Eleven Pipers Piping

Not sure about the wisdom of doing a drugs confessional.  But as the last time I touched any form of illicit drug was over 10 years ago, I think I'm safe from having the drug squad beating down the door.

When we first moved to Southsea, the house across the road was a bona fide crack house; run by a slum landlord who allegedly kept a stable of crack whores there.  Seemed unlikely - the only times we saw any of the resident was when they were being arrested - a regular occurrence -  and they were always prematurely-aged men with jaundice, no teeth and the staggers.  Possibly they were specialist 'glory-hole' crack whores.

They weren't great neighbours.  One of the first faculties that drug users lose is the ability to use doorbells.  Instead, they have to stand in the street and shout to attract the attention of those in the house.  Or maybe the doorbell didn't work.

One morning, we were woken by a loud crash - the drug squad had broken down the door and arrested everyone.  That seemed to confirm that the doorbell didn't work.  The house is now pricey apartments.

My personal drug history is nowhere near as exciting.  A teenage foray into solvent abuse was more fun than it should have been but was small beer compared to working with industrial solvents at a printers for a couple of years.  A couple of years almost permanently high and no doubt some serious long-term damage to my system.   Either way, glue isn't really a proper grown-up drug like cannibis is.  Glue doesn't count.

Everyone remembers their first joint - unless it was exceptionally good gear.  Mine was in Tetbury Rec., in the earthworks left behind after one of the failed skatepark initiatives that happened every few years from the 70s until a few years ago when they finally built one. I remember the earthworks but I have no recollection of what the joint was like - probably sheep poo.  Didn't stop me inhaling of course.  I don't remember any effect except for even more paranoia than I already had.  Great..

I went to Stroud for a year to re-fail my A levels.  Stroud was drugs central.  The 60s and 70s hippies had moved in en masse and pioneered home-grown on the south-facing slopes.  The place was supposed to be awash with drugs.  It wasn't.  Well... I couldn't get any.  I did get a mullet and a girlfriend though, so it wasn't a wasted year, in any sense of the word.

The circle of friends I had at the time, decided that drugs were uncool and so took up with Amyl Nitrate (poppers).   For the uninitiated, Amyl Nitrate causes your brain to grow at the same time as making your skull shrink. Like an ice-cream headache with the 'bonus' of an allegedly relaxed sphincter.  Never wanted to put the sphincter thing to the test but inhaling a few lungfuls of Amyl Nitrate did give a pleasant rush while reality wandered off and minded it's own business for a minute or so before returning, hand-in-hand with a splitting headache.

Amyl Nitrate hurts but it was legal.  You had to buy it from sex shops. It came in small bottles that the guy in the sex shop would always stack and roll when wrapping so that you left the shop with a dildo-shaped package.

Illicit drugs passed me from time to time but none stuck.

I tried hot-knifing but found it was like having your tonsils microwaved.  My housemate was more into it and our cutlery drawer looked like a blacksmiths forge.

I tried a line of speed before going night-clubbing in Yate.  Alternative night at Spoirals Nite Spot.  All that happened was that I was able to drink 8 pints of lager whilst remaining stone cold sober.  The cold, concrete bleakness of Yate town centre in the 80s should never be seen sober - let alone when speeding and over-aware of every shitty, dystopian 1960s concrete 'statement'.

I tried cocaine but all that happened was that for the first time in my life, both of my nostrils were working at 100%.  I'd never had so much oxygen in my system but apart from being able to breathe, the effects were underwhelming.

When I was backpacking in Australia, I discovered grass, which was a very pleasant interlude.  I worked on a grape farm and persuaded the farmers 22-year-old son that if he randomly planted one or two grass plant on each row of grapes, it wouldn't show up as a plantation to the spotter planes that used to try to spot grass enterprises.   If his plants had been found, he'd have been able to blame the random plants on the itinerant grape pickers.   I calculated that he'd be able to grow around 300 plants without detection.

He was the only son - the golden child; set to the inherit the farm and spoiled rotten by his doting parents.  We got in contact recently on Facebook and I find that he's now a 50-year-old burger flipper. Perhaps I shouldn't have introduced him to industrial scale grass production...


When I returned home in 1989, the early versions of shuper shkunk were doing the rounds and I found these to be far too hardcore for me.

The first time I tried shuper shkunk, I was sick out of the window of a girl's car. Vomit was all down the side of the car - like Go Faster stripes made out of chewed noodles.  She wasn't impressed and the evening ended with her parked outside my parents house while I washed her car - much to the amusement of her, my mates and my dad, who all stood round laughing at me and pointing out the bits I'd missed.

The next time I tried it was years later at a stag night in Gloucestershire.  We were playing drinking games when the booze was replaced with joints.  I was on the point of leaving - not out of protest but because I was hammered.  As I was leaving, I met a mate on the way in.  He's an immense Samoan and had been out clubbing in the local bikers club.   Bikers don't get to meet many Samoans and so everyone wanted to dance with him.  They all loved him and gave him a leaving gift of some shuper-shuper Shuper Shkunk.

He offered me a toke and I took it deep.

All the bones left my body.  My skeleton wandered off home and left the jelly bits behind.  I curled up on the doormat and tried to sleep.  Unfortunately, my bowels had woken up.   I navigated my way to the loo by following the skirting board -  crawling along with a steadying hand on the skirting board to stop me falling off the floor.  When I came to a doorway, I plucked up my courage and made the big leap across to the other side - like Evel Knievel rocketing across a canyon only without the rockets. Although my bowels were moving fast and so the rocket propulsion was only seconds away.

I made it to the loo and after a pleasant (for me) respite, I needed to sleep.   I crawled along the skirting until I found a bed and crashed into it.   While I was unconscious, the staggee passed out and was carried to the same bed.  He was stripped naked and slathered with toothpaste on his plums.  Apparently it dries out and forms a crust that has to be chiseled off...

According to my 'mates', as both of us were passed out, it was good sport to pose us and take photos. I'm not sure exactly what happened but it is safe to say that it was the night that 'tea-bagging' was invented and that the Farelly brothers (film director friends of the groom) got the hair idea for 'There's Something About Mary'  (They couldn't work toothpaste into the plot and so had to resort to masturbation - but haven't we all?)

Luckily, this was in 1994 and so there was no Facebook or other eternal repositories of shame.  In fact, the technology was so primitive that the photographer ran the same film through the camera twice, thereby ruining all the photos and letting myself and the staggee off the hook big time.

I've been clean ever since.