LAST YEAR, NEARLY FOUR MILLION BRITONS USED ILLICIT DRUGS

Here, 10 People Reveal Why Cocaine, Skunk and Ketamine Do It for Them

Lucy, 27, punk singer, London

Drugs: speed, ecstasy, ketamine

Spends: UKP 30-40 a week

There was a time when I was more than dabbling in heroin, when I went
totally into myself and detached myself from society, and I sat down
and wrote some really good songs, like 'Barbed Wire Boy', which was
about someone on gear. I liked heroin because it made me feel warm,
made me feel I didn't need anyone else. But now I'm not just a
songwriter but singing in a band, and my focus is performing and not
wanting to let the band down. We all want to make a success of it and
the unity has given me a focus - a bit like heroin, actually.

So I don't perform under the influence. Any drugs I choose to take
will only be after I've performed. I don't think I want, or can
afford, to be unprofessional and experiment with speed and ketamine
on stage, even if I think it might make me interact with the audience better.

I like speed socially. I last took some three or four days ago, at
someone else's gig. I was dancing around having funny conversations.
You have so much energy on good speed and the next day you've lost
about a stone - that's what I like about it. I was asked last week if
I wanted to chip UKP 10 in for a UKP 60 bag of coke, but it turned
out to be ketamine. All the young people are getting into ketamine
now, but it makes you quite aggressive. I took ecstasy a couple of
weeks ago with my boyfriend. Ecstasy in the old days was always good
vibey, but the pills today, like the techno, have become more erratic.

I certainly won't dabble with crack any more, like I used to - it
takes your soul away, you look a mess and you become an unpleasant
person. I think if I didn't have the band to focus on, if I didn't
see opportunities in life, I might be more inclined. The fact is
there are young people all over the country who see that even if they
had a job, it's so low paid they'll never be able to afford a home
and a family. So they're taking drugs to deal with it, or selling
drugs as a way to have something.

The other thing about Britain is it currently has the worst drugs in
the world, in terms of quality, cleanliness and the user's ability to
measure them and be able to judge their tolerance to them. Because
we're an island, and because of terrorism and security, people here
are becoming acclimatised to bad-quality drugs. If you believe that
people go through behavioural phases, moving through periods of
taking drugs and growing out of them, then the real concern should be
the decreasing quality of what those people - and the poor,
especially - are taking.

Jude, 40, illustrator and designer, London

Drugs: prescription benzodiazepines and other - non-prescription - drugs

Spends: UKP 10 a week

I take clonazepam and diazepam because they help me draw and design,
but I also take them to help with anxiety, nerves, twitching, bodily
aches. Any job where you have to have a very steady hand and stay
calm is helped by Valium or any of the benzodiazepines. I read that
snipers take them to steady their grip and I've met a surgeon who
uses them for the same reason. To draw well, especially to cope with
a client or someone visiting to be sketched, benzodiazepines can be
essential. But generally to work alone and really concentrate, with
confidence, without shaking, they help.

I've broken the back of two portraits this week and that probably
wouldn't have happened without the 'pams. But it's not quite as
simple as that. I have to get the doses and timing right. I prefer to
take clonazepam because it's milder, takes longer to kick in and is
less addictive. But I took diazepam on Wednesday because I'd arranged
to see friends but couldn't quite cope with socialising. Also, I was
afraid about bumping into someone I recently came out of a relationship with.

Some people might take them for fun, but I'm not doing that. I'm not
out looking for 10 for a fiver on street corners... not really. Maybe
eggs - temazepam capsules - which are great for sleeping. But I
usually rely on the goodness of doctors. I'm stocked up at the
moment, but in a month, six weeks - and this feeds into the anxiety -
I'm looking at an appointment with a consultant who's going to be
asking me how many I've been putting aside for rainy days and what
I'm drinking and... 20 questions. She might be wanting my liver or my
blood to be tested.

Because benzodiazepines store up in your body fat, I've been doing a
lot of exercise recently. I've not had muscles like this before. The
exercise is about cleaning the system, making what I take more
effective, and also fighting some of the anxiety in a physical way.
Cycling helps. Recently I cycled home from the studio too late,
having taken two or three 10mg tablets at the studio, and I went into
a skip. That wasn't good. I was in the relationship then. She wasn't
sure what she wanted. Since it ended I've not had the anxiety of
performing for her, but I've also been anxious about the relationship ending.

At their best, benzodiazepines basically make me feel really relaxed
and really productive and then really able to wind down. They're good
for insomnia, temazies [temazepams] especially, and they can knock me
out, sometimes with whisky, so I'm not too sleepless to be unable to
work the next day. I like playing poker on the internet in the
evening, and low 'pams can help that, unless I take too much too
early. Last night I timed it pretty well and I was a winner.

Ellie, 28, works in TV, Manchester

Drugs: ecstasy, cocaine, skunk

Spends: 'probably' UKP 50 a week

On Tuesday night I did a shoot for an alternative magazine, a bit
kinky, and coke sort of went with the job, it's the least you expect.
But my day job is in TV production, where there's lots of cocaine,
generally, although my boss really frowns on drugs. When you boil it
down, drugs are a social thing, for weekends. And almost always with
my best friend, usually at clubs or at her flat. That's what drugs
mean to me - friendship, laughter, dancing. On Thursday we got into
two clubs under false names. She can get any man to buy us a bottle
of champagne, and I could, too. But, at the end of the day, drugs are
what we're really looking for. We were on this terrace smoking and we
had a little coke from this bloke. We took the piss so much and he
still drove us home and gave us what he had left.

The first time I had good cocaine before sex was the first time I
really enjoyed sex. My sister said, 'It was just luck,' but it's been
like that since. I'm not advocating it for that reason. You hear some
men are useless [on cocaine], terrible. Maybe the women saying that
are useless, too, or they've been disappointed like me. I do have sex
without cocaine, but it's never quite the same.

I'm trying to think of drawbacks. I get sweaty. But I drive better, I
park better, I chat better, I feel better and make love better. I
don't believe everyone is better looking on coke, but when you're
with people who do it, they tend to be better looking anyway.

Every time I've had a really, really good time socially in the past
two years, drugs have probably been involved. But the best times, the
funniest times, the stupidest, are with my best friend. We can put on
this really cheesy fitness video from the Eighties and kill ourselves
laughing. Last weekend we got drunk and stoned and she had a bit of
coke left - because sometimes we take it from men, pretend to snort
it somewhere and then save it for when we're alone. We didn't go out
in the end because it was raining and we wanted to prank call, which
is mainly lying on cushions. Even if there's no one else, it's still
a bit like a festival, being with her and taking stuff. We act out
scenes in films - like Meet Joe Black - or impersonate Sarah
Silverman sitting in a chair. We run up and down the stairs with hats
on singing 'Shitdisco' by Shitdisco. We've probably never done
ecstasy on a Sunday, or mushies [mushrooms]. We'd say Friday for that
- - because she's younger than me, but does a straighter job.

George, 67, idealist and humorist, London

Drugs: cannabis

Spends: less than UKP 140 a week

I became aware of drugs when I was about 16. I would hang around Soho
and a woman told me about the uppers and downers that were going
around. They didn't interest me at all. I was fit, an athlete. Pretty
much teetotal, and I remain so. But then when I was about 24 and
working in the diamond trade in Hatton Garden someone gave me some
Thai grass to smoke and I enjoyed the experience. Ever since - 43
years - weed has been my recreational drug of choice.

In the Eighties I had cocaine, but it never did anything for me, and
I dabbled with ecstasy and it's OK, but nothing I'd want to keep
doing. My abiding memory of LSD is just how dirty and dusty everything seemed.

No, it's always been grass for me. But you can't get the stuff that
was around in the past that would always make you see the funny side
of life. Once, I even put some expensive Thai sticks in a lit oven to
dry out and then completely forgot to take them out. I was sitting
there with the windows closed, inhaling the wreckage.

It's the funny and philosophical side I'm after, and it tunes you in
to music, of course. It's like a perpetual Hamlet advertisement,
really. Unfortunately, the only weed you can regularly get today is
skunk and it's quite heavy. But there's never been any question in my
mind that if all marijuana was legal we would be a far healthier and
happier society. Smoking weed tunes me in to a part of myself I like
being tuned in to.

There should be proper drug education in schools and kids could be
allowed to dabble, maybe. Ultimately, I look to a future where weed
isn't classed as a drug. The only thing that'll stop me smoking it is death.

William, 15, schoolboy, Swansea

Drugs: skunk or hash

Spends: up to UKP 30 a week

It was mental my parents suggesting I should have some one-to-one
drugs counselling, because all they knew about was a few pills
missing and my spliff - and my dad's been spliffing since before I
was born. My mother drinks white wine and a night for her costs as
much as I've spent for a week. It makes me sarcastic with them. I'll
say things like, 'I'll see you in the queue.'

Mum and Dad are saying no to me going to two festivals now. The other
thing that didn't help was a party I was at was raided. They had
sniffer dogs and everyone was lined up and they made some girls cry
and found an ounce thrown about the place. One thing my father said
is, 'Don't get a record, or when you get a car they'll pull you over
every Friday until you're a dying man.' It's good advice.

I don't think my parents have ever cared if I've had three Stellas.
If I was out of it they'd be happy to think it was lager.

My mother thinks I'll be seen smoking by the neighbours. I saw a
burglar when I was having a smoke at the window once. I saved next
door a fortune, probably. It's much easier in summer, moving about,
because using the gazebo - the gazeblow, we call it - at the park on
this side of town is a bit of a joke. The council and the community
police walk in a circle at 15-minute intervals, so we're in, out. No
one really bothers us at the skate park in the evening. The
adrenaline of skateboarding takes the edge off spliff. But summer's
way better because there's loads of places to go.

It's never been a problem getting skunk in town. Or hash. It's not a
problem when I can't get it. The time I was always wanting it was
back at the beginning, really. I was being bullied. It sort of helped
me. I'd changed schools and there were two major serious psychos
there. When I started taking some of the pills my parents had - I
don't even know what they were - they were OK, like anti-depressing.

A bit trippy with drink. I don't do that now.

The thing is, I'm paying more for skunk from friends than I would
from some dealers, because dealers will start offering you anything
else they want to unload. You're saying, 'No, no, no. I only want
some hash really.'

What I'd seriously like is to be online on MySpace, be on PlayStation
2, and have a smoke halfway through homework, with a dressing gown
across the bottom of the door and really knowing no one's going to be
in the house for two hours. That and being on the ramps where there's
someone with smokes and jokes. And girls. My picture of paradise is a
girl on the ramps - no lamer, she's always busting it out - who sort
of gets she's sexy but doesn't. She has Air Insurgents [trainers] and
has the moves and has her own little stash of hash. Everyone I hang
around with wants the girl like that.

Diana, 27, legal clerk, Essex

Drugs: heroin

Spends: UKP 350 a week

Obviously I have to take my little packets to work prepared, so I
don't have drama in the toilet getting a razor blade out and
measuring each time for a snort. I'll have had one at home, so
there's two packets for work. One's ready for lunch and another
later. It's usually two, or three. I need three if it's cut
[adulterated]; ideally four - in case I'm working late, or I'm not
coming home after work.

I'll usually know in advance if it's heavily cut. If it's no good
then I'll want to smoke it. I prefer smoking sometimes, but I can't
be setting an alarm off. So I need to know the day's schedule. If a
case comes forward or I'm at the office and there's bullshit about
someone's dental appointment, or a personal injury case suddenly
reappears that someone's messed up, that's when I might get a bit
angry. On Tuesday I thought I'd have to smoke on the office balcony
because I couldn't wait.

But it's really no big deal going to work with a habit, unless others
are making it difficult. It's others causing the problems. I'd never
have concerns at work if it was good stuff.

Sometimes if it's really weak, or my husband's found mine and taken a
bit from each packet while I'm asleep, that's when I think about the
needle, but I can't be carrying a kit. I can cook up in the toilet
some time, if I must, but I'm not doing the needle now - ever,
really. Just sometimes in the evenings, when I have to, because of
all the hassle.

This week I've had good stuff. Not really good, but not really dodgy.
When it's really good, the forehead pours, you know straightaway.
Once, the paper towels and toilet paper ran out, because the cleaner
wasn't there the night before, and I brushed my hand against the
photocopier and it was dripping, and a clown said, 'It must be very
hot in the Ladies.' I didn't reply.

I take care of everything that's put in front of me. I'd probably
have given up working in law if it wasn't for smack. When work's
boring it numbs the boredom. Everything's better on smack,
everything. But I couldn't do more than a gram a day on what I earn,
and I'm eating at Subway. Whereas my bosses could afford two grams
without noticing. They don't, I'm just saying. There's no one else on
skag there, although there's loads in law.

There was a problem recently when my husband kept phoning the office.
Two dealers disappeared last month and my husband thought I was
hiding stuff at work. He hasn't phoned since. If he loses me a job he
knows I'll kill him. I work perfectly on smack. I'm not drinking at
lunch, like others in my office. When you've got heroin you don't
need alcohol. The only difference is you can't get it 24 hours in
Tesco. I know one lawyer who's been on smack for 18 years. One clerk
I knew died last year, but that's because the stuff that came through
was great after he'd been having stuff for weeks that was 15 per
cent, you understand? He was a good worker, good with papers like me.

After work yesterday I went somewhere to get some, because I was
thinking ahead to the weekend. But I didn't get any. I was just sat
waiting in a room with these guys, watching The One Show. We were
just watching television for hours. One of them was a guy I knew from
university who started getting angry because he said one of us ate
his KitKat. The dealer said he'd sort us by seven, then two hours...
We were just waiting and waiting. I had a report with me and I read
some of that.

Kevin, 48, grave digger, Hertfordshire

Drugs: cannabis, ecstasy, LSD

Spends: UKP 20-30 a week

Grave digging is one of those jobs where it's easy to smoke on the
job, and common. It's a bit ironic because, when I got into drugs, a
late-starter [at 21], I spent my first night coming down from
sulphate in a graveyard. I found blue bombers [sulphate] exhilarating
and sociable. I'm introverted, but the sulphate made me extroverted,
confident. I was snorting it at art college, for art's sake and for
the enjoyment of music and company and friends, and the high
philosophy of it and the liberation. Sometimes I was up for nights on
end and had psychotic comedowns. Two weeks solid was the most I ever
did. I'll take a bit now, but only at parties which I really don't
want to leave.

Acid's a touchy subject. My first time was one of the most wonderful
experiences of my life. Everything was so clear, so bright and so
real. Although I've had LSD since - seven in a week at music
festivals - and it's never been quite the same for me, I decided that
first experience was how the world is, for real, and I've always kept
the memory with me. I tell myself, 'When the world's not looking and
feeling like that, it's me not seeing it.'

I was cost-conscious about ecstasy in its early days - you could get
eight tabs of acid for the price of an E where I was, but I ended up
on the rave scene in the late Eighties and taking E regularly,
dancing all night. The reason I don't take it much now is because at
my age it would be crippling to dance around in cycling shorts and a
hat with dog's ears going absolutely berserk too much.

I think it was all the drinking that caused me to get a really
chronic nosebleed two months ago. I was taken off in an ambulance. A
week in hospital. They told me to cut out everything - the drinking,
the blow, the puff, everything. And I've gloried in it all my life.
After a month, I thought because it makes me sleep so well - I like
10 hours - that I'll have spliffs, but with toy tobacco. And I
thought that I'll drink but I won't cane it, then a couple of lines
of cocaine, up the best nostril. The funny thing is that they've been
talking at work about drug testing everyone. The last time they said
that, it never happened. But it's looming, looming.

So before the weekend I was feeling healthier, from not caning it,
yet thinking the world was turning against me. But on Saturday I went
up a friend's house and we were going to have a little drink in the
garden and someone else came round and he had some MDMA and I ended
up going next door and sleeping with my friend's neighbour. I haven't
even taken a girl out in nine years and so it was quite an outrageous
thing for me to do, a total transformation of confidence.

Carl, 37, shop owner, Bristol

Drugs: GHB, viagra, ecstasy, amyl nitrate, etc

Spends: less than UKP 50 a week

The Virgin Atlantic ad on TV - it's very spacey and John Hannah's in
it - is like a commercial for the hallucinogenic side of ketamine, to
me. There's drug imagery everywhere. You flick through the channels
on TV and see lots of people who are obviously on drugs - middle-aged
presenters, politicians, the lot - who sniff when the camera's not on
them. I've been told as a fact that drugs are allowed and encouraged
on one of the reality shows. It's edited out.

I'm a gay man. And I have friends who think anti-drug is anti-gay,
full stop. I feel it's certainly no business of anybody else who
someone sleeps with or what they put in to their body. Obviously I
like to think they're going to be sensible - hah - about it, avoid
people spiking their drinks and going bareback [not using a condom],
and looking after themselves and not necking anything and everything.
I want to remember what I've done. And obviously if a business
depends on you functioning day in, day out - and you need to earn to
be able to party, anyway - you're going to want to stay healthy. Of
course, sex keeps you fit and sex drugs contribute. But I've got a
form of cystitis and I've had sex once in the last week. If you were
hoping for a story of cocktailing drugs night after night and
six-hour sex sessions, I can't oblige right now.

One thing I've usually done is give myself Monday off work. If I'm
out on Friday, working Saturday, and then out again, this is the age
when it starts to become a bit torturous. I haven't had meth [crystal
meth] for weeks, and when I do it's only at weekends. I wouldn't do
Special K [ketamine] from Monday to Friday either and I'm usually
only having Dorothys [small amounts]. I find some people in a k-hole
insufferable. I love the way sounds and lights become
indistinguishable, blended, warped. But I don't go right to the edge
with it. I had cocaine, Viagra and poppers at the weekend. I had GHB,
I think, the weekend before. I still like Adam [ecstasy] sometimes,
although it's getting less popular here.

I'm more detached during the week. I'm not saying I won't go to
special events and any opening if they're during the week, but I'm
usually not seeing people and being offered drugs during the week. My
boyfriend is connected with a university, is away there, and anything
he brings is at the weekend.

I've been gardening and decorating for several weeks and every time
I've taken something I've had the house in the back of my mind. I was
given some amphetamines that I thought I could use, but I haven't. No
hash. There's a satisfaction in grafting from 10am to 6 and then
eight in the evening to 11 or 12, and the exhaustion. So Saturday
night - if we've not clubbed on Friday - is the time I need something
to take me out of that, to have the energy, the sex and the obliteration.

On Sunday and Monday I'm really only interested in cookery - I'm fabulous

Mars, 22, unemployed, London

Drugs: crack cocaine

Spends: UKP 100 a day

I don't sell bones - that's crack - or skunk or coke or speed. What I
do is sell cooking herbs [passed off as drugs] to get money to go and
buy bones for myself. I feel no guilt, none. If I don't rip them off
someone else will.

I've been in Camden this week. The CCTV helps me rip people off. I
say, 'Don't open it [the wrap], move... the camera is turning, go...'
Or, 'Take my number,' because I can take them into a shop, get a pen
and write numbers and then they're not looking in the wrap.

I'll also do Tesco Express, sit like a beggar man, but I can't do the
12 pence, eight pence all day, or the 'How do I know you won't spend
this on drugs?' Everyone thinks you're on crack. But my girlfriend -
she does girl scams, like 'You can look at my arms, I'm clean. I need
UKP 20 for a room tonight.' I try that, but she's got the looks. Not
looks for lapping - lap dancing - but men help her.

The best time was when we got some money - she stole someone's coat -
and we got tickets for a train to the coast and we were superstars,
that's how we were feeling.

I've smoked in all places this week. In the phone box, when I was
rattling [desperate]. We have 20 places a mile from here. You can do
McDonald's' toilets. And there's apartments. There's a roof near here
and I get buzzed in. We both keep a glass flower tube there, hidden -
she sawed it in half, one for her, one for me. Valentine's Day!

On Wednesday I visited my mother and she gave me UKP 30. I said I'd
go clean, but I went to a den near there. Now she's not answering
again. She doesn't get it. It's the best feel ever, a rock [of
crack]. I'm hot, I'm clever, I'm gliding. People can buy a car, go in
that restaurant any time they want, but we can't buy crack without
hassle. If you won the Lottery you could get crack five, six times
every day and no one would be sorry. No one's bag would get lifted. I
wouldn't have my cousin saying I shat up the wedding. I'd be kinder,
no depression, if I had crack and the housing association hadn't
screwed my girlfriend over.

I feel shit. I want UKP 40.Mark, party organiser, London

Drugs: 'everything short of injecting'

Spends: UKP 50 a week on opium, UKP 30 a week on cannabis

As a party organiser, I recognise that people like to go out at night
and have a good time and that they often take drugs to help them have
a good time - and there's nothing more or less to it than that. And
obviously I want to enjoy myself, but I can't get out of control
while I'm organising a party for a perfume company or a caviar
restaurant. When I'm DJing it works better, I play better when I've
had ecstasy or I'm drunk and stoned, but I don't go so far that I
can't physically operate the controls. It's when I have little
parties to celebrate the success of big parties that I tend to let
loose, perhaps taking three or four people away to Paris (women,
preferably) and having a splendid old time.

I've recently become attracted to opium. I find it wonderful,
fantastic, lovely, yet one feels instantly that it's incredibly
addictive for some people - the sirens ring, it's so seductive. If it
was possible to get in London I'd smoke more. Last week I got a text
saying some would be available at the weekend, but sadly it wasn't.

I really don't want to give the impression that drugs are a huge part
of my life, as I've never been on anything for more than a few days
in a row. But since I was 18, I've tried pretty much everything,
short of injecting.

The only thing I've had so far today is weed. Not skunk, which my
friend [dealer] doesn't sell, and I think is debilitating. I'm
talking about good old-fashioned weed. I particularly like a joint -
a small one - first thing in the morning with a strong coffee. A
shower, when you're a little stoned, can be the most wonderful thing
in the world. And then, walking outside, everything is more lovely
and beautiful and it can almost brand a smile on to my face for the
rest of the day. Smoking good weed and drinking double espressos,
that's a really lovely thing for me; they work together wonderfully,
whether I'm sitting watching pretty girls outside a cafe or working
on projects into the night, when they give me the energy to work but
without the jitters that would then stop me sleeping. They cancel out
the bad points of each other and accentuate the good points, calming
me down enough so I can concentrate on work and yet setting off the
mind so it's free, fancy, flighty.

But the thing I'm really looking forward to is mushroom picking.
Mushrooms are my favourite drug because they bring the rush, the open
and clear mind, the laughter and the energy. And they're
chemical-free. Whereas acid takes the world out and puts it in a
tumble dryer, mushrooms are more like a natural progression - taking
the world and stretching it.

Some of the interviewees' names have been changed

[sidebar]

UK ADULT DRUG TAKING IN 2007

3.7 million adults used illicit drugs last year - 1.8m aged under 24 years old

2.8 million used cannabis - 1.5m under 24

1.2 million took a class A drug last year - 560,000 under 24

900,000 used cocaine powder - 425,000 under 24

625,000 used ecstasy - 310,000 under 24

500,000 used amyl nitrate (poppers)

476,000 used amphetamines

154,000 used tranquillisers

87,000 used LSD

69,000 used glues

65,000 used crack cocaine

46,000 used heroin

41,000 used methadone

Sources: British Crime Survey (Home Office), Scottish Crime and
Victimisation Survey (The Scottish Government), Northern Ireland Drug
Prevalence Survey (National Advisory Committee on Drugs)