PANORAMA DOES DRUGS

M O N D A Y,  1 3  F E B

Slept badly last night because I couldn’t breathe, and got a nasty taste in my mouth from keeping it open. This cold has made me feel very weak. Besides that, I keep on having to blow my nose and it's SORE.

I wish I could act in Macbeth, I take a delight in saying the words, they're so rhythmical. "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more” etc etc. I also read about Macbeth from my new literary books, but I can't understand a word! They’re ridiculously intellectual.

Panorama was on drug taking in Britain. There are 2,000 addicts. What beats me is how they ever start to take drugs. Once you’re hooked on heroin you have to go on, because the pains you get if you don’t are too terrible. It's so sad. It made me awfully depressed.

““Shake this Square World and blast off for Kicksville!” ”

... is a weird American line from a weird American film about John's first 'pot party' (clip above).

Back in the UK, drugs had become a focal point in the growing conflict between youth and the rest of society, graduating from the mods' amphetamines (I remember first hearing about Purple Hearts, with horror) to marijuana and LSD,  drugs of choice for drop-outs and 'free thinkers':  At the same time, a much darker drug had started in the music scene: heroin. 

When Mollie Craven, mother of a 19-year-old addict, wrote her plea in the Guardian in 1967 – My Son Takes Heroin - she could not have imagined that the group set up in response to her entreaty would become the largest drug and alcohol charity in Britain: Addaction - the Association of Parents of Addicts (APA). Although APA could not save her son, the group was influential in shaping the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, the law that stopped doctors prescribing heroin. 

By 2014 those 2,000 UK “drug addicts” of 1967 (heroin-users included) had become a million.