I used to have a group of friends who were doing drugs at the same time as me. Not everyone made it through. Some didn't make it at all, some are still battling with it, and some came out the other side with me. Sadly, a lot fewer came out the other side than didn't. Most of my friends are still battling with drugs, a few of them have already lost and are no longer with us.
I had a really good friend, we'll call him Carl.
Carl was there when I had my first ever bit of weed. He was a really good bloke. A good friend. We chatted about all sorts of things together, he was someone I really could talk to about all those problems you have when you're 15.
I don't see Carl anymore. This is because he is a cocaine addict. He started taking the stuff about 9 months or so before I gave everything up. I never saw him on the coke, I couldn't have stood it. Here was one of my childhood mates ruining his life. I couldn't have coped with that. But I saw him plenty of times when he wasn't on it. He developed those shaky hands which are often the mark of the addicted. I remember being in a pub garden one summer, and he couldn't hold a pint still.
The last time I saw him, he couldn't talk so well either. I mean, he could still talk, but he didn't make a whole lot of sense. And all he could talk about was coke. That was the last time I saw him. I don't know where he is now, or what he's doing. Last I heard, he had a hotel job of some sort and was living in a council place, which kept getting raided by the old bill.
I had another friend, a girl who we'll call Kirsty. She was into her Drum n Bass music in a big way. I remember the first time she came raving with us, she loved it. She'd done a few drugs before, but she took loads of pills that night. I remember she kept saying "I'm off my nut" over and over again and offering a bit of her drink to anyone who she met. Kirsty fell in with the wrong sort of people. She met another lad, who I knew but tended to avoid. He was a smack addict, and had been for a long time. I stopped seeing so much of Kirsty because she was always with him. I would see her every month or so, and then every few months, and eventually I never saw her again. The difference each time was frightening. She started losing weight, then she got a lot paler. I remember seeing her for the last time. I saw her out shopping,I don't know where she was going. Her arms were covered in needle marks, and all over her face she had spots and sores. She looked awful. I know she's still around, I've heard from other people. She's addicted to heroin, and doesn't work. I'm told she lives in a squat, an abandoned house which she and a load of others broke into.
Another one of my friends has just got out of prison. He's been in three times that I know of, and at least once for drug dealing. This last time I believe it was GBH. He got a girl pregnant, there were a lot of arguments and she did a runner with the baby. Both of them were into drugs, him more so than her. I believe she still is. She's trying to raise three children alone. He loves his kids, and is trying really hard to be a Dad for them. But he's still into the drugs. One of the children doesn't talk, she's four. I hope he'll pull through, he is trying. But the drugs always get in the way.
I had a friend, who we'll call Sophie. She came raving all the time, she was the girl who held my hand when I had the really bad trip on pills. I remember one night we went to a rave, somewhere in London near the river. It was the usual thing, you get there at midnight, usually already pissed, then you pay 3 quid to get in. This night, the police had shut down another rave not far away. All the people from that rave were trying to get into the one we were in. The organisers barricaded the door, we wouldn't all have fitted inside. The people outside tried to break down the door, they threw bottles and stones through the windows smashing them. This wasn't unusual at all. I remember thinking it was kind of funny. When I think about it now, I cannot see how I found that funny, if those people had got in, a complete brawl would have started. It had happened before, and people usually ended up getting shot when it did happen.
That night, Sophie was spiked with some pretty strong LSD. People usually share their beers at these things, and we think that was how it happened. She didn't know who I was. She knew who her boyfriend was, but no-one else. I remember her coming up to me, very scared, and telling me she was in Africa, and she didn't know how we got there. That night, I overdosed on Ketamine and passed out. Sophie's boyfriend took care of us both. He was totally out of it on pills, so how he managed that I'll never know. I remember sitting next to her on the train on the way home, I remember the state of the pair of us. We looked, and felt, like total shit.
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