Not everyone has taken drugs. I just said no

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/06/everyone-taken-drugs-said-no

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The so-called “rave” generation, now in their 40s, who, like Pulp in Sorted for E’s and Whizz really have “left an important part of their brain somewhere/Somewhere in a field in Hampshire” are still taking drugs, albeit occasionally. According to research published in the Observer at the weekend, almost one in three British adults have taken an illegal substance, and a fifth of those still do.

Except for me. I have never indulged in illegal recreational narcotics. To put this in context, I was an A&R scout, worked for a band and was a music journalist. I also went to the Hacienda. According to The British Drugs Survey, 69% of the UK adult population have never taken drugs, so I am clearly not alone in my abstemious lifestyle. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like it.

My abstinence is not a moral stance, but a practical one. I spent time as an advice worker before entering the hedonistic world of music-biz libertines, and so, having witnessed the darker consequences of addiction, did not need Trainspotting to confirm that heroin is a really bad idea.

Unlike some contemporaries, I chose not to snort lines of Vim, bought as coke from scary dealers outside a nightclub toilet. Further back, when I was a student in the 80s, we thought only losers smoked weed; it’s just how things were. A few did speed, which rendered them twitchy and paranoid to the point of psychosis, and I declined politely. One especially bleak moment came when an awful man held poppers under my nose in the vain hope this would encourage me to sleep with him (I like to think that even if it had been a general anaesthetic I would have crawled away). Ecstasy was originally £25 a pill, which was a lot of money in the olden days, and in any case, nobody really knew what to do with it. Rave culture redesignated Adam (as it was then known) from a substance enjoyed by a minority of intellectuals at home, into the one and only dance drug.

I never struggled with refusal, though drugs were always on the periphery. There was and is a hierarchy: speed was for losers, weed was for hippies, and cocaine was expensive and worthy of the dictum: “Instant arsehole – just add cocaine.” But oh, the hypocrisy. I was once declared “uptight” and “stupid” for drinking cider by a fellow music journalist, a teetotal vegan no less, who had crawled through a field of mud and manure while tripping, which in his eyes made him more experimental, more adventurous than me. He saw himself as a rebel, because acid is for educated aesthetes, whereas the anxious poor, prescribed anti-depressants to dull the reality of their predicament, are viewed by many as chaotic and hopeless.

My restraint became a talking point. False rumours spread: that I’d had a bad time on drugs, or a friend had died. I witnessed a former flatmate spend regular Sunday come-downs weeping in the lounge, made unhappy by whatever it was she had purchased from a scary man outside the Hacienda toilets – often worm tablets. I remember the fellow travellers and poseurs brandishing bottles of Orangina (the beverage of choice for those “on one”) sharing knowing looks with the gangsters who had sold them paracetemol. I might have drunk too much whisky, but at least I knew what was in it.

It is widely acknowledged that the “war on drugs” is counter-productive and useless, but one friend was barred from entering the US because of a youthful conviction for possessing a small amount of speed. And I don’t believe that drugs enhance creativity. Another acquaintance has spent decades staring into a computer screen seeking the novel he suspects lies within, then skinning up because he never finds it.

Currently I know a few people who still indulge: dilettantes, not addicts. A few dinner party coke heads who chop out lines on the dining table if they can find a babysitter. Meanwhile, I enjoy a drink, and have suffered some epic hangovers but never endured the miserable come-downs experienced by my drug-using friends. Many friends said yes, but I always just said no. And I’ve never regretted it.