I vowed not to date men who use cocaine 18 months ago - I've been single ever since
By Imogen Lloyd Webber, Daily Mail
June 14, 2007
The evening had been great. The wine had flowed, the conversation was effortless, and the man sitting opposite me in a London pub extremely handsome.
As a first date, it could hardly have been better. But at the back of my mind was a nagging question.
Steeling myself, I brought up the subject of drugs, and how I'd sworn never to date a cocaine user again.
His face fell. With just one look, I knew it was over before it began. But this wasn't any rock star, a model or even someone in the media - the stereotypical cocaine users. No, he was just a goodlooking builder. Hardly the glamorous type.
But I wasn't surprised to discover he had a habit. Over the past few years, I've come to realise cocaine is not just a problem in the well-documented 'showbiz' circles of the capital, but across every class and occupation in Britain.
It was really brought home to me at a 30th birthday bash last month in Essex when one guest, a schoolteacher from York, told me about a dinner party she'd gone to where food wasn't on the menu.
"If I'm invited to dinner," she said, "I prefer mine to be with a little nutritional value off a plate, not a powder off a mirror. I made my excuses and went home."
At the same table around me that night were 20 or so people from all areas of Britain, with social backgrounds as varied as their addresses, their careers ranging from solicitor to ski rep, marketing rep to mother. In short, a selection of Middle England's finest.
And out of all those people, I joined my teacher friend in being the only two who have never taken the illegal Class A drug cocaine.
Another guest at the party, a no-nonsense estate agent from the North-West, had recently returned to see her family one weekend and arranged to meet up with some old acquaintances in a bar.
While she was out, she bumped into several of her stepmother's girlfriends.
These fortysomething women are all outwardly respectable and vibrantly healthy - the type who do not eat red meat, but drink wheatgrass juice and eat only organic food.
In the queue for the ladies - now longer than ever in nightspots throughout the country because of the number of women going to the loos in twos to powder their noses - my friend realised that her parents' pals had exchanged one type of vacuuming for another.
While a toilet attendant rushed to wipe down seat covers (employed by any place remotely trendy in case of spot checks by council officials), these super-mums were maintaining their super-high while their 11-year-olds slept at home in the hands of teenage babysitters.
Bear in mind, too, that those babysitters themselves may well be familiar with cocaine.
While I was in Edinburgh last year catching up with a friend, she told me how her supposedly straight-laced teenage stepsister had been snorting the drug.
"She told me if she didn't, she would be a social pariah. She hadn't been included in nights out with her friends before because they knew she'd fade late at night if she didn't use cocaine."
Harry Shapiro, spokesman of the charity Drugscope, confirms the trend: "The celebrities on the front pages mask the reality that it's not just them taking cocaine."
And he emphasises that abuse of the drug is far from the sole preserve of London's champagne and canapÈs set.
Thanks to its free-falling price over the past five years - National Criminal Intelligence Service figures show the price of a gram of cocaine fell from £80 in 1995 to as little as £40 today - the cost of a "line" can be less than a cocktail.
Britain has the fastest-growing cocaine consumption in the world, and Shapiro says: "It used to be like heroin, but that taboo has gone now. Cocaine has become a fairly unremarkable aspect of a night out for a lot of people."
Meanwhile, a Southampton-based girlfriend of mine, who is a sales rep, told me: "If someone asked if they could take heroin in front of me, I'd be horrified.
"But I'd be left with precious few friends if I complained every time someone did a line of coke."
Certainly, statistics bear out the fact that the young are using cocaine more than ever. Its use has more than doubled among 16 to 24-year-olds over the past seven years.
Twenty-four hour drinking has contributed, too, because revellers are using drugs to keep the party going long into the night. For them cocaine, which keeps you alert and awake, is the perfect solution.
Paul Broadbent, Chief Superintendent of South Yorkshire Police, has warned that the open-all-hours culture has led to a rise in cocaine and amphetamine use.
His officers have noted the trend in Sheffield, a city that has encouraged a round-the-clock drinking culture.
So more people are doing it, you might say, but surely they're not people you come into contact with? Well, don't be so sure.
The latest figures show that cocaine is now the fastest-growing drug problem among the middle classes.
A UK Drugs Unlimited survey published last year found that nearly half the young professionals questioned had used the drug, a fourfold increase from a decade ago.
The frightening truth is that these days, it's not just the Pete Doherty types who are using the drug, it's your dentist and that nice man who does your tax returns.
Look closely enough and someone you know is almost inevitably more than familiar with cocaine.
A 36-year-old female GP I know - whom I'll call Clare - privately admits that until recently she was a regular user.
Such behaviour is surprising for a medic, especially when you consider that cocaine is the cause of 50 per cent of weekend emergency hospital visits for heart and chest problems: it tightens up blood vessels, making the heart work harder and raising blood pressure.
As little as two 100mg lines (a fraction of an ounce) is enough to cause chest pain.
Professor John Henry, a leading drugs expert, says: "People need to know not only that they can die from first use of cocaine, but that they're also going to end up with arteries like a 60-year-old and have brain damage."
Then there are the other side effects of collapsing nostrils, suffered by the likes of EastEnders actress Danniella Westbrook and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, kidney and respiratory failure, strokes, gastrointestinal complications and mental disorders.
So why on earth would my GP friend join the ranks of coke users, inanely repeating themselves and looking like warped versions of AA Milne's Tigger, bouncing around jerkily with runny noses, bulging eyes and sweaty skin?
If you look carefully when you're out in a bar or pub - or even at your office - they're easy to spot.
Users are the people who think they're the life and soul, sprinkling their conversation with sparkling wit, when actually they are unable to focus on anyone or converse with any sense.
They will also be making regular trips to the bathroom, and if they're not, they will suddenly get so paranoid-that they are even more of a nightmare to be around.
That was certainly true of Clare's lover, Trevor, a fiftysomething who thought he was still a bit of a rocker. Trevor was an eerily thin, cheating, flaky liar who, when he wasn't high, was tired and depressed - classic cocaine side effects.
While the drug gives women the libido of a nymphomaniac, too much of it can have the opposite effect on men, so Trevor was also a failure in the bedroom and could not give her the baby she desired.
She finally ditched him after he turned violent thanks to the drug and broke her arm - and her heart.
Such bitter experiences have convinced me it's impossible for a non-user of cocaine to date a user.
The world of the "cheeky line" has all the unfortunate aspects of a secret society, a destructive third person in any relationship. My New Year's resolution of 2006 was giving up men who use cocaine and, yes, I have been single ever since.
But this is not because I never leave the smart enclave of clubs in Chelsea where one might assume you'd find scores of stereotypical cocaine users.
On the contrary, my standard nights out are in pubs visiting my school friends in north and east London, and my weekends are spent with my university pals in towns around the country.
As well as the handsome handyman-I also recently had to turn down the advances of a cute trainee chef because of his hideous drug habit.
Today, at 30, I find it easier to bring it up in conversation on the first date - always in a jovial way but so they know I'm serious.
It's rare when I've made my stance clear that a man will bother to call me again, although I once almost wavered with a beautiful boy who got persistent and with whom I felt a massive spark of attraction.
However, the memory of being let down on a number of occasions, including a birthday not so long ago, by an amour who was off doing cocaine instead, remains too fresh in my mind, and for self-preservation's sake, I know I must keep it that way.
Cocaine use is so widespread that I have been unable to find a remotely attractive, decent male who doesn't snort the stuff.
The very fabric of UK society is in serious straits, thanks to this snowstorm. On a wider scale, as the film Traffic shows, the cocaine trade is handing over money, power and legitimisation to the most violent and corrupt forces in Latin America.
UK users, no doubt a significant number of whom are card-carrying Amnesty International children's charity supporters, are also causing the death of children.
It is not Cambodia or Afghanistan that has the world's highest rate of injuries due to landmines, but Colombia, where insurgents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia plant them to protect the coca fields and processing labs that produce the drug.
It is time for an anti-cocaine crusade led by a politician or a personality with all the evangelical fervour associated with the ecological or world poverty cause.
But can you see Bono or Bob Geldof campaigning to cut off the import of cocaine. Not very cool, is it?
And as for government: David Cameron has notoriously kept his mouth shut on drugs, and in the wider political sphere, well, just remember that a couple of years ago, the toilets at all three party conferences all tested positive for cocaine.
So no, I won't be holding my breath waiting for the day when cocaine is neither cool nor ubiquitous. I fear I may be single for some time to come.
Link
By Imogen Lloyd Webber, Daily Mail
June 14, 2007
The evening had been great. The wine had flowed, the conversation was effortless, and the man sitting opposite me in a London pub extremely handsome.
As a first date, it could hardly have been better. But at the back of my mind was a nagging question.
Steeling myself, I brought up the subject of drugs, and how I'd sworn never to date a cocaine user again.
His face fell. With just one look, I knew it was over before it began. But this wasn't any rock star, a model or even someone in the media - the stereotypical cocaine users. No, he was just a goodlooking builder. Hardly the glamorous type.
But I wasn't surprised to discover he had a habit. Over the past few years, I've come to realise cocaine is not just a problem in the well-documented 'showbiz' circles of the capital, but across every class and occupation in Britain.
It was really brought home to me at a 30th birthday bash last month in Essex when one guest, a schoolteacher from York, told me about a dinner party she'd gone to where food wasn't on the menu.
"If I'm invited to dinner," she said, "I prefer mine to be with a little nutritional value off a plate, not a powder off a mirror. I made my excuses and went home."
At the same table around me that night were 20 or so people from all areas of Britain, with social backgrounds as varied as their addresses, their careers ranging from solicitor to ski rep, marketing rep to mother. In short, a selection of Middle England's finest.
And out of all those people, I joined my teacher friend in being the only two who have never taken the illegal Class A drug cocaine.
Another guest at the party, a no-nonsense estate agent from the North-West, had recently returned to see her family one weekend and arranged to meet up with some old acquaintances in a bar.
While she was out, she bumped into several of her stepmother's girlfriends.
These fortysomething women are all outwardly respectable and vibrantly healthy - the type who do not eat red meat, but drink wheatgrass juice and eat only organic food.
In the queue for the ladies - now longer than ever in nightspots throughout the country because of the number of women going to the loos in twos to powder their noses - my friend realised that her parents' pals had exchanged one type of vacuuming for another.
While a toilet attendant rushed to wipe down seat covers (employed by any place remotely trendy in case of spot checks by council officials), these super-mums were maintaining their super-high while their 11-year-olds slept at home in the hands of teenage babysitters.
Bear in mind, too, that those babysitters themselves may well be familiar with cocaine.
While I was in Edinburgh last year catching up with a friend, she told me how her supposedly straight-laced teenage stepsister had been snorting the drug.
"She told me if she didn't, she would be a social pariah. She hadn't been included in nights out with her friends before because they knew she'd fade late at night if she didn't use cocaine."
Harry Shapiro, spokesman of the charity Drugscope, confirms the trend: "The celebrities on the front pages mask the reality that it's not just them taking cocaine."
And he emphasises that abuse of the drug is far from the sole preserve of London's champagne and canapÈs set.
Thanks to its free-falling price over the past five years - National Criminal Intelligence Service figures show the price of a gram of cocaine fell from £80 in 1995 to as little as £40 today - the cost of a "line" can be less than a cocktail.
Britain has the fastest-growing cocaine consumption in the world, and Shapiro says: "It used to be like heroin, but that taboo has gone now. Cocaine has become a fairly unremarkable aspect of a night out for a lot of people."
Meanwhile, a Southampton-based girlfriend of mine, who is a sales rep, told me: "If someone asked if they could take heroin in front of me, I'd be horrified.
"But I'd be left with precious few friends if I complained every time someone did a line of coke."
Certainly, statistics bear out the fact that the young are using cocaine more than ever. Its use has more than doubled among 16 to 24-year-olds over the past seven years.
Twenty-four hour drinking has contributed, too, because revellers are using drugs to keep the party going long into the night. For them cocaine, which keeps you alert and awake, is the perfect solution.
Paul Broadbent, Chief Superintendent of South Yorkshire Police, has warned that the open-all-hours culture has led to a rise in cocaine and amphetamine use.
His officers have noted the trend in Sheffield, a city that has encouraged a round-the-clock drinking culture.
So more people are doing it, you might say, but surely they're not people you come into contact with? Well, don't be so sure.
The latest figures show that cocaine is now the fastest-growing drug problem among the middle classes.
A UK Drugs Unlimited survey published last year found that nearly half the young professionals questioned had used the drug, a fourfold increase from a decade ago.
The frightening truth is that these days, it's not just the Pete Doherty types who are using the drug, it's your dentist and that nice man who does your tax returns.
Look closely enough and someone you know is almost inevitably more than familiar with cocaine.
A 36-year-old female GP I know - whom I'll call Clare - privately admits that until recently she was a regular user.
Such behaviour is surprising for a medic, especially when you consider that cocaine is the cause of 50 per cent of weekend emergency hospital visits for heart and chest problems: it tightens up blood vessels, making the heart work harder and raising blood pressure.
As little as two 100mg lines (a fraction of an ounce) is enough to cause chest pain.
Professor John Henry, a leading drugs expert, says: "People need to know not only that they can die from first use of cocaine, but that they're also going to end up with arteries like a 60-year-old and have brain damage."
Then there are the other side effects of collapsing nostrils, suffered by the likes of EastEnders actress Danniella Westbrook and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, kidney and respiratory failure, strokes, gastrointestinal complications and mental disorders.
So why on earth would my GP friend join the ranks of coke users, inanely repeating themselves and looking like warped versions of AA Milne's Tigger, bouncing around jerkily with runny noses, bulging eyes and sweaty skin?
If you look carefully when you're out in a bar or pub - or even at your office - they're easy to spot.
Users are the people who think they're the life and soul, sprinkling their conversation with sparkling wit, when actually they are unable to focus on anyone or converse with any sense.
They will also be making regular trips to the bathroom, and if they're not, they will suddenly get so paranoid-that they are even more of a nightmare to be around.
That was certainly true of Clare's lover, Trevor, a fiftysomething who thought he was still a bit of a rocker. Trevor was an eerily thin, cheating, flaky liar who, when he wasn't high, was tired and depressed - classic cocaine side effects.
While the drug gives women the libido of a nymphomaniac, too much of it can have the opposite effect on men, so Trevor was also a failure in the bedroom and could not give her the baby she desired.
She finally ditched him after he turned violent thanks to the drug and broke her arm - and her heart.
Such bitter experiences have convinced me it's impossible for a non-user of cocaine to date a user.
The world of the "cheeky line" has all the unfortunate aspects of a secret society, a destructive third person in any relationship. My New Year's resolution of 2006 was giving up men who use cocaine and, yes, I have been single ever since.
But this is not because I never leave the smart enclave of clubs in Chelsea where one might assume you'd find scores of stereotypical cocaine users.
On the contrary, my standard nights out are in pubs visiting my school friends in north and east London, and my weekends are spent with my university pals in towns around the country.
As well as the handsome handyman-I also recently had to turn down the advances of a cute trainee chef because of his hideous drug habit.
Today, at 30, I find it easier to bring it up in conversation on the first date - always in a jovial way but so they know I'm serious.
It's rare when I've made my stance clear that a man will bother to call me again, although I once almost wavered with a beautiful boy who got persistent and with whom I felt a massive spark of attraction.
However, the memory of being let down on a number of occasions, including a birthday not so long ago, by an amour who was off doing cocaine instead, remains too fresh in my mind, and for self-preservation's sake, I know I must keep it that way.
Cocaine use is so widespread that I have been unable to find a remotely attractive, decent male who doesn't snort the stuff.
The very fabric of UK society is in serious straits, thanks to this snowstorm. On a wider scale, as the film Traffic shows, the cocaine trade is handing over money, power and legitimisation to the most violent and corrupt forces in Latin America.
UK users, no doubt a significant number of whom are card-carrying Amnesty International children's charity supporters, are also causing the death of children.
It is not Cambodia or Afghanistan that has the world's highest rate of injuries due to landmines, but Colombia, where insurgents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia plant them to protect the coca fields and processing labs that produce the drug.
It is time for an anti-cocaine crusade led by a politician or a personality with all the evangelical fervour associated with the ecological or world poverty cause.
But can you see Bono or Bob Geldof campaigning to cut off the import of cocaine. Not very cool, is it?
And as for government: David Cameron has notoriously kept his mouth shut on drugs, and in the wider political sphere, well, just remember that a couple of years ago, the toilets at all three party conferences all tested positive for cocaine.
So no, I won't be holding my breath waiting for the day when cocaine is neither cool nor ubiquitous. I fear I may be single for some time to come.
Link
