One of the things I’ve heard about music festivals is that a lot of drugs are taken. That’s something else I’m useless at. My drug-taking career began at a community centre disco when I was about 15. I had drunk a load of homebrew beforehand – and then someone gave me some pot. I felt quite unwell. To address this, I decided to go and have a headbang to Deep Purple. Scenes as ghastly as they were predictable ensued. The mere smell of pot still makes me gag, as my fellow headbangers and I were retching on that awful night.
Fast forward almost 40 years to March this year, and we get to my second – and emphatically last ever – encounter with cannabis. I was in a hotel bar in Manchester having fallen into conversation with quite a famous actor. After a while, she said to me: “Come out for some spliff.” Next thing, I’m sitting outside, pulling on a joint the size of a fencepost. I felt a bit funny at first, and then decidedly peculiar. She soon went inside, possibly because I had completely stopped speaking. As well as losing the power of speech, it turned out that my motor functions had all but deserted me, too. And I was overwhelmed with nausea.
Eventually, I managed to stand up and execute a kind of grandpa shuffle back into the hotel lobby, and make my way past pitying eyes to the lift and my room. I felt utterly awful. I contemplated a quick headbang to expunge it from my system, but thought better of it. I lay on the floor, which seemed to be the thing moving least, and shut my eyes. A very vivid array of colours danced on the inside of my eyelids.
I slept the best sleep I have slept in ages that night. But I am still not touching the stuff again.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
