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?