Losing the plot in London

One New Years Eve my life got a little bit messy, a good friend whom I was fully engaged with in a drug fuelled bromance at the time planned a big night out on ecstasy to mark the turn of the year. Some friends of ours who were really skint were running a cloakroom at a rave in a film studio in Vauxhall, it was to be our final destination and we wanted to be there before midnight but before then we had a whole evening to spend running around the city.

I hated coming down without any weed and our first port of call was to meet a friend in a pub in Camden who was supposed to get me some skunk. The pub was shut! It was before cheap access to mobile phones so we wandered around Camden Town looking for my friend with the weed, having a pint here and a pint there without any success. I think we had about three pints in Camden but to be honest I can’t really remember.

We decided to head over to Portobello Road to a pub called the Earl of Lonsdale to meet another friend who had planned to drop some acid early in the day and spend the day playing pool and drinking beer. He was a rocker and not much of a dancer, more importantly he hated coming down and wanted to trip in the day time and be really drunk and mellow by midnight and ready to tuck himself in for an early night. As soon as we ran into him, he offered us a trip each. We were at that silly stage of getting drunk two pints or so and highly suggestible, before we had thought through our actions we had necked the trips and bought a round of beers. The beer in the Lonsdale is this seemingly unreasonably strong lager. It was all going a bit woozey on the beer and when one of my friend’s rocker mates offered me a gram of sulphate. Again I failed to make any sort of cogent choice and bought the speed. Another beer and we were running late to get to Vauxhall before midnight, we decided to ride a black cab across town coming up on the acid.

Arriving all over the place near the club, we decided to neck the speed, ‘in case we got searched’ going into the party. Monstrous amounts of drugs and alcohol were swilling around our systems as we finally managed to articulate enough rational thought to persuade the door staff we were on the guest list and finally we were at the party. Flying and highly delusional, on being offered some ecstasy we bought it in the mistaken belief that it would bring us down to earth a little and we would have a really lovely time. It was really fucking intense and not all together comfortable. I seemed to have worked out we both looked a complete state, I suspected I was gurning as horribly as my friend. He, on the other hand, seemed blissfully unaware of how he appeared to a fashionable dressed crowd dancing to something rather leftfield of banging techno. My friend was launching himself at women with the enthusiastic cry ‘Happy New Year.’

It was at this point my mate came up to me to indicate he was incapable of thought or speech by passing the flat of his hand first across the top of head and then across his mouth. He wandered off again shouting ‘Happy New Year’ at all and sundry.

I with all sorts of things going on in my mind and body to dance my way through the buzz, hopefully not disturbing anybody too much and making the best of the mess I was in. It was with great relief what seemed an age later to stand there pissing in the gents feeling somewhat calmer and reasonably aware of my surroundings.

The two guys pissing either side of me were having the classic ecstasy induced gents toilet conversation. I listened to them banging on about what a great night they were both having and how good the tunes were, feeling so happy and relieved that they were making sense.

“Have you seen that bloke who keeps saying ‘Happy New Year’ to everyone?”

“Yeah, my girlfriend’s been counting, he has said it to her eighteen times already.”