When I remember the first time I bought illegal drugs I’m transported back to the mid nineties and a little dingy pub, smoke filled and dark with dance music pouring from the juke box.  The guy who we procured the weed from was dodgy as hell and looked like everyone us 90’s folk purchased drugs from.  A baseball cap and puffer jacket was the required attire for all wannabe drug dealers.

He took our money and told us to wait.  Nearly 3 hours later he returned and placed in our hand about £5 worth of sub standard weed for our £20 outlay.  We excitedly went outside and proceeded to roll an amateurish joint with our newly purchased weed.  Taking precious turns on the spliff we felt peak 90’s and not that high.

It’s this trust we had in a dodgy stranger in a pub that blows my mind, more than the weed blew my mind when thinking back to all those years ago.  Why did I trust these shady sorts who I purchased illicit drugs from?

One time after purchasing LSD from one such character on the street, his friend bounced up and cheerily informed us and him that someone had killed themselves after taking the self same acid we had purchased and hastily consumed 5 minutes before.  Needless to say I had the worse nightmare trip I had ever experienced.  It was truly terrifying.  No wonder given the set and setting of hearing of the demise of some poor chap who had taken the same acid the night before.  Did we buy off him again? Of course we did.

The point is that when we all inevitably started experiencing varying drug induced mental illness, we didn’t trust our respective doctors advice or treatment.  We put a fine toothed comb over the side effects and decried our doctors for messing with our minds.

No such scorn was poured on the drug dealer in the puffer jacket.  As our mental health collapsed further, we blamed the medication prescribed by the doctor trying to help and not the dodgy acid dealer in the pub.  Why is this? Why is someone in a drug induced psychosis so happy to reject medication to help heal, yet happily chomps on ecstasy smuggled into a club up someone’s arse and probably made in a council flat in the midlands in the uk?

I struggle with why my younger self had such trust for dealers and no such trust in doctors when it all went wrong.  Those self same kids who happily necked arse tainted MDMA and acid went on to become the vaccine hesitant, sage burning crystal worshipping types who infest instagram and facebook.  Their distrust of medicine has turned into a popularity contest and a business for some.

These people prescribe bicarbonate of soda and weed oil over chemotherapy for cancer.  They accuse the medical profession of making us sick for profit and accolades.  They would rather listen to ‘Dr’ Joseph Mercola or David ‘avocado’ Wolf than someone who has studied medicine for 7 plus years.  They trust yoga wellness gurus who suggest taking DMT or ayaschua for depression and have only scorn for psychiatrist’s who have given care and peace of mind to 1000’s of severely mentally unwell individuals.

It both baffles and infuriates me, as well as makes me ashamed as I was one of these arrogant and misguided new age arseholes who said ‘don’t vaccinate your child, it’s poison you know’ all whilst puffing on bath salts laced weed.

I suggest we leave medicine to the medics and let drug dealers and users stick to their ass tainted ecstasy.

Rant over!