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.
