpiece or accidentally had sex with a sibling, one of the primary reasons cited for quitting drugs was “getting too old for this sort of thing”.
While it’s tempting to grow old disgracefully, raising hell into your dotage, there’s also something undeniably freeing about the idea of never again experiencing the tedium of having the same conversation for four hours straight, or the sinking feeling that comes with walking home in daylight. As I stagger ever deeper into the shitshow that is my late twenties, the idea of a drug-free life isn’t unappealing.
Admittedly, this is largely because I am, and have always been, a terrible drug user. Not terrible in the sense that I’ll mug a nana to get a fix, terrible in the sense that I’m just not very good at taking them. I’m too neurotic. For instance, when I’ve taken MDMA, my inner monologue tends to have gone something like this.
Me: ‘Everyone here is amazing, this is my favourite song, I’m having the best night of my life!’
Me: ‘No you’re not, you just think you are because you’ve tricked your brain’ Me: ‘Pipe down.’
Me: ‘Seriously though, you’re in Hackney Wick. You hate Hackney Wick. And there’s a dog over there. Who even brings a dog to a party? It’s probably dehydrating.’
Me: ‘Thanks for the buzz kill, hun.’ (This, by the way, is a true story. I once saw a sad-eyed Alsation at a warehouse party and immediately burst into tears. When my friends found me they assumed I’d been attacked).
Other reasons I have a conflicted relationship with drugs: I am physically quite feeble, and a wimp when it comes to any kind of comedown. Fear of this makes me too uptight to enjoy the high, unless I get absolutely ruined, which is a kind of a catch-22. My response can be quite unpredictable. With drink, I know that wine will make me happy, gin will make me emotional and vodka will make me violent. A pill, on the other hand, can either mean I’m up all night dancing (badly) or lying in a bathtub for six hours complaining that my legs feel funny (again, true story).
I hate seeing people I love and respect gushing over acquaintances who we both have a pronounced dislike of because they’re off their tits. Nothing makes my blood run colder than overhearing a friend telling someone we both loathe that he has no idea why we don’t hang out more. We don’t hang out more because she is a psychotic Tory who once told me I didn’t have the legs for shorts. I also struggle with the hypocrisy of friends who are vegan for moral reasons boshing shed loads of Coke, which isn’t exactly Fairtrade. As you can gather, I am not a let loose kind of guy. I am the kind of person who panics that there’ll be an electrical fire if I leave the TV on standby. I have come to terms with this.
If you believe the stereotype, gays are solely preoccupied with clubs and chemsex, but these days I’d just as soon read my Kindle. They say no one looks back on their life and remembers the nights they had plenty of sleep, but I do – fondly. And I’d certainly rather forget some of the nights I’ve spent watching boys in vests swing their jaws and wondering, aren’t I getting too old for this sort of thing?
By JOE STONE.
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