Confessions of a middle aged English hashish eater

Confessions of a Middle Aged English Hashish Eater

Don't Smoke It!

When I was about 13 I decided I would be going to go to University and so I had better learn how to smoke dope. This seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to decide to do.

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I had absolutely no attraction to smoking cigarettes. That was for losers, smelly old people and kids from the council estates. Smoking cigarettes was (and is) as glamorous as fungal skin diseases. The only reason to smoke was to get the basic skills required to be able to smoke something worth smoking: cannabis, pot, dope, weed, grass, hash. Whatever that was. I wanted it.

My sister had taught me a nice skipping rhyme (to the tune of Frère Jacques.) :

Marijuana.

LSD!

Scientists make it

Teachers take it

Why Can't we?

Why can't we?

It was rather obvious that the kind of person I wanted to be, a bright intellectual student layabout, smoked cannabis. I didn't know there was another option. I didn't know about the joys of eating cannabis. Therefore I set about consciously learning how to smoke just for that purpose, practice, a dummy run.

Smoking cannabis has a number of things going for it for the young tearaway type. It is quick and easy to do it, but there are also a huge number of ways in which the technique can be polished and refined so that you appear an expert. There is special equipment you can buy, a language to learn, a whole series of special techniques and other memes. By the time I got to University I was fairly well briefed with what to do. I just didn't have any cannabis.

By virtue of reading The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers books I had a pretty clear idea of what a cannabis plant looked like. Can you imagine the joy that filled me, when aged 18 and just weeks away from starting university I came face to face with a huge mature cannabis plant growing in the back garden that adjoined my sister's house? Now it wasn't stealing, it was harvesting, sampling, and I wasn't greedy, I only took a few bits from the top. I must have left at least two thirds of the plant behind.

With great trepidation I set about drying the leaves with a very careful technique of blasting them with a hairdryer. Then came the exciting bit. The smoking!

I knew how these things were done. You had to lock yourself in the bathroom. In anticipation of my life of drugs I had already got the cigarette rolling papers and I had practised rolling stuff, so I wasn't a total beginner, I had experience of smoking all kinds of stuff that wasn't worth smoking. I knew what I was doing. It tasted rather unpleasant. It certainly wasn't something I would smoke for the taste. It was harsh and lacking in pleasant flavours of any kind. It also didn't seem to have any affect on me. Shit. I must have made a mistake, it was something else that just happened to have serrated edged finger leaves on a tall stalk. Or maybe it wasn't ripe for harvest? Or maybe it was a male plant? Or maybe... why can't I roll this bloody thing...? Ahh. Maybe it's OK after all. Yeah. Maybe it is.

At university I totally failed to score cannabis, once my personal supply was used up I was left with nothing but the student bars and off licences to satisfy my drug needs. I don't know what I did that was wrong, but for some reason nobody offered to sell me any. Perhaps my clothes were not obviously enough the clothes of a drug user, perhaps the only justification for the extremes of teenage fashion is precisely to show which people are committed enough to be be trusted to offer drugs to? They did sell me a paracetamol for £1 and a small piece of paper with a suitable rising sun design on it that was described as a tab of acid. But because the stuff was illegal there was no way to demand my money back when it failed to have any noticeable effect on me.

I did manage to get my hands on some cannabis through contacts with the Liberal Party. While I was working for the Liberals I was able to share a joint on a couple of occasions. That is why a bloke needs to know how to smoke, so you don't choke, drool or otherwise make a scene. While in a South London pub once I was introduced to a couple of dope smokers as a Liberal MP, I was told to tell them how the Liberal party was all for the legalization of cannabis. I don't know if I won their vote but the buggers could at least have offered me a drag.

I went to the Gower by-election campaign, working for a candidate called Gwynoro Jones, who did nothing to improve my views on Welshmen. I was billeted in a place called Love Farm. It was a nice place. The parents had left the teenagers in charge. Rich kids home alone in a big old farmhouse with a swimming pool. Well, you can guess what happened next. A big party. Hey, young Welsh people were cool! They offered round a bong and a few joints. I happily accepted their hospitality, it would have been rude not to. My companion, also down to help out with the election, a young fresh-faced Cornishman then at Oxford University, Matthew Taylor, didn't seem to enjoy the dope. He wasn't a smoker. But he was a nice bloke, very keen, very bright, very proud of of his Cornish/Celtic roots. Of course Matthew Taylor MP has since been on record as having smoked cannabis but not enjoyed it because he wasn't a smoker. I can confirm that story 100%. Whether he inhaled or not I can't remember, but he certainly wasn't sucking it down with the gusto I was.

After university my life of drug taking was pretty much the same. I never managed to find anybody who could supply me with any. I did get offered some while I was in New York, I parted with $20 and in exchange I got a brown paper bag with a pizza crust in it. This hardened my attitude. The stuff must be legalized, we must stamp out this sort of crime. You don't go to the off licence for a bottle of cider and come back with a bottle of lemonade or urine. Unless you buy the wrong brand, obviously.

Shortly after I was married I got an opportunity to make the only successful drug purchase of my life. I got hold of some hashish and smoked it at the backdoor late at night, then went to bed a little later using Vick's vapour rub to disguise any smoky smell. By this time I was no longer a smoker. It was good, but it wasn't as much fun as sharing the experience. Sue didn't find out at the time but I confessed later. She was annoyed at me for deceiving her, for bringing drugs into her house, but mostly for not offering her any.

Much later my wife made a few new friends and they gave her some hashish. She let me have some of it and I smoked it, but she didn't want to smoke. I also found that I hated smoking. I had gone from being a smoker to an ex-smoker who had the odd cigar at Christmas and now I had progressed further, I didn't like the smell, the sensation, the mess or anything associated with the process of smoking. By this time I knew there was an alternative. Cannabis can be eaten. The active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol is soluble in fats and alcohol, but not water. Hashish is often dissolved in butter to be eaten. This seemed like an excellent idea, we could experience it together without the hassle of smoking. I heated up some butter in a small frying pan and crumbled in a good measure of hashish, having softened it for a twenty seconds or so in the microwave, it was good stuff, you can tell this when gentle heating changes the consistency from something you could make furniture out of into something much more like fudge. Would we like the taste? That need not be an issue. I added chopped onions and a little garlic to the pan. I was making special recipe toasted sandwiches. The special recipe onions, herbs, ham and cheese finished off the sandwich. Very nice, any hashish taste was masked by the onions, garlic herbs and cheese. Now what? We sat and waited.

It took a long time to have any effect, forty minutes before I could be sure it was real and not just a placebo effect. And it kept building up for another two hours. We were giggly and cuddly. It was wonderful. Sue told me she was a pillar of the community, a pillow of the community. We laughed and joked and had sex. It was wonderful. It was still wonderful at bedtime. Ah. It was still rather interesting the next morning too, and even into the following afternoon.

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I had some more of the hashish myself on a number of occasions, experimenting with ways of eating it. Once the hashish was dissolved into about twice its weight in butter it was easy to add to food, even just spread on toast with syrup or Marmite. Sue decided to have another go. This time was fun, Sue enjoyed it, at first, it was a very pleasant sensation.

The downside is the time it takes. We took it at lunchtime and it lasted all day and hadn't cleared the next morning. Sue got frustrated and wanted to be back to normal. It lasts too long to be something people our age can do on a regular basis. You need a day and a half free with no pressing calls on your time, mind or productivity. You also need lots of food in the house too, cannabis is a very effective appetite stimulant.

I don't think I'm ever going to smoke again. I don't think I'm going to experiment with lots of different kinds of drug. But I certainly don't rule out the possibility of doing some more special recipe cooking.

Don't smoke. It's bad for you. All forms of smoking are bad for the lungs. Tobacco smoke is bad for you, so is cannabis smoke, both together are worse than either on its own. Tobacco is the drug of choice for losers. You really don't have to become a smoker to enjoy cannabis.

Smoking cannabis is dangerous because it associates the taking of a powerful mind-altering drug with the habitual consumption of a bland but highly addictive drug, nicotine. It helps the smoker make the wrong connections. Cannabis is a mind-altering drug, a powerful drug, not something to be consumed regularly throughout the day, every day, in the way cigarettes are smoked. If a person treats cannabis in the same manner as many people treat tobacco they will do themselves tremendous harm by consuming far too much, far too often. If cannabis is rolled with tobacco then the effect is very damaging because it associates the hit of cannabis with the hit of nicotine, one of the most addictive drugs known to man and it associates the drug with smoking, which is a method that is ideal for keeping topped up with a drug. If you keep yourself topped up with cannabis you lose your drive and ambition, and with more use you may lose your sense of reality.

Cannabis is a good weekend drug, for relaxing when you have achieved all you need to achieve. Sometimes it's good to get drunk. Sometimes it's good to get stoned. It's never a good idea to be wasted all the time.

There are no drugs that are safe to be taken all day, everyday. Cannabis is not of itself a dangerous drug as long as you keep it in perspective and take it with moderation, but far too many people make cannabis the central point of their identity, it is never healthy to let any habit or substance take centre stage. A person who smokes cannabis everyday and is stoned much of the time is just as much a pathetic loser as a perpetual drunk, or in many cases more so because of their denial of reality. Most drunks know they are sad and pathetic losers, they don't harbour the illusion that by being wasted on this particular substance they are doing something chic, cool and clever. Just for one moment imagine re-writing a Cheech and Chong movie or a Freak Brothers cartoon and replacing all references to cannabis with references to beer, wine and spirits. It wouldn't be very funny, would it? Just rather sad and pathetic. Constant drug use is always sad and pathetic.

Now, do I have the courage to point out this page to my daughter?

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