My Recreational Drug Life

I’ve had an active recreational drug life for five decades, and getting high is still one of my favourite things to do on occasion.

But my close friends argue that drugs—with the exception of cannabis-- are inherently evil and will eventually kill me. In my defence, when will that happen – when I’m 95? Keith Richards is still going strong and he’s a decade older than me. Isn’t the right to “the pursuit of Happiness” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence? And it’s just a matter of time before psilocybin is legalized – you’d be surprised how many middle-agers are secretly microdosing.

My yoga instructor M, exchanges her ADHD prescription Vyvanse (I love Vyvanse – helps me focus) for my Percocet, which I get from the guy down the road in exchange for dogsitting. M and my 40-something neighbour Angie came over the other night with a bottle of wine and a reefer. M said that 70 is the new 50, meaning me. With that compliment, I cranked up the volume to “Laura Branigan’s Gloria and we twirled around the kitchen. That was so much fun we planned to take our dancing downtown next week, and Angie would supply the Ecstasy. Yay, I could keep going past my 10 pm bedtime. Bet I’ll be the oldest gal on the dance floor. That reminds me, I bet I was the oldest person to ride the roller coaster high as a kite on mushrooms last year. Never laughed and cried so much at the same time and can’t wait to do that again.

My drug of choice is mind-expanding psychedelics – a great learning tool, i.e., contemplating the universe and gazing at the Milky Way. The first time I dropped acid was in the high school cafeteria—I was fifteen in 1979, the youngest in our motley group of soon-to-be high school dropouts. If you wanted to come down from a bad acid trip, my pal Dave had a steady supply of Mandrax, another name for Quaalude, the drug Bill Cosby gave to women he wanted to have sex with. I don’t remember having sex. Keith Richards was a fan. We would chase a few pills with booze, pile into the “Mandy Wagon” (a beat-up station wagon), and hysterically drive around Dave’s parents’ country home. Kind of ironic, calling our parents soul crushers and materialistic when we were pilfering their pills. And who hasn’t stolen their parents’ booze and watered it down? Yeah, it's a fine line. My parents eventually found out that I took acid and, figuring I was an addict, took me to the Drug Addiction Foundation. But I could never abuse substances I love…

Drug Dealer

Looking back, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, which means risk-taking. When I left home at sixteen and lived in my friend’s basement, I got a job at Malott’s Pharmacy as old man Mallot’s assistant. I was filling prescriptions and stealing birth control pills that I sold to grade 10 schoolmates. Inventory control was unheard of, so I never got caught swiping valium and phenobarbital, which financed a year tripping around Europe. Here’s another risky incident. Ten years after I left grade 10, I was admitted to university, and a grant and a loan were attached. I invested the grant in two pounds of Mexican weed—this is way before B.C. bud, and that’s how I met my husband, Paul—he was the pot dealer. Selling 32 ounces would more than double my money. I drove north to a mining town where nobody had time to leave and buy their dope, but a cop pulled me over on the highway. I rolled down the window. “Know how fast you were driving?” Thinking about the weed in my trunk, I burst out crying. “I am so sorry, officer; I’m late for my mother’s funeral in Port Hardy.” Well, slow down, little lady and get there in one piece.” I did. Get there in one piece, that is. No slowing down.

Talking about taking a risk, I have to mention this. My American boyfriend Eric and I were stopped at the US-Canada border on our way to his home in Tucson. We were led into an office and quizzed - they figured I was going on the lam. I asked if I could use the washroom and, once in the stall, I flushed a gram of coke down the toilet. But here is the kicker: I hid some coke in my lipstick, figuring they would never look there during a strip search.

By the mid-1990s, most of my middle-aged friends turned into naggers and health freaks walking around with their stupid water bottles (I will never utter the word ‘hydrate’), and the cowards indulged in drugs only on weekends. But not Paul, the psycho I married.

I met Paul again in Vancouver on the fourth floor of the Hudson Bay parking lot. This time I bought an ounce of cocaine. Again, I doubled my dollars in sleepy town Victoria by cutting the coke with Mannitol (a harmless baby laxative), and maybe Paul gave me that tip. The coke must have been decent, even after I stepped on it because I was soon back in that parking lot.

(I have always been attracted to bad boys, but I have to give Paul some credit. He wasn’t just a drug dealer; he owned and operated “Station Street Arts Center,” and many actors started their careers thanks to Paul; a few made it to Hollywood. You never know who reads your stuff, maybe his relatives, but Paul is no longer here.)

Just before we met, Paul had spent three years in prison because he didn’t rat on the Hell’s Angels – they were his coke suppliers. The Angels often dropped by for dinner, nice, polite guys. On one of our early dates, Paul told me his claim to fame: at William Head Penitentiary, he got to spit on Clifford Olson, Canada’s first serial killer, who murdered eleven children. I was impressed with Paul.

Money Launderer

I soon moved into Paul’s house. And not long after we were ‘an item’, the owner of the film catering company where I worked asked if I wanted to buy it. Yes! A few nights later, I held the flashlight while Paul counted his steps from the porch to a spot in the back garden to figure out exactly where he buried the money. He had wrapped a few hundred grand in several heavy-duty garbage bags, but they’d been underground for more than three years, and some of the bills were mouldy. You might find this hard to believe, but I can’t make this stuff up: We drove to his lawyer’s house the next day and dried twenty- and fifty-dollar bills in Jeff’s dryer: It took hours to literally launder the money. (Paul thought the cops wouldn’t break Jeff’s door down.) That’s the night I said Yes, I’ll marry you. And it wasn’t just for the money – risk-takers have much in common.

We also had coke in common, until I got pregnant. I’m not getting into details here, but our baby died, and that’s when Paul went off the rails and I sank into depression (only to crawl out of that hole and self-medicate after we divorced). He lost everything, house, theatre, and me. The drug that destroyed Paul was crack cocaine, and a close second was speedballs: mixing cocaine and heroin. No wonder he died from a heart attack. Hey, that just gave me an idea: I could combine Percocet with Vyvanse and sell them on the dark web. Kidding!

I have two sets of friends – millennials mixed with young Gen X, and baby boomers—my age group. You probably figured out that I no longer have pharma fun with the latter, nor would I even tell them about our drug-fuelled antics, like dancing the night away on Ecstasy. I’d wager that a few of my old-timer pals are secretly micro-dosing, and of course, their smoking pot doesn’t count as drugs.

They already worry enough about me living alone in my rambling house (I’m never alone with dogs), not eating meat, not having enough savings. And they worry about my health. Sheesh, give me a break: I quit cigarettes 40 years ago, and according to my last check-up, I’m perfectly healthy. During that visit, I asked my doctor for an ADHD test (I looked up all the symptoms) so I wouldn’t have to pay M for her meds. My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist, and I’m always up for a challenge; after all, I fooled the cop. Thank God I didn’t touch crack or speedballs. As soon as I hit ‘send’ on this story, I’m gonna treat myself to a Vvyanse and Percoset, heehaw! (I hope the psychiatrist doesn’t read this.)