WITH nitrous oxide off the menu, join us on a trip down the seedy bit of memory lane and remember the cheap-and-nasty highs the nation used to love.
Glue
The only form of drug abuse that required you to pretend you were building an Airfix kit of a Spitfire. Once free from suspicion, glue was dirt cheap, though reputed to kill brain cells in alarming quantities. These days glue sniffing is looked down upon. Honestly, people are such snobs.
Soapbar
Before Blueberry Haze and Bubblegum Kush there was soapbar. For £10 an eighth you just put up with all the bits of plastic, and you could measure your usage by the holes in your sleeves. Very much the ‘unlucky dip’ of soft drugs, bulked out with anything from beeswax to coffee granules. Handy for the stoner who wanted to polish their parquet flooring then have a Nescafe.
Cider
Before it came with gold medal rosettes and the name of each individual apple listed on the bottle, cider was for forgetting your own name. Enjoyed on its own or as a mixer with lager and blackcurrant, aficionados lived by the delightful rhyme: ‘If the bottle is clear, it’s too dear. If the bottle is blue, I’ll have two.’
Reef
If you found the cocktail of sugar and artificial flavourings in Sunny Delight too healthy, there was Reef. Made with orange and passion fruit flavourings, vodka, regret, and the urge to bum fags off strangers, Reef dominated urban chain pubs like a drunk divorcee at last orders.
Speed
A designer drug in the sense that Adidas is designer clothing, ‘speed’ referred to a mix of various substances containing up to 0.05 per cent amphetamine. That’s not to say there were no other active ingredients. Caffeine, paracetamol and possibly catnip all combined to make you feel like shit for days afterwards.
Hairspray
Cheap and readily available in Boots, its popularity was limited by the high chance of instant death, never much of a selling point. For some reason it never caught on with the glitterati in the way that cocaine did. Was it something to do with the classy technique of huffing it out of a bucket of water to avoid getting a mouthful of L’Oreal? Who can tell?
Amyl nitrate
Still has its devotees, but the high – more of a head rush similar to the start of a mild panic attack – is incredibly short-lived and known to cause headaches. Not ideal for something sold to enhance your sex life.
