I MADE THIS ENTIRE THING UP

DISCLAIMER!

I WANT TO MAKE IT VERY CLEAR THAT EVERYTHING WRITTEN BELOW IS A COMPLETE FICTION. NONE OF THE BELOW EVER HAPPENED.

Now. I've seen the wrong side of 7am on a Sunday morning a lot of times in my life, but only sporadically have I been up at 6:30am on a Sunday to go running. But the early morning weekend run is becoming a lot more regular than any other reason why I'd be up at this strange time.

As I run through Queensbridge road it becomes clear that a lot of other people are up and about: the rave zombies. Those desperate people who've found themselves wandering around London in the early hours, confusingly trying to find out either where the hell they are, or how the hell did they get there.

You see them stare into the middle distance, willing a taxi, or anyone, would pick them up and take them home. Some of them are clutching cans of beer like comfort blankets, while others are sweating more than I am. Which is a worry as I've already been running for a mile and a half.

I'd be lying if I didn't feel a smugness or an air of betterment than these poor unfortunates as I glide past them, but this is replaced very quickly by the knowledge that I am one of them, and that I've been in worst states than they ever could cope with, and that basically, if things were only slightly different, I'd be smashed out of my head with them too.

I'm guessing these battered, wide eyed, smoky kids have been to the Lovebox festival. A three day festival in my local park where everyone goes home at midnight, only to return the following day for more drinks, more drugs, and more fun.

I'm not attending any festivals this year, for two reasons,

1. Memories
2. Drugs

1. Memories
I've been to a lot of festivals, and had a lot of fun. And the memories of those amazing times are scolded onto my heart, never to be forgotten. Alas however, these memories are tinged with a sadness, because I know that those great times can't be replicated, and if they were to be, they would be altered by time and circumstance. The people who made those wonderful times with me don't go to festivals anymore, and the ones that do go with people I don't want to go with. And I'm not sure if I can be bothered making new memories with a load of other people, I'd rather just remember the ones I have.

I remember finding someone in Lovebox once, I found them in a sea of 35,000 people, as if it were normal. They'd been there all day and I'd followed later, they were drinking and having fun and phone signals were dead so I had no clue where they could be. I just walked in, and walked straight to where they were and tapped them on the shoulder. It was uncanny, like a subconscious GPS system was working in my head. and the shock and surprise and joy on their face made me feel amazing.

I remember being sat in a field in Glastonbury with my friend Mark, who'd taken far too much speed and couldn't get to sleep, in fact, he couldn't stop moving his leg. And we sat in that field watching his leg shake for 3 hours until the sun came up, then he fell asleep, his leg kept shaking though.

I remember a man in a portaloo have his portaloo pushed over by some guys and it fell straight into a lake of piss and shit that had built up around the toilets. And as he climbed out of his portaloo boat he just laughed and laughed, and I thought he'd be spitting fury but he was pissing himself. Which he actually could have been because he was covered in it.

I remember dancing surrounded by strangers. I remember trying to finger a girl with my dirty festival fingers, while her friends slept all around us. She wouldn't let me. I remember the drinking and the drugs, I remember the heightened fear of the searches at the gates, and most of all I remember the love. from all around, you just feel this connection with your friends, your girl, that person you've just met, and from strangers. It's amazing.

I do love a festival, but it's not my life right now, this much I'm sure of as I get my the buzz from running across the Thames. This feeling that lifts my legs and changes my pace, when I come alive in London, instead of feeling like London is killing me.

2. Drugs
I have been doing drugs, in one way or another, for over 14 years now. I started, like everyone, by drinking. Alcohol is the worst drug I've ever taken, it causes more damage, more violence, and costs society more money and causes more deaths than any other drug I have come across. And on a personal level, while I've been pissed I've said and done the things I regret most in my life.

At about 15/16 I started smoking weed, long summers out of school were spent smoking weed, playing the megadrive, and endless hours playing football. But as I started drinking more I quickly realized that mixing the two resulted rapidly in me going green and vomiting. It's calmed down a lot since then but as my drinking became regular, in line with the new friends I'd made after I'd left school, booze and speed became my thing.

Then one day our dealer Steve said that he didn't have any speed, and would we be interested in a mix of coke and speed? We were in a rush and agreed, not really thinking about the fact that we were going to start taking cocaine. I was 17.

I'd always been aware of the use of drugs and its impact on music, and I had been working in HMV from the age of 15, so hearing all the jungle, house, and techno made me very alive to it, and I learned more about ecstasy and the rave culture that had just passed me by a few years before. I remember one of the first concerts I ever went to was the Prodigy, with a few people from work. About half way through my co-workers all started getting really 'huggy' and smiling a lot. I thought that they were just pleased that the Prodigy were about to come on stage, and I sort of wished that I could like a band THAT much. Then after the concert Dave and H drove me home, and as I sat happily in the back seat, I didn't really understand why H kept saying things like,

"you're going a bit left Dave, OK, slow down a bit Dave, there's a red light here Dave, stop now Dave" I just thought Dave was a little bit bad at driver. I look back now and clearly see that they were both smashed on pills, and were negotiating the roads as well as they could. Bless them.

So at about 18 I was annoyed that I'd bypassed the ecstasy culture and ended up on cocaine, without ever experiencing the drug that changed youth culture in the late 80s and defined the 90s.

So I went out specifically to find someone who still did E's and asked them to take me out. I found someone, and they agreed, and I took my first pill at the Emporium nightclub, Cardiff. It was called an 'elephant', I think it was because the thing was as thick as a elephants leg. Many people have tried to describe their first pill, and I'm not going to even attempt it now, but as I cross back over Tower Bridge, and look across to St Katherine's Dock, the recollection of my first pill draws a massive smile across my face, much to the bewilderment of an oncoming cyclist.

I lied.

It's the best feeling in the world, a rising sense of well being, coupled with the feeling that everything is OK in your world, and that your friends are the best friends you'll ever have, and that you're life is going to be so much more than the sums of its parts. The euphoria of feeling that good makes you so happy to be alive that you cannot imagine ever not feeling this way for the rest of your life. Incredible.

And it sort of never went away, through University and out of University drugs became the background to my social life. The white foundation to whatever paint of life I wanted to create with. It never took me over, I never got hooked, I was always aware and respectful of drugs and their uses. I'll admit that there were some bad times, nights where I took too much, drank too much, and too quickly. Nights where I possibly didn't really think about the effect it was having on others. But I never let it define me, and I always made sure that weekends were spent doing things away from the nightclubs and music, and for a couple of months at a time I wouldn't drink either, knowing full well that drinking is my trigger for wanton excess. Take away the booze and I wouldn't ever contemplate getting smashed.

In my early twenties I smoked heroin.

once.

and I'll never do it again, not because it wasn't great, it was. It was really great. I only did it because I believe that if you are to have an opinion on anything, you must have experience of it. If you don't know what you're talking about then you don't have the right to judge anyone about their choices in life. This doesn't really stretch to paedophilia, serial killing, and eating baked beans though, but for nearly everything else, if you choose to have an opinion, and a opinion that you want to push onto other people, then you need to know what you're talking about. I didn't just try it so I could say 'yeah, I've done it, you haven't' or because drugs are 'cool' I did it because it was a moment in time, and I can look back on that time and say,

'I made a choice, and now I have a fuller understanding of what happens to people when they fall into the hole of dependency and addiction, and why a drug can do that to a person, and I am glad that I have never fallen into that hole'

Thinking about these experiences as I run makes me feel like I'm having a bit of a panic attack, I guess the mixture of these memories, coupled with my raised heart rate from the running makes my brain think that I'm in a sweaty, nightclub, afterparty, scenario. When in fact I'm banging it down Whitechapel high street on my own.

My mind shifts to now and I think about the fact that that I've not enjoyed taking drugs for about 2 years, don't get me wrong, the chemicals still work, and the changes in my body still work when I take them but I just don't like the situation anymore. I don't like how I feel after or during if I'm honest, but in almost all social situations and with almost all the people I know, I have to take a drug. Normally it's just a beer, but from there it's the booze to coke, coke to pills, pills to ket and so it goes on. So I don't go on, but of course I do. I am not a hermit, and I'm going to stay in for the rest of my life, and red wine is far too good to never drink again, and a cold lager on a hot day is sublime, and the rush of a pill surrounded by your mates, with the best music on earth blaring around you is feeling that is hard to turn down, but it's not a coincidence that I want to stop taking drugs at the same time as I have signed up for 3 marathons and a ultra marathon. I just know that I need discipline to stay out of trouble, a project if you like, and right now, running is all the project I need.

AS I SAID AT THE BEGINNING NONE OF THIS EVER TOOK PLACE, I AM WHOLLY AGAINST ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITY. I JUST LIKE THE SENTIMENT BEHIND THE STORY.