Why is it that in this age of enlightened attitudes from the new generation of modern families and forty-something hipsters-wannabes is there still a wholly unrounded perception towards those who 'do' drugs?
My days of indulgence were sadly snatched away from me upon the birth of my son. My last joint was rolled and flamed on the very day he was born. I had spent all night at the hospital, the little fellah arrived with screaming and tears (mainly mine), and once Mum was settled in her fancy recuperation unit, I went home and rolled a fat one.
Sitting in my back-yard with the strongest coffee I could find, an empty stomach, and a few ounces of Afghanistan's finest Kush, I not only pondered the reality of being someone's dad, but also that being a dad means I need to stop getting stoned all the time.
Don't get me wrong, the minute my son leaves our house and ventures off to college, university, whatever, and with a large part of my fatherly duties achieved, I will no doubt revert to the waking-baker I have always been.
My misadventures with various herbs, tabs, pills and powders were always conducted away from the normal and the acceptable. In a strange London club that was allegedly operated by the Real IRA, on a transatlantic flight (back in the days when you could do shit like that without being mistaken for a terrorist), and once whilst stumbling through downtown Miami, at 4am, with two transvestites in a Pontiac Firebird!
All those moments, and many more, yet strangely enough not once during my times in the medicine cabinet did I feel the need to rob someone, hassle someone, fight someone, rape someone or act like a lady's clunge area.
However, and not including the panic roused by the scum-bag media, the amount of times I see a viciously over-stimulated man-woman-thing, trying to lock an aggressive gaze with anyone who makes eye contact, is beyond a fucking joke and worryingly regular. What makes it worse is when you realise it's not the behaviour of your usual chavvy little fucker whose parents are one DNA sequence away from dog shit, but actually as a result of drug use.
That sullen-eyed expression, the sickly smell of a recently dogged joint, or even the overpowering bouquet of the one drug we all find acceptable, alcohol. It's a sight that not only provokes a sense of avoidance and revulsion, but also an instantaneous disgust for the drug you have attributed to the behavioural patterns displayed.
Seriously, it's this kind of stuff that gives drug use a bad name!
Please, all you people that fit the above description. Stop. Stop ruining the party for the rest of us that can handle our high without the need to become a loathsome little puke.
There's no great mystery to it. Drugs can make you better. They have the power to lead me to a nightclub - a place I would normally fucking avoid with my broken fingernails scratched in the pavement. They can make the most boring flight into a possible alien encounter in the sky (no time to explain now, but it was very trippy). They can make me talk for hours with two transvestites in a Pontiac Firebird!
All you twats that get fucked up and rob someone, please leave the area, leave the country, leave the fucking planet if possible. Take all those bastards that have given acid a bad name with you, those people that dance in fields to awful music designed to provoke tinnitus and extreme diarrhoea. Try blowing your whistles and throwing shapes as my fist punches through your thorax.
I know it's trite, but look at music and comedy; it's a fucking hotbed for great drug use. Hendrix, Keith Moon, Dee Dee Ramone and John Bonham, Lenny Bruce, Greg Giraldo, Chris Farley and John Belushi; they all took drugs and they all made the world a much nicer place to get wasted in.
Ok, so they also died in hideously fucked-up and horrifying ways - with most of them found lying in their own shit, riddled with Hepatitis B, and drained of any semblance of their pervious personality - but let's not get hung up on that.
Besides, those guys act as a nice little precautionary tale for anyone looking to step up from the lower leagues of funny, mischievous, lovable drug addict to the scary premiership of "I'll fuck your mashed skull" drug addict/droog.
I want more of those guys and a little less of Michael McIntyre, The Wanted and those little scrawny fucks that congregate around the local Kwik-E-Mart.
It's two sides of the same Rizzla paper. We have those that can freely use drugs with minimal disruption to their lives (perhaps a little more time than usual spent talking to transvestites, but that's it), and those that fucking ruin it for the rest of us with reckless indulgence and escalated arseholery.
I don't want to be mean, or avoid the whole "it's a disease" horseshit, but let's bottom line it for a second. You rob someone, you attack someone, you rape someone, it's all on you, bitch. Everyone who's every committed a criminal act had a fucking reason for doing it - usually as a result of either piss-poor judgement or trying to work outside the system we all adhere too. That's it.
Just because you're a drug addict doesn't give you a free pass to run riot, and blame the blackened tin-foil for the shit YOU have elected to do. You rock the pipe, stab a vein, smoke a bowl or any of the other terminology I've heard in The Wire, then you and your broken shitty-arsed veins need to stand up and be counted, rather than hide behind an excuse based on a sickness. Cancer is a sickness, Alzheimer's is a sickness, man-flu is a really bad sickness - smoking crack is a fucking life choice, at best.
In essence, those that can't manage their high, start robbing the town-folk, and go all Breaking Bad on us; you people need to stop playing with the rest of us. Go to a clinic, or wherever you need to go, and take up basket weaving or Moshi Monster collecting.
Stop ruining our lovely drug-taking.
Paul Millard 2014
