I didn’t even know I had any feelings one way or the other about Lesley Garrett

I didn’t even know I had any feelings one way or the other about Lesley Garrett. “She’s just too pleased with herself by half,” I can hear myself saying. I actually feel quite disturbed by this, as I know I’m talking complete rubbish but cannot stop. I then realise I need the loo, quite desperately, which is a problem because all my limbs have now turned to air, to nothing, maybe even to nothingness itself. I am thinking:1) Can I get up?2) If I get up, will I be able to stay up?3) Will I be able to walk?4) If so, how far?5) Didn’t Toyah have a hit with the word “free” in it somewhere?I manage to get to the loo, via a combination of rocking, teetering, holding on to things and sitting down on every other stair The world is swimming. I feel I have been out of the room for hours, but by the time I return, the ad break is just finishing, so I know it can have been only a minute or two.

I’m now getting strange rushes: prickly, hot waves that start at my feet and move quickly upward The same rushes you get just before you faint. The same rushes you get just before you are about to be sick. Oh, please,

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I am thinking, don’t let me be sick, here, in front of my friend and his girlfriend I guess I am now well stoned. Man.Back on the telly, someone is walking across a high bridge and not liking it Toyah looks rubbish without her make-up At some point, my friend and his girlfriend go I suspect that they let themselves out. Then my partner, who has a knee injury and is on crutches, and has had a few puffs “because it never affects me”, gets up from his chair and falls flat on his face The crutches fly This shouldn’t be funny, but it is, wildly I laugh until the tears run down my face I laugh until I have tummy ache I laugh until my face hurts The laughter banishes the nausea, thank God.

And then, somehow, I get to bed, where I sleep very well and dream of neon daffodils.And this morning? No hangover as such; just a very dry mouth that tastes as if someone in extremely muddy boots has stamped through it, and a raging thirst.Overall, I think I generally quite liked the experience. It’s a bit like getting drunk, only without any of the calories And Lesley Garrett is a little too pleased with herself Oh, hell. Am I a grass fiend now? Isn’t dope simply a crutch for people who cannot cope with reality? On the other hand, though, maybe reality is simply a crutch for those who cannot cope with dope.That’s my line, and I’m sticking to it.. Anyone who thinks the British hedonist’s relationship with cannabis and its brethren extends no further back than the Isle of Wight Festival or the Summer of Love in 1967 may be surprised to learn of a dope-fest that took place on the coast of Bengal in the 1670s.

It was recorded by an English sailor called Thomas Bowrey, who’d been watching, with his friends, the elation and euphoria of the locals after drinking a concoction called bhang, made from crushed cannabis mixed with water. They decided to try it themselves, bought a pint of bhang each (costing sixpence), locked themselves in a house to keep safe from prying eyes, and signed up a local fakir to record what happened. One of them Sat himselfe downe Upon the floore, and wept bitterly all the Afternoone, the Other terrified with feare did runne his head into a great Mortavan Jarre, and continued in that posture 4 hours or more; 4 or 5 of the number lay upon the Carpets (that were Spread in the roome) highly Complimentinge each Other in high termes, each man fancyinge himself noe lesse than an Emperour. One was quarrelsome and fought with one of the wooden Pillars of the Porch, until he had left himselfe little Skin upon the knuckles of his fingers. My Selfe and one more Sat sweating for the Space of 3 hours in Exceeding Measure…”Sound familiar? As Richard Davenport-Hines points out in his magisterial history of narcotics, The Pursuit of Oblivion, this charming scene was the forerunner of many things: the trading in drugs as international commodities; the use of narcotics for recreational use, rather than the treatment of illness; the clandestine self-incarceration of the hedonists; and, of course, the classically idiotic behaviour patterns of those involved in getting off their faces.In my own druggy heyday as an Oxford student in the mid-1970s, we weren’t conscious of breaking the law. Actually, we weren’t very conscious at all on Friday evenings, or BFJ (big fat joint) nights as they were called, when my student housemates and I rolled up five-skin Camberwell Carrots, and lay around giggling uncontrollably, listening to Leonard Cohen’s poetic dirges and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (remembering to come in at the right second with Viv Stanshall, as his voice introduced the instruments at the end), before setting out for the petrol station in the Iffley Road around midnight, in search of chocolate biscuits to stave off the dreaded “munchies”.We knew there was nothing original about this behaviour, that it was being replicated in every student household and every other college room in Oxford We rarely met the dealers. It was a tad intimidating to make the trip to Keble Road, where the spotty grass-and-hash lords reportedly lurked in squats and scabby hovels, measuring out flagrantly short-change ounces into impressive-looking but crooked brass weighing-scales.