HAS ANYBODY NOT TRIED CANNABIS?

I Admit I Have, But A Fabulously Fruity Hash Cake Put Me Off For Life

To Me Cannabis Meant Rejection, Deceit And Failure. No Wonder I
Spurned It

I think it's time to admit that I have taken cannabis. What a yawn.
Who cares? But everybody else seems to have admitted it, so why not
me? Judi Dench has done it, so has Queen Victoria, Mr and Mrs Al Gore,
Newt Gingrich, Fergie has taken her daughter near people who were
doing it, and now, thanks to her confession on a forthcoming Channel
Five documentary, we know that Maureen Lipman has done it. And so have
I. Has anybody not? But it was all rather dreary. I didn't do it very
well. At first I refused to do it and threatened to report my chums to
the police. They were not pleased. But it was 1960, taking drugs was a
wicked criminal offence and they were smoking it in a phone box with
my boyfriend who had just dumped me. I saw them from the top of a bus,
the swine. Why should he have a fun time while I couldn't? So why not
tell and have him banged up? But I didn't, and in the end I tried it.
Being a non-smoker I couldn't get the hang of it. I persevered, but
nothing happened. Complete blank. I had a couple of lessons. "You are
not inhaling properly. Wait. Take it right down. Do not exhale yet.
Relax. You are too uptight ... blah blah." I tried harder. No result
except fainting and nausea. I gave up.

The 60s passed by. I attended parties, many in squats with purple
walls and naked red light bulbs. The air was thick with criminal
fumes. All around me people chilled and laughed. And laughed and
laughed. At what? They took trips, they saw beauty in everything, they
had wild sex. One hid his hash stash in my rocking horse's bottom,
under its tail. Real rocking horse shit. He shared it with other
women. To me, cannabis meant rejection, deceit and failure. No wonder
I spurned it. I sat on my street market stall in the trendy Portobello
Road all through the 70s. I looked hip, but I wasn't. Chums came
laughing and tripping by. The fools. And then one day I ate some hash
cake. I admit it. A huge chunk, because it was a fabulous fruit cake
and why not? Nothing would happen. This drug had never had an effect
on me, why should it do so now? I had more cake and went home.
Horrible. Robbers kept coming in and tapping me on the shoulder, I
swear they did. Where were my friends now, when I needed them? On the
way round, but late. They were stoned, so time meant nothing to them,
or to me. What had happened to it? It was full of gaps. I tried to
watch telly. Chunks of plot disappeared. More robbers came in. No more
cake for me, ever.

Over the years the dreadful cake memories faded and I tried again. I
admit it. I had a couple of fun evenings, but then the person I had
the fun evenings with rather overdid the cannabis taking. For days and
days on end. What terrible poetry he wrote while stoned, what dreadful
stews he cooked, what shameful greed he exhibited, startling my
mother, what endless crapola he talked, for hours and hours on end.
Drone, drone, babble, babble. No more of that person for me, thank you
very much, and no more cannabis. Ever, ever. But if, one day, I change
my mind and try again, I promise to confess. Because it's so important
that one does so. Isn't it?