College, crazy Barry a chemical diet and a crossbow

It wasn’t long before school was finished and a reasonable set of exam results meant I could attend a college at the neighbouring town.  3 A levels should set me in good stead for my soon to be career in advertising / journalism / media!

6 months in and I had kissed the hottest girl in my classes, befriended an awesome graffiti artist (who later completed a mural covering my bedroom wall much to my mothers disgust), gotten some great results in my photography classes, been to my first trance party and been beaten up at the local pub.

Want to read about my first real beating? click here

So, all in all college was great but my ability to function when stoned 24/7 was not, I fell behind and was politely asked to leave rather than be expelled.

My first real job was working in a sheet metal factory owned by the father of a friend.  It meant getting up ridiculously early, working extremely long days and getting paid close to fuck all....I honestly loved it.

It was here that I was first introduced to speed.  One of the other much older workers gave me my first taste and in the same vein as weed this bleach flavoured, bitter as hell substance became a new and exciting associate during my long days.  I now had speed to wake up and weed to wind down (there’s probably a song in that somewhere)

My addictive personality and my newly delivered pay cheque meant that speed became part of my daily  routine....shit, brush teeth, take speed, brush teeth again, go to work.

As well as my work colleague dealer there was a local guy who I used to purchase fun from, he was slightly older and lived literally 2 minutes from my house, lets call him Barry.

Very strange guy with an abundance of personal issues but nevertheless he always had the goods, (speed needs to be kept in the fridge and shouldn’t be stored in anything like a "wrap" that has colour on it as it will strip the colour from the paper....if it doesn't then what you have just bought is predominately glucose...unlucky)

Barry once abducted a male friend of mine...I received a phone call from said friend to say that he was in Barrys bedroom and had been pushed in there before the door was bolted with no explanation offered.  Barry then went out for several hours, I waited on his doorstep until he returned but he was so ruined by the time he got back he didn't even remember doing it.

Another time I walked into his house (door was normally left open for us) to find him naked with a pot of paint in each hand.  He stopped and stared as I entered the lounge slightly slack jawed, from the walls and his painted naked body I could see that he had been using himself as a paint brush to decorate his lounge.  I side stepped into the kitchen collected what I needed from the fridge, left the money on the side and left without a word.

Want another little story about crazy Barry? click here

Speed (or “base” as it's known in it's purer form) is a really nasty drug and I don’t recall any fond memories in the same way I do with other drugs, some bloody crazy ones but none that you could class as nostalgic.

I lost so much weight over the coming months that my already emaciated frame started to turn heads and not in a “sexy beast” kinda way.

Yes it's a Banksy

My shrinking body, occasional chronic constipation, twitchiness and general disregard for anything that didn’t involve speed or weed didn’t go unnoticed and after a few choice words from family and friends I decided to sort myself out,  I left the sheet metal factory and searched for another job.

My second, and to date longest spanning role, was working in an electronics company producing military products.  I’d landed on my feet and worked hard.

My boss at the time was a bit of a lad and when working the 10pm till 6am shift together one evening the conversation eased on to my favourite subject matter of the moment, drugs.

Turns out he was happy to supply me with vast quantities of pot with no payment up front.  I started buying, chopping and selling 9 bars (9 ounce block, value once chopped roughly £800.00).

This continued for a while and although I never made any huge amounts of cash I always had an abundance of pot to smoke for free.

One morning, on a day I was due to collect the latest delivery (from his desk drawer on a busy shop floor!) the police turned up and we were all asked to vacate the building while they searched his locker and you guessed it, his desk.

Turns out the odd 9 ounces every couple of weeks was only a speck of what my boss was actually shifting.

I heard later through a mutual friend that when they raided his house they found huge blocks of pot in each of his kitchen cupboards worth over £30000.00

After being let out on bail he decided to track down the guy he suspected of assisting with his capture and was promptly arrested by armed police in his local pub brandishing a loaded crossbow.

That’s the last I heard of him and was to be the interlude to my simple supply route for a bounty of cheap / free pot.

For no particular reason I’d like to finish this post with another quote from Hunter S Thompson:

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

― Hunter S. Thompson

For those that don’t know, Hunter S Thompson wrote some fantastic books which were later turned into amazing films, including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “The Rum Diaries”, both starring Johnny Depp.

You may recognise some of the images scrolling through my photo’s at the top left, these are created by Ralph Steadman who provided the immensely fitting artwork for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you can find his website here

This is new...it's called "Carp Crazy" (Ralph Steadman)

 

Till next time dull-lovers!

dullboyblog goes live!!

So, Welcome, the time has come for us to move on from “The prelude to the story...”

I’m hoping most of you will have read it before ending up here as it kind of sets the scene for what is to come.  If not lay your eyeballs on it here.

So....to recap... I’m now a confused and typically frustrated teenager with a loving mum and two missing fathers.

What can I do to express my individualism?  How can I impress my peers and prove to myself that the family breakdowns have not scarred me for life? 

I know.... I’ll focus my anger and confusion into something positive .....art?, sport?....maybe I’ll practice day and night in order to excel at something and everyone will swoon at my greatness!!!....hmmm......or maybe I’ll just rebel a bit and spend several years taking a variety of drugs to numb my childhood woes.....

Just to be clear...this is not now and will not turn into a blog about drugs. 

My experiences associated with drugs have shaped my being and some events caused by or related to drugs make for a great read so my story must continue from here....

I first smoked weed when I was 13 years old
(interesting fact...the drug has accounted for nearly 3/4M arrests per annum in the US alone every year since the mid 80’s). 

A slightly older family friend, who’s mum was a white haired hippie, had promised me the opportunity to get stoned for the first time at his place.  I arrived on a Sunday morning to find my friend was still researching the inside of his eyelids
(I still today haven’t figured out why Sunday morning seemed to me as an appropriate time and day). 

 

His hippie mum let me in, I bumbled into his bedroom, woke him and reminded him of our deal, he grunted and rubbed at bleary eyeballs before stuffing a small bong with the sickly sweet green weed that was to become my companion for several years to come.

At 13 I had already smoked cigarettes and thought I was prepared for the inhalation...I was not and coughed heartily while my still bed bound and rather more experienced friend chuffed away as if he were Howard Marks himself.

The effects were not quite immediate and I must admit were minimal, my first taste was pleasant enough with no ill effects.  I had a long walk home which felt surprisingly interesting and somewhat longer than my journey there.  The Sunday roast my mother cooked a few hours later was legendary....at least I thought it was.

I soon became absorbed in the world of weed and its fascinating complexity, not only the array of “flavours” available, the variety of methods for getting high but also its history and ubiquitous glamorisation in the media.  My growing interest, and connection to my older friend, meant the local weed smoking fraternity soon welcomed me with open arms; the unspoken camaraderie and general friendliness of those who partook in such an activity surprised me and warmed me.  

Every new face and acquaintance was interesting, often no introductions were needed, and the everlasting symbolic gesture of simply passing and receiving a joint was all it took to avoid the inaugural sentences awkwardly spewed in an attempt to make friends.  These were my kind of people...I was hooked. 

 

I continued to smoke as often as possible, almost every day, and as the number of acquaintances within this new “underworld” increased, possibilities opened up and I soon started to supply small quantities to my group of curious “non underworld” friends, never making any money but instead getting my own weed for free out of the deal.  

Over a relatively short period of time the quality of what we smoked improved as did the strength and the volume.

 

It wasn’t long before my teenage blasé attitude meant I was caught red handed by my mother at a local fairground.

She glided like a ninja across the field on her Shopper bicycle, before I knew it she was in my face....as was a massive joint.

I received the “look of death”, that only a mother knows how to administer, but for unknown reasons she decided not to publicly chastise and embarrass me.  I stayed at a friends house that night and proceeded to get really stoned in an attempt to wash away the underlying fear of gawking up into my mother’s fierce eyes the next day (she wasn’t that fierce to be fair.....however in comparison to my rather blood shot and droopy eyes she may as well have ripped herself a new pair from an angry tiger and shoved them in her own face just for effect)

Angry tiger, shopper riding, ninja mummy

After returning from my smoky sleepover (in a tent in a friends garden) my mother looked me in the eyes and asked me straight “were you smoking ma-reee-juanaaaa?” ...stifling back the giggle her pronunciation caused I found I couldn’t lie to her, I admitted unreservedly to what I had been doing. 

My punishment......the 6 week school holidays that year were spent at my Aunts (the mental one from “The prelude to the story...”) This was an attempt to keep me away from all those awful friends who were nothing but a bad influence on poor little dullboy.

he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

I spent most of the school holidays getting drunk on cider with my cousin and managed to pull two girls in the same evening....where’s the karma in that huh!?

As you can imagine being caught and subjected to such punishment did very little to affect my feelings about smoking weed.  

I returned to my home town a hero amongst friends and slipped straight back into my old ways.  Before long smoking became a bit of an obsession for my friends and I, we would always devise exciting new ways to smoke weed....bongs, shotties, pipes, bag-bottles, buckets and other wonderfully intricate and “steampunk-esque” contraptions.
 

ok, so maybe not quite this intricate but you get the idea

For those who don’t know what “steampunk” is think the bastard child of Mad Max and Phileas Fogg...or take a look here.

Want to know about these contraptions? Take a look at the dullboyblog - substories site

I now had a group of, previously only curious, close mates and a group of “underworld” acquaintances all of whom were smoking as much weed as we could burn and force into our blackened lungs.

Supply was never an issue and our little town was literally brimming with the stuff.  In a few years I would take advantage of this fact...

Next instalment coming soon...