Taking recreational drugs was an interest and a hobby many of us shared during the 1960s. Some overdid it and were damaged temporarily or worse. Now, you know the joke: These days I get enough of a rush just standing up from my arm chair.
In my late-found wisdom I avoid all drugs except a cup of coffee and a glass of decent red wine (just the one). But many people are still able to use recreational drugs moderately and sensibly. Not me. And anyway, I like my world the way I find it.
I have always stood up for the legalisation of cannabis and the medical control of hard drugs, not making them a matter for police control. Our prisons are overcrowded, both in the UK and USA with people caught up in the illegality of drugs. Millions of people have had their lives ruined not by the drugs themselves but but by the heavy punitive actions of policing, the courts and the prisons. Half of crime is fuelled by the need to make money to buy illegal drugs on the black market. This includes prostitution, muggings, burglaries, low level street dealing, etc. If only we could adopt sensible policies towards recreational drugs as they do in Portugal, Denmark, Holland, and even some US states, the world would be a better place. Organised crime and the drug cartels would shrink away if we treated drugs as a medical issue and made the safer ones available legally, to adults.
In addition, criminalisation due to drug offence disproportionaly effects ethnic minorities. A huge percent of prisoners in USA jails are African-American, many if not most locked up for drug related offences. The same is probably true of Hispanics too. In the UK a disproportionate number of prisioners are Afro-Caribbean, again many incarcerated for drug-related offences. Some have said that the drugs war is a race war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_war_on_drugs
This section is not an endorsement but a (partly) dispassionate overview with a some memories and experiences woven in. Even in the 60s I did not feel it was right to encourage others into drug taking, except perhaps the odd spliff. I think over-reliance on any artificial stimulants whether it be alcohol, cannabis, E or even heroin is a bad thing. But it is for individuals with the help of the medical profession, counselling and mental health services to sort themselves out. Criminalizing drugs makes the problem much, much worse.
As a middle class white person I have never run foul of the law. In 1968 I was with a girlfriend called Dee who had taken over a room available for rent in Brighton prior to landlord agreement. The police were called but knew Dee. One experienced sargeant picked up a tranparent plastic box of powdered cannabis containing maybe 10 gm. He asked if she was staying off drugs, and shaking the box said that a bit of weed never did any harm. He accepted her account of having every intention of regularising the rental, which she did. The police then left. If we had been black, or if the police were having a bad day, or if they were sticklers for the law, our life courses might have turned out very different. Many are not so privileged or lucky. Thousands of black men in jail in the USA and UK can attest to that. It’s not right.
Here, I treat what it is we are talking about in the domain of recreational drugs, what they are and what they do. Many of these drugs were tried out by me and my friends when we hung out at the Wiches Cauldron coffee bar, Belsize Park, in the early 1960s. See
https://sites.google.com/view/witchescauldron1960s/home
Let me start with a picture of a range of drugs. Most were obtained from someone’s prescription in those days, but not cannabis or LSD.
Common illegal recreational drugs available in the 1960s
This photo shows many of the most common illegal recreational drugs available in the 1960s
Some of those on top row are ‘black bombers’
Next row: no. 9 is drinamyl (purple hearts, blues), no. 10, Spansule timed or ‘sustained release’ pellets)
Second row from bottom: no. 20 & 21 are hashish, no. 22 is grass, marijuana, weed, pot (both forms of cannabis).
Bottom row: a joint, reefer, or hand rolled cigarette of cannabis
In the class A section: no. 25 a ‘jack’ (soluble tablet) of heroin (10 mg of diamorphine hydrochloride), no. 26 a ‘microdot’ of LSD.
An ABC of Drugs
A is for Amphetamine, Speed, Uppers, Whizz, Krank. Small amounts of speed make you talkative, full of warmth joy, sharing yourself with others. It keeps you going, defeats exhaustion, stops you sleeping and reduces your appetite. Larger amounts of speed put you into a removed and anxious state tapping your feet or hands repeatedly, doing obsessive things like picking fluff off the carpet or squeezing pimples on your face until you look like you have been in a fight or worse. Prolonged large doses leads to what is termed amphetamine psychosis where your sense of reality breaks down
I saw an eyeball coming through a splitting wall on a stalk in Tetuan 1969, and saw fish jumping out of the sea the same size all the way to the horizon, in Tangier Summer 1969. I could hear people whispering about me incessantly, and knew that they were peering into my hotel room through every crack, door and window. At one point I threw open my doors shouting “I have nothing to hide!”
Large doses and the associated sleeplessness produce feelings of paranoia and threat. People in the grip of amphetamine psychosis are delusional and can be dangerous, just like paranoid schizophrenics. They are capable of unpredictable violence (see also coke).
Prescription amphetamines
A photo of prescription amphetamines; including ‘purple heart’ (blues) in the centre, and ‘black bombers’ above, and spansules, below.
Purple hearts
Purple hearts (drinamyl) were the favoured drug of the Mods – they included 5mg of dexamphetamine and some amylbarbitone. Great for dancing to what is now called Northern Soul.
A is for Atropine and other drugs from the Bella Donna Solanacea plant family, also present in Fly Agaric toadstool (amanita muscaria) alongside muscarine, scopolomine. These are powerful mind bending drugs, not necessarily any fun. Arctic shamen used to eat fly agaric for visions and ceremonies, and drank each other’s urine as the drugs are excreted unchanged. Witches, that is female wizards and crones, not the eponymous coffee bar, used to take datura containing atropine in order to fly on their broomsticks. Don Juan in Mexico used datura in his rites, including flying while chained to a rock. You certainly see things that aren’t there but it’s not much fun. Alan Shoobridge told me you could buy morphine over the counter in Ibiza, but the only available sort had atropine with it. He complained it gave him ‘barbed wire’. I didn’t understand this side effect untill I saw his difficult passage down the high street, Summer 1967. He was, dipping down, stepping high with his feet, and twisting his body around and to the side. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Oh, I’m just trying to get through – they’ve strung fucking barbed wire across the road, again.”
B is for Barbiturates, a whole range of sleeping pills from ultra short acting to long or slow acting ones (sodium pentothal, seconal, amylobarbitone, nembutal to barbital/veronal). They help you to sleep but make you very groggy. Their effect is multiplied by combination with antihistamines or alcohol, which can be dangerous. They are now known to be addictive, and rarely prescribed. I used to steal my father’s seconal but it really isn’t a very pleasant drug. He used to take it to go to sleep but as it took hold he would stay up into the wee hours talking and fighting off the little death of sleep.
B is for Benzedrine – see Amphetamine or speed or methedrine. The nickname ‘Bennies’ is a shortened form.
C is for Cocaine, Charlie, C, snow, ice (also crack, rocks, ‘free-basing’ – the smoking of crack). This is a very powerful stimulant that also is a local anaesthetic. It is made from the coca leaves that grow around the Andes. It has long been chewed by Aztecs for stamina and to combat altitude sickness. Hence the nickname ‘marching powder’. Cocaine can be snorted or injected, and in the form of crack or rocks it can be smoked. While very stimulating, giving one much excitement and confidence, producing a gleam in one’s eye, encouraging manic story telling like the ancient mariner, it also made me want more, immediately, now! Injected with heroin as a speedball it provides an enhanced rush; that minute of orgasmic ecstasy that each drug can supply separately, but combined into something even more intense. But the question you must face is: Is it worth swapping a decent, happy and organised life for a minute of ecstasy?
C is for chloroform, a stupyfying liquid, used as a full-anaesthetic since Victorian times. I recall Alan Shoobridge putting a hankie soaked with drops of chlorofrom into his mouth at William Ellis School. We pinched it from the biology lab, regularly. Alan passed out in the corridor and as I was dragging him along the highly polished parquet flooring back to the lab by his legs a master (as the teachers were then called) asked me what I was doing. I explained that Alan was just feeling a bit faint and I was just taking him back to the classroom. I was allowed to proceed. Another time Pete Rasini was inhaling similarly, from a hankie stuffed in his mouth, while seated on a lab stool. At this moment the biology mistress Aggie Clough came in. He was not a biology major so she tapped him hard on the arm saying “What are you doing in here, boy, go back to your classroom!”. She didn’t realize he was borderline unconscious. He fell off the chair and lay motionless on the ground. We gave her the same alibi and got away with it again. Stupid stupefaction!
C is for Caffeine, a central nervous system stimulent found in tea, coffee, cocoa and available as pills. I bought 25gm of pure caffeine from Gerrards the chemical suppliers on Pentonville Road about 1960-61. Can you imagine selling to a young schoolboy, clad in in school uniform, significant quantities sulphur powder, sodium nitrate, charcoal powder (the ingredients of gunpowder), pure caffeine, pure chloral hydrate, chlorbutin, 100 gm of sodium metal immersed in oil, and god knows what else! Peter Sayers bought fuming nitric and concentrated sulphuric acids there too, and took them home on the bus! Luckily we knew the dose for caffeine was about 10mg. Recently in the papers there was the report of a tragic case of a hapless youth who took over 1 gm and died of a burst heart!
D is for Dope, a generic name for drugs but most often used for Cannabis. When Tony Barnett was a lad he had heard that dope made you feel nice, and that it was also used to treat the outside of airplanes. On boarding a flight to France with his father, he ran his finger along the outside skin of the airplane and then licked it surreptitously. It had no effect. A true scientist. Test before you believe!
E is for Ecstasy – it wasn’t around in the 60s but it is reported to be very nice, euphoric, giving you feelings of unbounded love, and to be great for dancing. It is related to the amphetamines but significantly nicer and safer. I had some in a tiny pot on my study shelf that somebody gave me a few years ago. Reading Granta 74: Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater
made me ethusiastic enough to ask my friend to get me some, and I was almost bold enough to try it! It’s gone now, in case you’re asking! I never tried it!
F is for Fentanyl – a hugely powerful opiate 200X stronger than heroin. Thank god it wasn’t around in the 60s or many more of us would have ended up like Prince, dead! The annual death toll from it and oxycontin (another synthetic opiate, called “redneck heroin”) in the USA is greater than the total from the entire Vietnam War start to finish (counting only American deaths – the Vietnamese suffered far worse casulaties).
G is for Grass, the flowers, buds, leaves of the cannabis sativa (or indica) plant, a moderate strength hallucinogen. Having said this, the intensity of different people’s reactions varies greatly. In 1968 my Swedish artist cousin had major psychedelic effects from smoking ordinary weed. Like seeing sheets of glass cutting his legs off and revealing all the flesh and bone to his gaze. It also caused him to be fearful and paranoid, so he never took it again! Cannabis can be smoked, eaten (majun cake in Morocco) or drunk (bhang in India) and varies from mild to overpoweringly strong (see skunk). Called weed, marijuana, kif (in Morocco). There are many regional varieties, such as Morrocan kif, Acapulco gold, Tijuana technicolur, Durban poison, Thai sticks. Cannabis enhances the senses, dilates time, let you really appreciate music, food (the munchies) and overall is a pretty benign drug. Most people also get the giggles, uncontrolled laughter at the funniness of everything, especially the laughter of your compatriots. I recall Margaret Pearce sharing a joint with me and Tony in our hotel room in Paris 1962, and rolling around on the floor, kicking her legs up, laughing uncontrollably. “The drug has no effect on me, whatsover.” she insisted. We fully agreed, and joined in her hilarity! However, despite its contribution to widely shared laughter, a few people do react badly to it, especially in over-strong forms (skunk) or over-large amounts (such as when eaten). It can, if very rarely, lead to a psychotic breakdown. Smoking dope everyday, or all the time, is not a very good thing. My father used to describe the effect as making people ‘world-strange’, a very apt term for the isolation, alienation and entrapment in a bubble of strange ideas and distorted worldviews, possibly tinged with paranoia, to which excessive use of cannabis often leads. See also hashish.
H is for Hashish, the resinous extract of the cannabis sativa (or indica) plant widely grown in North Africa, Middle East, and in warm parts of the Far East, like Thailand (where it is usally kept as grass, e.g., Thai sticks). Unless the powdered cannabis is very high in resin content (such as Lebanese Primo) the chopped resinous plant is mixed with a little water to adhere to itself and compressed while heated. The result is plaques, discs or slabs of hashish. Heating it under pressure so that the resin melts and melds forces out any air which will tend to oxidise the active ingredient THC (Tetro Hydro Cannabinol) and degrade it into a more soporific and less hallucinogenic cannabinoid. Put simply, it preserves it better. There are many local versions and types of hash. Different varieties from Morocco are probably the most common in Europe, but there is also red Leb (terracotta coloured hash from Lebanon, often compressed in little cotton sacks), Black Afghan discs of hash, which used to be hand pressed, Black Pakistani hash slabs, imprinted with a gold seal, Nepali temple balls, etc. Of course it may all have changed since the 60s. Hashish, and indeed cannabis in general, has long been celebrated as a hallucinatory drug giving rise to enhanced sensations and perceptual experiences, as well as visions. Baudelaire, Rimbaud and other poets have long celebrated its visonary qualities. See also G for Grass.
A cannabis booth in Christiania, Copenhagen, with weed to the left, hash to the right, ready rolled joints in colour-ended cylinders, top right, and the dealer’s hands in view. Judging by its colour my guess is that, despite the labels, all of the hash is Morrocan.
H is for Heroin, Horse, H, Smack, Diamorphine, Diacetyl-morphine hydrochloride. It is made from morphine, the naturally occuring narcotic alkaloid which is the major pharmacologically active component of opium. Morphine is first extracted and purified, and then further processed using acetic acid. Heroin is the best painkiller ever discovered. But, as is universally acknowledged, it is a very addictive drug. Indeed, it is probably the most addictive drug known to humankind. It is addictive because of the unpleasant and painful withdrawal symptoms experienced by a regular user of high doses, when they stop taking it. But beyond this, it also causes extreme psychological addiction, leading addicts to go to great lengths to obtain it. They will sacrifice the needs of loved ones, their own dignity, bodily safety, and almost anything else, to obtain the next dose. When addicts or anyone takes heroin, there are two parts to the heroin high. First, there is the immediate flash, the rush, the ecstatic minute of euphoria as it takes hold of your mind and body. Second, there is the afterglow, the extended high, the numbed contentment that follows. Unfortunately in the medium to long term it causes emotional distancing and numbness. For a personal account see https://internationaltimes.it/heroin/
Dave Young’s comment:
Re smack, I never had so much trouble with it nice and moreish though it is. I thank Robert S. deRopp for his book Drugs and the Mind which made it very clear that it was possible to stop with a bit of will power. There is no doubt however that there is not much if anything in this world that makes you feel better. As a friend of mine said when we were talking about enlightenment: I don’t know what it could be like but if it is anything it must be better than heroin.
I liked to go out on the town on it but the vomiting made that awkward and lying around drinking tea and smoking fags was a pretty limited lifestyle.
Perfect for late old age though, they should give it to all pensioners.
Oh yes, I forgot the vomiting. Very often you will vomit on injecting heroin. One ex-junkie friend (on this site but who shall remain nameless) reports that just getting ready to fix made him feel sick. A Pavlovian reaction!
I is for Injection. Many drugs are injected subcutaneously or intramusculalrly for moderate speed of release into the system, or intraveinously in order to reach the brain very fast (max. 30 seconds). However breaking through the skin barrier by injection risks introducing infectious agents into the system. All of us who have experienced a ‘dirty fix’ know what it feels like to lie shivering and cold for hours, while your immune system fights off the infection. At least two of of the Witches people died from sepsis infections cause by intraveinous drug use in 1970 or soon after. Alan Shoobridge died from sepsis in an hospital in Northern France. Lynn Ellis was another. I last met Lynn in New Bond Street in 1970 when I was working nearby as a computer programmer. She assured me she was off heroin but I could see from her pinned eyes (tiny pin-prick sized pupils) that she was high on opiates. I never saw her again, but learnt from Nessie that she had died in a squat from blood poisoning. Both were good friends, bright people with great potentials and abilities, but both were burdened with an irresistable urge to self-destruct. They sleep in the arms of Morpheus.
J is for Junk, see Heroin, Morphine. (Plus there are loads of synthetic opiods including methadone, tramadol, palfium, pethidene, fentanyl, oxycontin, etc). Junkies are of course opiate addicts.
K is for Ketamine, a horse tranquilizer used for clubbing and dancing. Loved by some. Never tried it. Sounds rough!
L is for LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25) a very powerful hallucinogenic drug. This is the god drug, the one that opens you up to powerful visions and near-religious experiences; when you think you understand everything and see how the universe is totally interconnected. Afterwards your insights may not seem to be quite so universal and mind-blowing. But one does carry away the knowledge that reality is not what it seems on the surface. Periodically Acid (LSD) is promoted as the answer to all psychic and social ills. The fact is that
Acid is truly amazing and mind-blowing, and teaches you so much, taking you beyond just seeing the surfaces of everything swirling with patterns and rippling and heaving with life and movement. Acid takes you into yourself and lets you see who you are, what you might be and unleashes the love and laughter of the universe through you. It lets you see the joy and beauty of all beings, the interconnectedness of life, nature in its wholeness, the pulsing net that is the communion of everything. And you carry some of that wisdom back with you when you return from your trip. But if you have dark fears and anxieties it can release them too and leave you cowering and quaking at your own demons, absolutely terrified by the abyss within. You taste heaven (or hell) in the here and now.
Alex Grey’s vision of the Net of Being
Acid makes you very susceptible to outside influences and so is best taken with friends in supportive and familiar surroundings. Once you get comfortable and confident you can perhaps go out, with your guide accompanying you. Sometimes people have ‘bad trips’ when they become disturbed, paranoid, fearful and anxious. This is not a pleasant experience. Very rarely, bad trips can even trigger a mental breakdown. LSD is a very powerful drug that should be used cautiously. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who drove a bus around the West Coast of the USA in the 60s spiking peoples drinks with LSD, were behaving very irresponsibly and badly. No-one should ever be given a drug without their knowledge and consent, especially not LSD. For an imaginative personal version of the LSD trip see: https://internationaltimes.it/the-journey-2/
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their bus which took Owsley’s acid to the masses, willing or not!
L is for Largactil, very heavy tranquilizer. A chemical cosh!
L is for Laughing gas, nitrous oxide, which makes you light headed and laugh a lot. In much of London clubland, Brick Lane and Camden the morning after party nights many little silver ‘sparklets’ (gas cylinders) can be seen on the pavements and in the gutter. Users typically discharge the compressed gas into balloons and then inhale it, enjoying the light headedness and laughter it provokes. It is actually sold for inflating whipped cream in patisserie making. When you buy a whipped cream dispensing ‘aerosol’ can, the inflating gas inside is nitrous oxide.
M is for Morphine, and MS for morphine sulphate. One of the main opiate drugs, used for pain relief. The effect is not as euphoric as that of heroin, but similar in many ways. 10% of codeine injested is turned to morphine in your body which why codeine is moderately psychoactive. Morphine and codeine are some of the most commonly occuring opioids in opium. There are scores of different opioid alkaloids in opium, very valuable medically.
M is for Mescaline a very powerful natural hallucinogenic drug present in the mescal cactus of central America (used to be called Lophophera Williamsii in Botany). Similar descriptions of effects and warnings of danger that apply to LSD are equally relevant here. Traditionally it is used in shamanistic rites by Native Americans in South Western USA and in Mexico. Mescaline is weakly present in the form of tequila called mescal. This often has a worm (or two) at the bottom of the bottle, purportedly to absorb the poisons.
M is for Methedrine, methyl amphetamine sulphate. Basically it is speed, just a slightly nastier version of it. See Amphetamine, Speed. It used to be available on NHS prescription in 30mg ampoules, for addicts and other uses. In the mid 60s the street price was 5/- per ampoule or a box of 5 for £1. The strongest dosage of amphetamine in ampoule form is Maxiton Forte, each containing 100mg of amphetamine sulphate. In Kabul 1965 a bunch of us took one each. The effect was so powerful that the next morning Tony Barnett and I scaled the mountain range that divides Kabul into two halves, at high speed (sic) circled by eagles. Later the same day I was so tetchy I narrowly avoided a knife fight with a man I insulted in the bazaar, when he kept intervening in my bargaining. Not recommended.
N is for Nose Candy, a slang term for cocaine.
N is also for Nostroline yellow and black plastic nasal inhalers available over the counter from chemists in the early sixties for 1/3d (one shilling and threepence). When cracked open it contains a bundle of about 10 absorbant paper ‘leaves’ bound together and soaked in 350mg of pure amphetamine oil as well as being flavoured with essential oils to help clear the nasal passages. Sometimes one found that the makers had substituted cotton wool for the paper strips. Ugh! The essential oils made it nasty to eat, in either form! The standard dose of amphetamine sulphate, such as in Drinamyl (known as purple hearts, which also contained a dose of amylbarbitone) is 5mg. So a Nostroline inhaler contains the equivalent of 70 purple hearts, which is, in terms of amphetamine content, a huge amount. After buying and consuming one, Mick Roach complained it took 2 days to work and then kept him awake for 3 days. On questioning he admitted he had managed to swallow the whole plastic inhaler intact, with its outer cap still screwed on, and his ironclad system had managed to digest it over 2 days! On that dose it was amazing he was only up for 3 days and survived intact.
N is for Nutmeg John Martin writes: “You left out nutmeg from your list of drugs on the Witch’s website. I once tried it. I think I lost consciousness for at least 24 hours.”
Yes, I too tried nutmeg having read that it was used by sailors and prisoners for self-intoxication. I tried it 3 times, taking 1/2, 1 1/2, and 4 1/2 freshly ground whole nutmegs, respectively. For the last attempt I used some local anesthetic throat pastilles so that I could swallow this horrible, rough stuff. For 40 years I could not bear nutmeg in food because of that experience. It is a powerful, stupefying and almost psychedelic drug. I took it in the flat in Frognal, Hampsted we lived in until winter 1961, so that dates it probably to Autumn 1961. After taking this large dose I recall watching TV and the adverts on ITV were speaking directly and personally to me, giving me messages. I went to my study and I was dissecting an earthworm (a part of ‘A’ level Zoology that interested me) and I recall finding my self down among the huge seminal versicles which were like giant balloons towering over me. The next day my parents could not wake me to go to school. I slept all day. I recall investigating the availability of pure nutmeg oil – the active ingredient – and found Boots sold it for 10/- a fluid ounce. But that was expensive and it wasn’t that nice and I moved on to other things.
O is for Opium, natural source of all the opiates. O is also for omnipon, medically sterilized opium extract for injectible pain relief. Opium is a dark brown sticky lump, but it can be softer and more malleable if not fully dried out. It is the collected dried sap of papaverum somniferum, the purple/bluish/white opium poppy. It is collected by scarifying the green poppy pods (each about the size of a baby’s fist) so that white sap oozes out of the diagonal or vertical slashes and accumulates in a drying droplet or two at the bottom. As it dries the colour changes from white to cream, then from ochre to brown and black. Collecting up all the drying sap is quite a lot of work. I read somewhere that it takes 100 hours to collect 1 pound weight of opium. Opium is a narcotic, a soporific, generating euphoria, reducing percepions of pain and inducing a dozy state. On opium you have little daydreams, waking scenarios when you shut your eyes, like hynogogic reveries. Opium can be smoked, eaten, injected (suitably boiled, dissolved and filtered), or absorbed through the mucus membrane of any body aperture (hence opium suppositories). Opium, like all the opiates reduces libido in most men, as well as reducing the ability to perform sexually. However, perhaps through relaxing and disinhibiting women it can enhance their libido. This mismatch can be a source of conflict and disappointment, at least in my own experience.
Opium has long been beloved of poets and writers, from Thomas de Quincy, Baudelaire, Coleridge, Rimbaud, Artaud, Cocteau onwards. Laudenum, or opium tincture, consists of the soluble parts of opium dissolved in pure or nearly pure alcohol. Some of the Victorian opium addicts would takes hundreds of drops of laudenum in a single dose, thus becoming alcoholics as well as opium addicts.
The collection of opium from poppy seedpods in the field in Afghanistan
P is for Pethidine (a synthetic opiate) regarded as three times stronger than morphine (as indeed heroin is). In the 60s there was a story of the Pethidine twins who would rub glass fibre into their eyes and then go to hospital where pethidine was the only suitable treatment. The story sounds a bit dodgy, in retrospect.
P is for Pentothal an ultra fast acting barbiturate, one of the downers and sleepers. It used as a truth drug because it is quite disorientating and puts you into a hypnotic trance like state. ‘Sleepers’ like this were also known as hypnotics because of this effect.
P is for Preludin, another form of speed that used to be available from the 50s for appetite suppression (my mother took it for 2 years around 1959-61 and I used to pinch some from her handbag when she wasn’t looking!). You could buy it over the counter as late as 1969 in Tangier. However when I went into a chemist there, very gaunt and rather strung out, and was asked what I wanted it for, my flustered answer of “for dieting” earned me a stern refusal!
“Preludin was the first drug that the Beatles first took, a German diet pill, its chemical name is phenmetrazine. It was a stimulant, apparently used, some people say, by Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Truman Capote.”
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/16/290614967/inside-the-barely-legal-world-of-designer-drugs?t=1592660364662
P is for Physeptone, the English trade name for methadone. Originally named Dolophine this is a synthetic morphine equivalent developed in Germany during the WW2 period when supplies of opium from India and the British Empire were cut off. It is commonly used as a heroin or other addictive opiate substitute. It gives less of a euphoric high but lasts in the system longer, for up to 24 hours. However it has worse and longer lasting withdrawal symptoms than heroin or morphine. Dolophine is said to be named after Adolf Hitler, who used it extensively in the late 30s and the war years. However it just as likely be named for dolour, the pain it banishes.
In the 1930s, pethidine and methadone were developed and put into production in Germany. After the war, all German patents, trade names and research records, including these, were requisitioned and expropriated by the Allies (primarily Americans) – from Wikipedia.
P is for Palfium, a powerful synthetic opiate. Its active ingredient is Dextromoramide, which is a powerful opioid analgesic approximately three times more potent than morphine but shorter acting. Alan Shoobridge claimed that Palfium and Ritalin combined gave a better rush than a speedball made up of Heroin and Cocaine. I was never able to test that claim, but did find Palfium on its own to be most pleasant.
P is for Pan, a mix of herbs and spices wrapped in a betel nut leaf, which has a mild narcotic effect. It is widely known and used in India, rather like an after dinner brandy, and comes in a wide variety of fillings and effects. They used to serve it in the Indian High commission canteen in central London for 1/- where the public could lunch for 3/- in 1970. I had it once, and although mildly pleasant I found I couldn’t do a thing with my mind all afternoon, and I was supposed to be working at computer programming for British Olivetti.
Q is for Quaaludes, a US term for Mandrax, a stupifying downer prized by some and not really liked by myself. Makes the user stupified, stupid and clumsy.
Q is for Qat or Kat, a Middle Eastern and East African narcotic plant which when chewed induces a mildly stupified state. Although widely available in Somali communities in London is technically illegal. I recall hearing of the Qat belt, a zone across the Middle Eastern and East Africa where it was hard to get anything done because the unskilled working population were too stupified on Qat to work effectively. Retrospectively, this sound like an exaggerated and racist myth, which is not to deny that Qat usage may be problematic. Do note that this is a great word for Scrabble.
R is for Romilar, a proprietary cough medicine containing dextromethorphan. 100 ml of this syrup induces a cheap version of an hallucinogenic high, especially when cannabis is smoked with it. I found you could also buy a party pack (500ml bottle) and Romilar in pill form. Much fun was had in the mid 60s on Romilar patrols!
R is for Ritalin, a form of speed used to treat kids for ADHD or Autism spectrum disorders. A bit gentler than amphetamine or methedrine! I can’t think it’s good for kids, though!
S is for Skunk, an artificially developed and bred cannabis plant product with elevated THC content, the active hallucinogenic ingredient. THC content of skunk is reported to be in the range 10% – 30% of total weight. Because of its strength, this is the most dangerous form of cannabis. The relatively rare cases of psychosis caused by cannabis are usually down to the use of skunk. Skunk has a a very strong smell and it is quite common to get a whiff of it, even when you are 10m away from the smoker, as you walk around Camden, the West End, and doubless many other districts of London. I like the smell.
S is for Shrooms (short for mushrooms) the psylocybe toadstools that grow wild in many places including Wales and Dartmoor, Devon. The active ingredient is an hallucinogen milder than LSD but stronger than cannabis. I never knew how to get it and never tried it, but some young relatives would regularly go to Dartmoor to pick it and later injest it, from the early 90s onwards. Shrooms are unique in that the freshly picked toadstools, if unprocessed, are legal to possess. Once dried or extracted the substance becomes an illegal drug, possession of which is subject to legal penalties.
T is for Temazepam, a sleeping pill. They are all addictive!
U is for Uppers, speed, various forms of amphetamines and related stimulants. Just like sleeping pills and tanquilizers are all Downers!
W is for Weed, grass, Cannabis
V is for Valium, a tranquilizer. Benzodiazepam.
X is for XTC another name for Ecstacy
X is for Xanax, a stress relief drug. It lowers the heart rate and calms the user greatly.
Y is for Yage’, also known as ayahuasca, a very powerful hallucinogen extracted from South Anerican lianas and used by shamen in religious ceremonies. According to Tony Barnett it is stronger than LSD or mescaline, but not necessarily a pleasant experience. You feel very icy cold and shiver, and also get very sick (vomiting). But it is potentially a powerful theraputic drug for clearing away mental problems – for some at least. The active ingredient used to be call telepathine, according to William Burroughs. I have not heard cases of it giving telepathic powers to its users.
Z is for Zopiclone, a modern day sleeping pill
That’s all. folks, in my A to Z tour of recreational drugs, both hard and soft. But …
There is a whole host of previously legal highs, now illegal, like Spice. These are novel chemical variants of various recreational drugs like THC and methedrine. Not enough is known about their chemical make-up, their medical properties, whether they are safe to use in the short term or long term, let alone how pure they are and what they might be mixed with. I had a young acquantance I used to chat to at the gym who described the effects of taking Spice. He ended up stark naked, on the street with no memory of how he had passed the preceding 48 hours. He had no idea of where his clothes, phone, wallet, and keys were. He had, he admitted, consumed vodka. He knew that because he found a bottle in his hand. Sounds like great fun, an experience we must all try to emulate. Not! Such drugs are widely used in prisons because they are not easy to detect in the bloodstream. In contrast, traces of cannabis linger on for one or two months. Given the likelihood of psychotic reactions these drugs present a real threat to order, safety and sanity, let alone to the rehabilitation of prisoners.
You might think I am glorifying drugs, revelling in the half remembered humorous anecdotes of terrible self destructive acts that took at least half a dozen friends and loved ones to an early grave. Well, I guess I am. But I am also remembering those victims, and celebrating those of us that survived. A number of us forged bonds of solidarity, comradeship and love, in those good and bad days, days that are long behind us, that will last as long as we do!
As Blake says “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” But this does not mean hanging about on that journey.
“You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough” However, once you know, maybe it is time to pack it in.
“Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.” Well, that puts me back in my box.
“Enough! or Too much!” As Blake ends his Proverbs of Hell, in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”.
What a genius! What a man! There’s sombody who never needed any drugs. He had what Burroughs called “a Man inside”.
Paul Ernest
