Drugs

(This post was originally published in the Huffington Post)

So farewell Silk Road. To those of you who’ve only just heard about it since its shutdown, well, it clearly hasn’t been causing you any bother. Just a bunch of wasters who got to stay off the mean streets for a while and got some good shit on the net, like you do on Amazon and eBay, right down to the part where no one worried about paying any tax.

The debate about whether Silk Road was actually a rather good thing or pure evil has thrown up that age-old question: why the heck do you people take drugs? It’s illegal! It’s bad for you! It makes you rape grannies!

See the problem with talking about drugs is that people who don’t take it don’t get it, and those that do sound like imbeciles when they try to explain it. Well, I’m fairly comfortable with sounding like an imbecile, so here goes… Continue reading “Why Do People Take Drugs?” →

(This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post)

‘Look, Daddy – that one’s on ketamine!’

Some guys encourage their kids to recognise sports cars. I showed mine how to spot the drug casualty. It seems to have hadthedesired effect on The Girl. While her peers are stumbling through the transition from Inbetweeners to Skinsby tripping the white fantastic, to her it’s the frankly banal equation: Father thinks drugs are kinda cool = so not cool.

I’d like to point out I didn’t thrust her from the cradle to the rave without giving it careful thought, but I can’t. I fathered her when I was stupidly young and took her to her first festival because that’s where I was going that weekend. I sat her on my knee in a field, she started bouncing, and that was that. I’ve been taking her along to festivals ever since, and she’s hands down the coolest, most sociable girl you’ll ever meet. Plus she has the most excellent iPod playlist any 16-year-old can boast of. I’m having that. Continue reading “Why Festivals Make the Best Crèches” →