Thursday 20 January 2011

Looking Back...

Patrick Kurp, spurred by my vinyl musings, wonders if all that drug-fuelled boring (I used the word advisedly) deep into what we were listening to in those far-off days might have flexed critical - and creative - muscles that could be put to better use later. I'm sure he's right. And I suspect the druggy period that features in many of our CVs had other beneficial effects too - not that I'm in any way advocating it as a course of action; looking back, I realise I more than once came close to doing myself serious damage, and I quickly lost all druggy urges as soon as my life and environment changed. Speaking for myself, I think there was an element of self-medication in my drug taking - at that time I actually needed it in some way to attain a kind of balance or repose in my inner life. And it certainly revealed to me how partial, fragile and easily overturned our 'normal' consciousness of reality is. I never regarded any drug as opening the Doors of Perception, but some of my experiences certainly suggested the whole thing was vastly bigger and more complex and mysterious than it might seem. And having experienced such extreme mental states has perhaps given me some degree of protection against psychic disturbance ever since - or at least taught me enough to know not to panic, I've been through worse, long ago and far away. None of this is any kind of justification for drug taking, but I think there's something in it - if only in my case. At the very least, if I wasn't taking those drugs, who knows what self-destructive feats of boozing I might have undertaken instead, and at what cost to my liver and mind? Yes, it was a misspent youth - but really is there any other kind, and would you want to live it?

7 comments:

  1. I quite agree, though it pains me that the popular drugs of my generation are largely far more idiotic ones - there's not much consciousness expansion to be found in cocaine or ecstasy...

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  2. Excellent, the Boomers have come full circle and LSD is the drug of the gnarled reactionary. "Bloody youth of today, all they do is work to pay for their tuition fees and crippling mortgages, then sit around not taking drugs. They don't know they're born..."

    There's a school of thought says that computer games have given kids super problem-solving skills, so it's swings and roundabouts innit.

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  3. I've always thought the justification for taking lots of drugs is that they're great.

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  4. Yes Worm - there is that too...

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  5. Ah, the good old days - coming to feeling awful in a strange house, doorway, bed, field, car. Even so I still feel that life is so ridiculous in some respects that if ever one gets to a certain age - say, seventy - it's OK to tuck into misspending it again.

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  6. Robert Elms reckons the main influence over youth cults - more than music even - is their drug of choice. I'm sure there's something in that: you can't imagine mods without speed, hippies without pot and LSD, and ravers without ecstasy. I reckon that coke's expense and ability to keep its users fairly high-functioning means it inevitably produces yuppies.

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  7. Alcohol too, Gaw. Fizzy lager and alcopops = rowdy townies and slappers.

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