Читать книгу Tell Me a Secret - True Confessions of Britain's Most Erotic Dancers and Models - Dawn Simpson - Страница 25

Robbie Williams, Ashton Kutchner, Ryan Phillipe, Jared Leto, Freddie Ljungberg, Stephen Dorff, Johnny Dep … And, Posh, don’t worry, because Becks does nothing for me!!!!

Tell me a secret … The first time I tried speed I was 15 and it was with my best mate. We were bored of drinking MD 20/20 and experimenting with marijuana, so this seemed like it could be fun. We paid a fiver for a gram off some kid who lived down the street from me.

I must point out that I am being completely honest in reiterating these events, although it may come across that I am talking about drugs in a positive way. This is not the case – I just want to explain how I felt at the time and in no way am I condoning illegal drugs at all.

As I was saying, we took half a gram each and waited. Then we ‘came up’. It was quite a nice feeling. Not like when you take pills or LSD. With speed you are completely aware of everything that is going on. Every song sounds fantastic, and you are a great dancer, a confident speaker. We stayed up all night chatting. I thought how could this drug be harmful?

The next day was a different story. I didn’t actually get to sleep till 8am. Well, I didn’t really sleep at all. I just forced my eyes shut and tossed and turned. By mid-afternoon I was really ill. I couldn’t move. My whole body ached and was stiff. I was really emotional and tearful and when I tried to go to the loo it was as though my guts had fallen out of my body. I later learned that this horrid stomach upset was common and was referred to as ‘gut rot’. Eating was the last thing on my mind. Just looking at food made me feel sick. My mouth was sore and ulcerated and I couldn’t even drink water. I took comfort in sipping a carton of Five Alive. It took me six hours to sip the whole carton! Welcome to my first ‘come down’. But being a naïve 15-year-old, I just put this horrid experience down to it being my first time. The following weekend we did it again, but this time we bought a gram each.

My mum and dad are very good parents and were very strict disciplinarians with me, but it’s hard to keep a tight reign on a 15-year-old. I had a curfew of midnight, which was way earlier than most of my friends. But, like most typical 15-year-olds, I was moody and hated being around my family.

When I wasn’t hanging out on the local estate with my friends I was in my room playing Super Mario Brothers till the early hours. So it was normal for me to sleep till midday at the weekends. Also, I did a lot of drug experimentation on nights I knew I would be sleeping over at a friend’s, so my parents didn’t notice any strange behaviour. I had a big attitude problem anyway and I used to talk to my mother like shit. So the nights that she’d catch me climbing out my bedroom window at 3am, because I was still buzzing, she would put down to me just being rebellious. I was always a sensible child when I was younger, so the last thing on my parents’ minds was that I was involved with drugs.

Very quickly after I started doing speed, I started taking the drug on school nights. I began truanting and falling asleep behind the school stage to recover from my ‘come downs’.

I eventually worked out that there was a good way to escape the dreaded ‘comedown’ and that was, basically, you had to take more. Soon I was taking a few dabs before my lessons. No one noticed. I didn’t really ever do anything out of character on speed. I just became more confident, enthusiastic and energetic. By this time my friend had dropped out of school and I was truanting so much my teachers were sending letters home.

My weight was only six stone. I hardly ate. But people always knew me as skinny anyway. Again, it was something that no one picked up on. I always made sure I wore baggy clothes, which hid how skinny I was. One particular favourite item of clothing was my grey Fruit Of The Loom sweatshirt that would fit a grown man. I think I’ve still got it at home somewhere.

Eventually I went from taking one gram to two grams to taking pure base (speed that is supposedly stronger as it hasn’t been cut with glucose and all sorts of other household crap). I also took pink champagne – that was speed that had a slight pink tinge to it. I liked speed as it lasted way longer than cocaine. It was cheap as hell and you could take it anywhere and everywhere. On a downside, it tasted like shit. Possibly the worst taste ever – so I overcome that by bombing it (wrapping it in a rizla and swallowing the rizla so it explodes in your belly like a little ‘bomb’). Sometimes I’d snort it. I once snorted a gram straight out of the wrap without cutting it and smoothing out all the lumps. My nose was a right mess the next day. When I think back I can’t believe I was so sick and depraved. I’d even put it in my tea. It got to a point where I was buying quantities big enough to deal but they were just for my own consumption.

I once tried to cheat by cutting it with glucose to make double the amount and sell it on. I put red food colouring in it to pass it off as pink champagne to get more cash, but I ended up f***ing the whole lot up. It didn’t matter though as I’d eaten it all by the end of the week.

By the time I was 17 I had a bit of a reputation of being a ‘whizz head’. I wasn’t the only one. The estate that we lived on was a bit rough and practically everyone was on speed at one time. Once my neighbour and I stole her flatmate’s TV and video and sold it to Cash Converters so we could go and ‘get on it’.

At this time I’d also experimented with pills and GHB, which I can’t really remember much about as I was usually on speed when I took them anyway. One night at a hardcore rave in Stevenage I put 8 grams into a bottle of coke and downed it, then topped it off with a couple of pills. That night I was so ill. My mate, Mark, found me in a right state on the floor in the toilets. I refused to see the paramedics in case they pumped my stomach and, even worse, they would tell my parents. So I begged Mark to stay with me outside the rave. We sat together for five hours with me rocking backwards and forwards, making the odd whimper, while he gave me sips of water, trying to keep me alert.

It was the day after that night that I decided to sort out my mess of a life. Yeah, I’d done well at school and had just completed a first year of A levels in Art, English and German. But my life was more important. If I stayed in the area, I knew I’d end up in the gutter. So I dropped my German A level in a suitcase, packed my English coursework, my sketch pad, pencils and Indian ink and went to stay with relatives in Cyprus. My parents agreed this would be good for me, as I was a bit of a wild child and thought that some time away would keep me from getting into trouble.

Being in Cyprus was a breath of fresh air. I couldn’t get any drugs at all out there. I felt naturally refreshed. My appetite returned and I started to put on weight. A month later I weighed a healthy eight-and-a-half stone. I came home, completed my A levels and avoided my old friends like the plague. As soon as my exams were over I went straight back out to Cyprus for my 18th birthday – this time with my parents. It was really weird, but being in Cyprus and learning to feel clear headed and confident without taking speed made me realise that speed wasn’t addictive for me at all.

It wasn’t all great. I did suffer from panic attacks and nausea for a long time afterwards and now, even at the age of 24, I still get panic attacks, which I believe are a result of the amount of mental damage I did to myself.

Nowadays, I won’t even drink any more than one Smirnoff ice at a time – let alone take any substance that will alter my perceptions or intoxicate me. I’m very lucky I escaped a possible worse fate.

My parents agreed that when I came back from Cyprus I was altogether a much nicer person, but they couldn’t exactly pinpoint why. Only I knew the real reason. Since then I have told my mum that I had experimented with drugs in my teens. But she doesn’t know to what extent. I’ve spared my dad the details, as it would disappoint him so much.

I have never shared this with anyone and, when my parents do read this, I hope that they will not be too ashamed of what I did. I want them to be proud of the fact that I fought the problem head on. It’s because of my parents love, support and the way they raised me that made me strong enough to get over this and make a success out of my life. Thanks Mum and Dad.