POP STAR GEORGE MICHAEL has been caught misbehaving yet again in a public convenience. (Surely an inconvenience for him.) According to vague BBC radio news he was captured and cautioned in possession of "a class A and a class C drug".I bet it's crack, I thought to myself.
And cheery-mcDeary, wasn't I bang on right?
Everybody who is into drugs seems to be doing crack these days.
A decade ago cocaine was approaching a peak in popularity to which it had gently climbed over the preceeding decade. When I first encountered drugs cocaine was still a dinner party drug for those rich enough not to know what to do with their money, a drug for rock stars, and was often uttered in the same breath as heroin. Heroin and cocaine. It was a hard drug. Less disrespectable than heroin, but not something one would idly brag about snorting, certainly not in mixed company.
Within half a decade the situation had changed to the point that coke ("charlie" as the new lower-class users referred to it) had become a posh version of speed. A man with and on coke felt he was "the man" and any shame surrounding the substance, at least among the weekend clubbing fraternity had evaporated. Nearly all of these users sniffed the drug. Crack was still considered scummy. A "black drug" (at least in America). Something desperate addicts might be glimpsed smoking on shadowy inner-city back stairwells (as I did a couple of times).
Crack, of course, is only cocaine mixed with baking soda, "washed" (with water for it to float in) under some heat source (e.g. a cig lighter flame). An oil forms atop the spoon. Fished out, a molten white substance quickly hardens and the so-called rocks are produced.
These can be shoved on a pipe which requires cigarette ash or some squiggly wire gauze as illustrated to suspend the melting coke allowing nearly 100% of the dosage to reach the lungs and hence the user's brain. Unlike snorty coke which comes on over five minutes or so, this of course hits the nervous system almost all at once in a super-compressed rush so powerful it can sometimes be heard as an ear-ringing echoing altered state. A very large pipe even blinds you with a snow-blind light in an infinite space (very close to an epileptic seizure, and crack can induce seizure disorders in those previously well). And then a high so immense it feels like surfing a double tidal-wave.
No wonder it's so very addictive.
As I say, crack is only a different form of cocaine, hence many a nose-up user has graduated, from boredom, curiosity (or nose-rotting desperation: don't forget ~ years of snorting eventually dissolve the separator of the nostrils) has "graduated" on to this intensely potent form of the drug. It's more widely available than ever before (from dealers who often retail grass as well). With Amy Winehouse and others widely known to be smokers any remaining stigma is vanishing. And years after the doom and gloom "crack crimewave to hit Britain" headlines it's actually happening.
I have little else to say on the subject. Coke never really got me until I picked up a taste for the so-called speedballs or snowballs, when it's mixed with heroin and injected intravenously as one hit: and this was some years into my hard-drug-using "career"... If the relative dosage is right this feels like an incredibly sugared-up version of heroin, flushing into the brain almost double the dopamine of a crack hit alone...
Highly, highly addictive...
Read the full News of the World article, George Michael had crack in the toilet
PS What's he doing in that Faith poster of his? Wondering whether his deodorant's up to the job..?
14 comments:
Does England have a meth problem yet? Meth labs have sprouted all over North America in the past 15 years. Nasty drug it is - keeps you up for days on end and rots the teeth right out of your head. I watch alot of a show called Intervention. The way that you describe drugs and their effects totally make me not want to do them.
I tried Crack once..
Nasty drug. Way too more-ish, literally.
Problem is you inhale, feel like God, exhale it's gone.
The danger of the instant but trancsendental hit....
Funnily enough, the smell of emulsion pain always reminds me of it though...
I don't mind admitting I think Cocaine generally has an undeservedly negative reputation, but Crack, Crack is evil stuff, it is the road to hell, worse than heroin in my opinion.
What is it with George Michaels and toilets? You'd think after one episode he's be a bit more discreet. Apparently he's in the middle of writing his warts n all memoirs! Memorable moments in that one! You're blog's an education alright Gleds. Puts me right off too! I should get my line snorting nephew to read it.
The little community I came from was tightknit...everyone knew everyone. There were a group of us kids (teenagers) whose parents all grew up together and we all ended up doing the same. When we were young, we were thrown into basements to have our fun while the adults had drinking parties upstairs.
As it turns out, half the people I grew up with have either OD'd on or are currently battling heroin addictions. I never did get involved...for the most part, it was the older siblings. We lost 3 off one street in a short period of time...in total, probably 10 either directly or indirectly through their drug use.
Cocaine was part of our lives (my ex and I) for a time...it was fast and furious and we went through almost everything we had at the time. Could've developed into a real problem for me...I was lucky to get away. I have an addictive personality and there was a lot of alcohol/drug abuse in my family - both sides, so I'm prone to throw myself right in. Luckily, I got out of it. But I know how it can grab ahold.
"George had crack in the toilet". Now that's quite the double entendre. Why those naughty headline writers. They were some very stylish toilets too with the black and white floor tile, but please... Crack in the crapper. It might be time for George to get a new MO, but what do I know. A very informative post you have here Gledwood. Maybe not so positive, but informative.
It is weird how there is a stigma to crack, but not as much to coke. I have to say that I've fallen prey to this thought process as well, I feel like I've been brought up on so many stigmas about crack that it is horrible, while coke was something that the rich did.
Maybe George Michael and Amy Winehouse should have a party together, I'm sure they'd both have lots to talk about... It's just a thought. = )
Well, suffice it to say that George Michael and toilets...JUST DO NOT GET ALONG!
Maybe he should wear Depends?
I am getting that he would save tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees...
Getting caught exploring various peccadilloes in public toilets does not seem to have that positive of an effect on record sales, also.
Something about getting carted away in handcuffs from a place where everyone takes a dump tends to ruin the "mystique" the artist and the record company have struggled so long to build up.
(Yes, that album cover is curious--I never stopped to think about it. It looks like the "Before" picture in a Mitchum commercial. Like if you ever do that, you're not a Mitchum Man--because it has the maximum ingredients allowed by the FDA. Or whatever the FDA is in England.)
George really needs to build a public toilet in his yard already. It would save him all this trouble.
Eileen: I might have come across methamphetamine, but not in its crystal form. the papers go on and on about it though, it's the coming plague!
Crushed: at least you kept it at one pipe or you might be in a very different place right now
Baino: lines of what??
Deb: I bet you're glad you stopped.
Didn't coke cause lots of arguments? Usually in relationships it does
Molson: do you know the papers actually employ specialist headline writers who brainstorm each article every day (so I heard)
Lucinda: I saw a docu on cocaine in the City of London (ie our Wall St) & was surprised to hear former execs saying when their noses finally gave way they took to piping crack instead. Hope they didn't have ultramodernist glass offices! Or if they did, I hope nobody cared about the glimpses of flickering lighter flame and glazed expression, rocking back and forth in the seat (all I ever did on crack was stare at the wall rocking)
ZenWizz: exploring various peccadilloes peccadilloes: love that word!
Nicole: that's classic. You got it bang on!
I'm starting to think George should seriously never use a public loo - they seem to be bad luck for him all the way around!
...well, I didn't wanna say, "giving another dude a hummer," 'cause this is a FAMILY page, and all...
...oh, wait, that would not be correct anyway, cause one time it's hitting the pipe, and one time it's giving a hummer...
I guess George's "ideal evening" would seem to be hitting the pipe, and then...um...hitting the pipe...
I am picking up on a real oral fixation this gentleman has. Not to get Freudian, but did his mom cut him off in the middle of breastfeeding? Or did she have a really nice rack, or what??
seeing that crack pipe had a horribly uncomfortable feeling for me. God! Even after 5 years. No wonder I avoid pictures of crack!
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