Cheers for the Vodka and Beers

I can't recall when it was that Jet and I became friends. But I found out later that the reason they called him Jet, was because he was always quick to run away from the trouble he'd caused.

We went to the same school together and we’d hang around my estate with Toby. We called him Toby for short, as his last name was Tobberson.

I was only 14 but I soon found out that if I put on a deep voice and acted confident, I could pass for 18 and buy alcohol from the shop.

There wasn’t much to do round my way, there was the park, the shops and a home I didn’t want to be in, so I’d hang out on the streets.

Vodka burns when you drink it, but we’d down it in an effort to get drunk as quickly as possible. I’d welcome any opportunity to escape who I was, someone I hated.

I’m not sure where my self-loathing came from, but I remember drawing pictures for my therapist when I was a child, depicting how I wanted to die.

Jet wanted me around, it was nice to feel wanted and all it ever seemed like I got other places, was a hard time. At school I was bullied every day and at home I was emasculated by a mother who’d manipulate me, in an attempt to bend me to her will.

She was raising 3 kids alone, because she’d decided to have an affair with a married man who wanted nothing to do with us. I felt like a stain he wanted to get rid of and all I yearned for was someone to teach me what it meant to be a man.

Jet was confident, he spoke up for me, so I thought that must be what being a man is about. Although I still lacked confidence, I became very protective of my friends.

I thought very little of myself, but I would stand in front of a bullet for my friends.

My first drug..... Tobacco

Drug use was commonplace on the council estate where I grew up. Kids as young as 12 would smoke cannabis, which was regularly supplied by their family who sold it.

Tobacco was my first drug. I was 14 and it didn’t start with cigarettes. Fred and I would put these reeds in our mouths and set fire to them. We were just messing around, pretending to smoke as we blew down these reeds and they burnt like cigarettes.

Fred wasn’t his real name, but people called him that because he looked like the cartoon character from Scooby Doo.

 

Fred

We’d often hang out in the woods, then one day he pulled a roll up out of his pocket and demanded I smoke it with him.

I was reluctant but easily peer pressured into doing want others wanted, in my desperate need for love and acceptance.

I took about 2 smokes of the roll up and thought nothing more of it.

Then the next time we met Fred had a pack of 10 Mayfair he demanded we smoke. When you smoke for the first time it doesn’t actually taste nice, imagine a dirty sick feeling as the carbon monoxide poisons your body and nicotine fills your brain.

His expectation was that we’d smoke the whole pack, I chain smoked as many of the cigarettes as I could, which was about 3 and a half, then went home.

I’d go off to the park lunch times at school with Scott who smoked. He was a grungy looking guy who didn’t really care what people thought of him.

One lunch time I asked him, “can I have a roll up?” and he said sure. From then on, we’d smoke together every lunch time and I was hooked.

My mum found out I smoked when I was 15. She disapproved, so I agreed to stop until I was 16, the legal age to smoke in the UK at the time. After that I started buying my own cigarettes and smoking everywhere I went.

Other kids would ponce roll ups off me and as weak willed as I was, I’d give in to them. 

Deep down I wanted everyone to like me but as troubled as I was growing up, that desire displayed itself through subservient, people pleasing behaviour.