Hi all. This is the intro and two early chapters of my attempt at a book. It's a first draft, so I'd love to get some feedback from people who are, let's say, much better at this than I. Even if someone just read either the intro or a single chapter and commented, I'd be grateful.
Welcome to My World
Sometimes throughout the day, I find myself thinking about the lowest points of my colourful existence. The tragic calamities that I've got myself into. It could be the time that I found myself involved in an armed robbery of a petrol station (by 'armed' I mean armed with a banana under my hoodie). Or maybe it was when I slept on the streets of both England and Thailand? Possibly, it was when I found myself swimming through a monitor lizard and dirty nappy infested river in Thailand, in the middle of the night, to get my next fix of amphetamine? Or... when I was arrested in Bangkok with crystal-meth and facing the 'monkey house'.
No.
It was almost definitely when I fell into a coma after another drug induced night of shame in Bangkok.
Let me introduce myself: My name is Gavin and I'm one of those people who faceplants into every hurdle that they try to jump over in life. One of those people who makes the worst possible choice at every chance he gets. One of those people who is, to put it simply, hopeless at life.
I started writing this book to save myself from myself. To give me something to focus and reflect on and maybe, just maybe, save a single soul from following the ridiculous path that I chose to go down. A path that took me into the darkest depths of despair that may be humanly possible. A journey that should have killed me three times over yet, through sheer luck, saw me come out the other side smelling of something that wasn't quite roses.
I deserve no sympathy or pity for what I went through. I clumsily fumbled my way into every situation all by myself. I can proudly proclaim that I need not a smidgen of help to get myself into a tight spot - I can do it all by myself. I'm a grown man after all!
People like myself aren't bad people - we just shouldn't be allowed to go anywhere without a responsible adult present.
I hope my story can maybe provide some company for other like-minded people and maybe serve as a reminder that... however bad the situation may be, there is always some light (if only a flicker) at the end of the tunnel.
Chapter 5 - A New Friend
Ever since I'd lived in Fleet, I'd always had the same group of friends around me from junior school all the way through to secondary. It was when I turned thirteen that I met a guy who would turn out to have the biggest effect on me and my life to this day.
His name was Alex. He was two years older than me. A tall lanky boy with a shaved head. We instantly became very close - best friends, inseperable. I looked up to Alex as a groupie would look up to their hero. I was chuffed... flattered even that a guy two years older than me would take a liking to me.
I would copy everything Alex did. I started to listen to the same type of music as him: Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Pantera. I started to look like him: Scruffy boots, torn t-shirts, baggy jeans. I participated in his evening hobbies: Smoking weed, smoking weed, smoking weed. I would do absolutely anything Alex asked me too.
I can't say I didn't enjoy this period of my life because I did. Lots of new friends - older too! Nights at Alex's friend's house passing the bong around, listening to music all the while laughing hysterically at anything that seemed funny at the time.
The collateral damage of all of this though, was that my grades at school began to drop, and I mean really drop. From an A* student I swiftly dumped myself to a D at best. What's worse is that I was proud of this fact. I'd lost all interest in education in the space of a year. My Dad was never around to guide me. When he was he barely ever took the time to talk to me - He had new family now. It was over this period of time that things really turned sour for me. I was going to start shining as a fuck-up of society. I'd found my calling. Very soon, I'd see myself in trouble with police.
I was fourteen years old when I had my first serious encounter with police (I'd been arrested when I was twelve for stealing a Mars Bar from Woolworths - that doesn't really count). It was a Sunday afternoon and I was playing football for my local team 'Crookham Rovers'. Alex turned up at half time so we snuck off into the woods for a sneaky cigarette - something which we thought was quite bad-ass at the time. I noticed something odd.
"Where's your bike Alex?" Alex and I would always be on our mountain bikes. Alex held in a laugh. I could see the excitement in his eyes. He was bursting to tell me.
"I've got my Mum's new car!" he sniggered. Alex was only sixteen years old.
"She let you borrow her car!" I was shocked. Alex was never in his parent's good books.
"No... I stole it! They went out shopping in Dad's car so I took it. Are you coming for a spin or what?" Alex already knew the answer to his question.
I definitely didn't want to go but I never said 'no' to Alex - or anyone for that matter. I wasn't going to let him down. 'What kind of mate would say no to an offer like that? Not a good one!' I thought.
"Alright, but I need to play the second half first. Can you wait for me?" I asked.
"I'll come back in half an hour. I'm going to have a little drive around first", and off he went giggling like a little boy who'd just seen a bra for the first time.
After the match, Alex picked me up as promised and we drove around, aimlessly, for an hour or so wallowing in pride at how 'gangster' we were. It didn't take long for me to notice that Alex was in fact a terrible driver. Possibly the worst in the world.
"What's the plan, buddy?" I asked. Alex never had a plan. I don't know why I asked.
"Don't know, man! We need to find something to eat soonish... I'm starving!" Both of us never had any money to our name.
"Alright", I always had a solution for that. "Drop me at mine quickly so I can get changed, and I'll grab what I can from the fridge". My Dad's fridge was always well stocked. "Meet me at the end of the road in five minutes."
I crammed as many snacks into my hoodie pockets as I could, without my Dad noticing, and set off to meet Alex. It wasn't long until his driving really started to worry me.
"ALEX! You're gonna hit the curb again". I was getting bored repeating myself.
For the first half hour we continued where we left off and drove around aimlessly ending up in a nearby town. I can't remember which town it was. Alex was coming pretty fast up to a t-junction and swung a right turn at the end without checking for traffic coming on the left. As luck would have it, a white Volvo was coming down at that same moment. That horrible screeching sound of rubber skidding along tarmac filled the air as the Volvo desperately tried to avoid hitting us. Alex, with all his driving prowess, just frantically started spinning the steering wheel to his right bringing us into oncoming traffic. With the grace of a hippo, he swerved through a couple of cars and avoided a head on collision.
We were now heading straight onto the pavement. Two young girls were walking there. This was a 'bullseye' moment. No chance of Alex getting out of this one. Luckily, one of the girls saw us hurtling towards them and jumped out of the way pulling her friend with her. She may have just saved her friend's life at that moment. She certainly saved her from serious injury. Heroic act. It's probably a moment that they still talk about to this day. A moment that solidified their friendship forever. Happy to help!
With human life out of the way of danger, Alex and myself could now smash into a signpost and crush the front of the car without worry. Alex reversed out, and calmly pulled away, dragging the front bumper along with him. It wasn't exactly a stealthy getaway... but a getaway it was. At this point I was scared stiff. I'm a coward by nature - I shouldn't be here. Alex tied up the front bumper so it didn't drag and we continued on our merry way.
"We're running out of petrol", said Alex. "You're gonna have to help me do a petrol run"
Great! Here we go.
"I'm gonna pull into the next petrol station. I'll keep the engine running while you fill up the tank. When it's full jump in and we'll fuckin' leg it". What could go wrong?
"Alright", I said. I never was one to say 'no' me.
We pulled into the next petrol station, which was on the way to Hartley Whitney. I got out the car, trying to look 'cool', and begun to fill her up. With the engine still running we were both dead stupid and a dead giveaway. I was shaking, sweating...scared. This was all a bit too much for me. I was a little out of my depth. I'd only stopped using armbands in swimming pools a couple of years ago.
I filled the car up to the brim and walked calmly over to the passenger door. Alex already had the bloody car moving before I got to it. I opened the door, jumped in and then Alex floored it. The petrol station was on a busy main road so the odds of us not hitting anything was slim to nothing.
SMASH, BANG, WALLOP...straight into a green metro being driven by a couple of pensioners who had probably just had a couple of years knocked off of what they had left. The car, surprisingly, still worked so Alex sped off into the distance, leaving the poor couple wondering what the hell had just happened.
"Let's go to Essex", Alex suggested. "I have some friends up there." So off to Essex we were.
There were no more hiccups along the way now apart from Alex continuously taking up two lanes on the motorway. It was nighttime when we arrived in London. London can be pretty scary at night for a 'well-to-do' fourteen year old from a little village. We drove around without direction once again until we found ourselves in a rough part of town. A very rough part.
There we were, a young wally and a tall skinhead sitting in a brand new car in a black part of London. Gangs grouped on each street corner. We had gone the very wrong way. Alex pulled into an estate where a gang started walking towards us. One guy had a bat in his hand. He didn't look like a fan of baseball to me. Alex slammed the car into reverse and bolted off.
"I think we should go back home now", Alex said. A hint of worry was evident in his voice. Even he was a little out of his depth now. 'YES, YES... please let's bloody GO HOME!' I thought.
"Yeah, alright then. If you want to." My cool response couldn't have sounded anymore fake if I'd tried.
When we arrived back in Fleet a huge sense of relief overcame me. I hadn't got caught. I hadn't died. I hadn't wet my pants in front of Alex.
"Gav, you go home mate. I'm gonna call my parents and face the punishment now", Alex said. The initial excitement of the whole day had now been doused with a bucket of reality. I didn't want to leave Alex on his own, but I was scared shitless of what my Dad would do if he found out. Dad always found time to punish me... I could be sure of that with him.
It took two days for the police to come round. I had, of course, been caught on camera filling up the car and pulling away. I was only a kid so I just got a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to. Alex got a fine and some community service. It was my first encounter with the police but nowhere near my last.
Smoking weed was a daily activity by this point and I was soon going to be introduced to actual drugs. Drugs that would control and rip up my life to this day. Drugs that, 17 years later, I am still having to battle against.
Chapter 7 - Time to Party
During my last year of secondary school, hard drugs had fully enveloped my day to day life. I just loved doing them. Stupid is as stupid does. Speed, ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, skunk, poppers, gas... let's just say - anything I could get my hands on. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Drugs are a way for any teenager with problems, to escape from reality for a bit. As a teenager, it feels good to take them. There are no serious repercussions mentally at that point. It's when you hit adulthood, that you notice that some damage has been done - irreversable damage.
Every weekend one of us would have a free house somewhere in town so we would usually stock up on alcohol, ecstasy and heroin. A fine mix if I may say so. The evenings generally began with lots of hugging and kissing from the high of the ecstasy.
"Mate, have I ever told you how much I love you?" Would be the common over-used sentence of the evening.
"I love you too, man", came the reply. "I know we only met three minutes ago, but you're like a brother to me!" Ecstasy was fun. It makes you stupidly happy. Then brings you down to earth with a thumping whack during the comedown. The heroin was essential for the comedown. After professing your undying love to a stranger for the past hour, the heroin made that awkward moment when you realised you didn't actually love that guy (maybe you even actively dislike him) somewhat more bearable. Everyone ended up sprawled on the floor by the end of the night. If you weren't - you'd underdone it.
I began selling weed and ecstasy to make it easier for everyone to obtain. I'm a terrible salesman. I don't have the knack. I'd lose money every time due to literally giving my stuff away. Of course I gave it away. I was on ecstasy. Everyone was my best friend for an hour. I'd usually do my whole stash in that hour. When the hour was up - I was usually pretty pissed at myself. Wash, rinse and repeat... I'd do the same again and again. Some people learn from their mistakes - not me. I forget them, do them again and hope for a different outcome. Same outcome every time. A mistake.
Sometimes, there would be no free house to party at but a little problem like that would never stop us. We had plenty of outside venues to meet at. Whether it was a freezing cold winter night or a blistery autumn day, a little thing like the weather wasn't going to get in our way of a good time. Mostly we'd go to one of the many local parks in my area. Fleet is surrounded by woodland. Nature. It's actually a beautiful place. Sometimes, we'd get creative with our evening venues.
One particular venue became somewhat legendary to anyone who was a part of it. In years to come, anyone who participated would talk of it. Even adulthood, I'm sure, will not erase the memory of this particular epic drug binge during the school holidays.
"Do you remember 'Velmead School'?" they will say as they are clinking cups of tea in their retirement homes.
Velmead school was a local junior school surrounded by a dense forest. A perfect little hideaway for reprebates like ourselves. And given that I'd just found myself in possession of 100 ecstasy tablets, we were in for quite the party. Some nights over the school holidays, there must have been twenty, maybe thirty, people there dancing on top of the school, swaying in the rain storms that came and generally treating the place like our own little drug den.
All ecstasy pills were consumed, ounces of weed smoked, gallons of alcohol drunk... we would still be there, grinning and gurning, when the sun came up. I've know idea what the police in Fleet actually do but, from my childhood memories, it seemed not a lot. I can't fathom how we weren't all rounded up and arrested at some point. I actually was never once arrested for drug possession in England. And I did a lot of drugs there... I mean really a lot. I've been caught with weed six or seven times but each and every time the officers, quite rightly, realised that the paperwork wasn't worth the bother. Sometimes they'd chuck the weed down the drain. Other times they'd try to smash the hash with the heel of their shoes. However they disposed of the weed the end result was always the same.
"Off you go, son", they'd say. "Don't let us see you again."
I went through phases with drugs. First came cigarettes, then weed. These two drugs continue to this day. I then went through the ecstasy and heroin phase. That probably lasted a couple of years. A smattering of L.S.D soon followed. Then cocaine. A little later I moved over to amphetimine and crystal-meth. That phase nearly killed me. After that, I slipped over to crack-cocaine. The ,'Just Say No', campaign never really hit the right chords with me, you could say. It worked for most other people. Not me. Not one iota.
So, onto the next phase: L.S.D. or 'trips', 'acid', whatever you'd like to call them. These were apparently very popular in the sixties. Could explain why the world is in such a catastrophic mess today. All the oldies running the world are all a few crumbs short of a biscuit after enjoying some trips 'back in the day'.
L.S.D was probably the hardest drug to get hold of when I was younger. It was an exciting time when one of our friends had got hold of some called 'Green Aliens'. These were an extremely mild acid trip which was very fortunate for us at the time. These trips allowed us to enjoy the funny traces and colourful vision. We'd take them then wander around the local shopping center, eyes WIDE open, taking in all the colours. What we must have looked like is anyone's guess. An acid trip later on would not be so kind to us.
A good friend in our group 'Chunk', so named because he was a chunk of a boy, brought back some trips from a recent illegal rave he'd been to in London. The trips were called, 'Green Smokes'. The name still sends a shiver down my spine to this day. 'Damn you, Green Smokes… Damn you to hell!'
Three of us were in for the journey that night. Chunk, Lee and myself. Our trip started just like any other trip and we wandered into town, giggling pleasantly at the different surroundings. Everything was going just as planned. After a while, we went back to Lee's and got out 'The Lizard'. The Lizard was a bong that we'd constructed with the engineering precision of rocket scientists. It was a bong known by many others around town. We were very proud to be the owners and creators of this bong.
We sat down in Lee's room passing around 'The Lizard' and listened to some physcadelic music. It wasn't long until everything took a turn for the worst. To me, it felt like a dark cloud, a spirit even, was jumping between the three of us, taunting us. When it jumped to me, it took control of my speech, my thoughts. It made the music bend what I was trying to say. It made my stomach drop as if I was at the hull of 'The Pirate Ship' at Alton Towers. This wasn't fun. This wasn't fun at all. When it started going wrong, I became very aware of the fact that acid takes bloody ages to wear off. If you're having a bad trip it seems like a lifetime. Due to my recent bad behaviour, I was on a curfew. I had to be home by 10pm every night. I couldn't go home. I had to try and make a phone call to my Dad. I nervously picked up the phone having planned what I was going to say.
"Hi, Dad", my voice sounded weird to me. "I'm gonna be late. We're watching a movie at the cinema and it's starting later than we thought". And breathe. I'd got out what I needed to say.
"What time is the movie?" he said. I was a prolific liar. He questioned everything I said.
'Shit!' I hadn't prepared myself for a follow-up question. I didn't know what day it was, let alone the time. Trying to get the math right was not gonna happen. I started pointing at the window blinds in the kitchen, as if I was searching for a movie time, hoping somehow it would trigger something. After a few seconds I forgot what I was doing.
"Hello?", there was someone speaking on the end of the phone I was holding.
"Hello, who's this?" I replied.
"It's your bloody father! What time's the movie?"
"What movie?" I had know idea what the old man was on about.
"The bloody movie you're watching with Lee! What time does it start?" He wasn't enjoying this conversation.
I remembered I had a plan about a movie. 'Oh, that's right', I thought. 'I'm making up an excuse for being late, aren't I'. I was back in the game.
"It's on in a minute. I'll be home in an hour or so." I said. This was sure to be the end of the conversation now. I'd made it.
"Where are you watching it?" Dad said, as I was about to hang up the phone.
"At Lee's". I was quite pleased with myself that I managed to answer quickly.
"I thought you said you were at the bloody cinema!" You couldn't pull the wool over my dad's eyes.
"Yes, the cinema at Lee's", I'd dropped the ball there I thought. Not passable.
"What the bloody hell are yo.......", I hung up the phone.
'Well that went well', I thought. The look on Lee's face was of sheer horror when I turned to face him. His look told me that the phone call didn't go well. The phone rang. We looked at it. We looked at each other. We unplugged the phone. Problem solved.
Needless to say, I never did LSD again after this. Everything else though, sure.