Like a Shadow Lean
A popular concept is that drugs are not only addictive but they are progressive as well. The theory goes that the victim becomes accustomed to the effect of milder drugs and is inevitably drawn into harder and more dangerous substances in pursuit of his high. This notion is usually resisted by users of milder drugs--usually! Some of us are not so lucky.
This memory is divided into several sections and tells the story of my slow but steady progress through the drugs of the age finally ending in a place I could no longer control.
The Car Knows the Way
Having settled into hippy land in the bowels of Nottinghill Gate, London, I was quite enjoying my increasingly hedonistic activities. Desmond, Ivan and their friends were my family now. This lonely Montana boy had found his space in a new exciting world 5000 miles from home. Our new best friend was Dealer Dan who could supply good imported afghani black for only 8 pounds an ounce. It sounds cheap until you remember that at the time I was only earning 10 pounds a week as an assistant photographer. Nevertheless we could afford a bit from time to time and sitting on the floor, smoking dope, drinking lemon tea and listening to Bob Dylan was the order of the day.
Dope wasn’t the only thing on the menu however. Des and friends had discovered Romilar, an opioid cough medicine. Sold as a vile tasting liquid, it was also available as a small yellow tablet. We discovered that if one took 15 to 20 of these innocent looking little sweets, a beautiful, dreamlike, experience ensued, lasting several hours. It was very tribal, and we began to use it most weekends. Our adventures were wide and varied.
They often included trips in my little three door Borgward Combi, wandering, the night-time streets of London, “the car knows the way” was the call from the back . It was only a small car but we could squeeze in at least 7 people including at least one or even two into the small space in the back. No health and safety seat belt stuff in those days.
I was driving of course and was nominally in control, but I was also beautifully stoned, and consciously or otherwise, I allowed the whim and energy of the group to control our direction. One night we ended up on Hampstead Heath. We parked the car and wandered the fields and woods of that impressive north London “wilderness” for several hours. Every new field or stand of trees, took on a special significance. The theme of Alice in Wonderland formed our fantasy that night. It was a magical experience, we were all wrapped into the fantasy—Every new scene fully absorbing us into itself—we merged into everything.–Eventually we came down enough to find the car and carefully drive home. This wasn’t LSD which I hadn’t come across as yet, but it was certainly a very powerful and psychedelic experience.
On reflection, driving on drugs was no doubt dangerous and certainly illegal, but I was always able to retain full control and through a combination of extra care and good fortune, we never had a driving incident.
On another occasion we wandered the streets of Soho and Oxford Street dressed in outlandish clothes. Repeatedly getting thrown out of posh restaurants and even bars, not for our behaviour which was very respectful and polite but for our extraordinary dress. The Romilar experience was very tribal and magical as I said earlier and Desmond an extraverted, bisexual man, was the perfect leader. We made a similar adventure nearly every weekend for several months and we always had a wonderful time with few if any, morning after effects.
Toward the end of that summer London was to stage the biggest alternative event to date. An all-night party to promote the opening of a new underground magazine called The International Times.
The venue was to be the Round House, a Victorian railway turntable building North of Kings Cross railway station in London’s Chalk Farm. Built in the 1840s, it had fallen into disuse over the years but in the middle sixties it began slowly to morph itself into a public venue. This metamorphosis was only partially complete when this event came along. It was the first large scale hippie happening to occur in burgeoning Flower Power London.
We went of course, on the Tube this time: Romilared up to the eyeballs so-to-speak. We arrived just in time to see Allen Ginsburg the beat poet, complete with signature hair and beard, climb out of a taxi preparing to enter. This was obviously the place to be in London this night; It was to be an all-night event. Performing bands included The Soft Machine and Pink Floyd, our favourite bands at the time. I also remember being startled when Arthur Brown, complete with a poorly connected microphone, suddenly swooped in, swinging from a rope twenty feet above our heads, his voice crackling in and out as his microphone connection faltered. He was singing Fire, his recent hit, when without warning and still swinging and singing, his head caught fire and was fully ablaze, probably with the aid of some type of apparatus. It all looked astounding, rather dangerous and very surreal. Thinking about it Arthur Browns aerial performance could well have been another night but it makes little difference. Like Robbin Williams apparently observed, “If you remember the 60s you really weren’t there”. – We floated around this extraordinary venue in a complete fantasy until the morning when we began to come down, the Tube opened again and we could get a train home. Fabulous! It was my first “happening”.
Although we regularly used Romilar, I never felt that I was addicted or suffering health wise in spite of the fact that the drug is an opioid. Perhaps we moved on to other things before the addiction took hold. I did, however, have one rather disturbing experience. One night we found ourselves sitting in a flat just off Westbourne Grove, drinking tea and passing joints around as normal. Sitting on my right was a very wasted American character, a heroin junkie. He was explaining that he had come to England because, as an addict, he could legally get heroin on the National Health through a misconceived British mid-sixties attempt to control hard drug use. On my left, and at eye level was a 60s style Chinese wire and paper globe cum lamp hanging from the ceiling by a cord. I was very stoned and my senses were raging. I was holding the glowing globe in my hands and moving it around my head with my eyes closed, entertaining myself with the colours spinning around my brain. Round and round I swung my head, again and again. … suddenly … I popped out! I found myself sitting in the ether–surrounded by blackness. — Beneath me was the room, like a bubble, and I had just popped out of it. Unlike experiences reported by others, I didn’t see myself in the room below, I was out here, all of me,–out in the blackness and no longer sitting on the sittee… Out too was the junkie who had previously been sitting next to me. He was, like me, in the same sitting position but now we were unsupported by the settee. We were both simply floating in the blackness together … the rest of the room remaining as it was beneath us. The Junkie made it known to me somehow, by telepathy perhaps, that I had now left normal life. I had crossed the Rubicon and was destined to join him in the dark world of junkiedom. … The blackness closed in …
…I heard my name – faint and distant at first then louder and louder …
“Jay! … Jay!” It was Des. He was below me, I could see him below me, still in the bubble of the room but looking up, craning his neck to see me and calling me to come down…
“Jay – Come down … Come down” His voice grew louder and louder and more insistent.
“Jay – Come down” … Then, as suddenly has it had occurred–I popped back into the room, flushed and breathless.
“I was outside my body” I told Des with excitement and some trepidation, “I was floating above the room looking down at you”.
“Yes you were” he assured me. “I saw you too and called you down, are you ok now?”
I assured him that I was and again queried him about what he had seen. He insisted that he too had seen me pop out of my body and hover in the space above him. He was very understanding and comforting though and assured me that I was ok but that everything I had seen was true and had really happened. Well… Desmond was a romantic hippy and he often said things like that. No one else in the room seemed to notice anything at all, but they were all very stoned. Perhaps it really did happen.
I never did Romilar again after that, we moved on to LSD and other psychedelics but I have to admit that the experience overall was very good and that I never regretted that summer.
Tripping The Light Fantastic
My first acid trip was shared with my Irish friend Ivan. I think of him as being Irish but as he recently informed me, he is actually English. He also said that he doesn’t mind being identified as Irish because he, rather like myself, has adopted another country as his home and has now lived in the Irish Republic most of his life. Nevertheless, in 1967 he was in London sharing adventures with Des, myself and several other regulars on our excursions with Romular. My recollection is that he too had never done acid before so we were the blind leading ourselves so to speak.
The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream
International Times was in trouble again. The underground newspaper was struggling to survive, party due to police harassment. IT as it was also called, was organising a huge all night happening to raise money. This event was to take place at the famous Alexander Palace in North London. The event was billed as “The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream”. Many of the most popular underground musicians and performers were going to be there. It promised to be the event of the year if not the decade.
In the week or two Leading up to the event, my new flatmate Toby suggested we go up to Balls Pond Road, in North London, to join a dance company called The Exploding Galaxy under the direction of Philipino artist David Medalla. While I was not a dancer, I was for sure a hippy, and apparently this was enough to qualify for membership of this group. I suspect the carrot from my point of view was that we would get free entry into the excitingly advertised event which was due to take place on May Day eve, the 29th of April 1967. The dance was to be a very hippy performance by us as dancers in a short anti police show piece. I was cast as a policeman and my job, after standing around menacingly for a scene or two, was to rush out with my billy club and destroy the “mushrooms”, the symbols of love and freedom. From that point the play continues, and the peaceful hippies win in the end.
We arrived early in the afternoon and did a successful rehearsal ready for the show later in the evening.
Alexander Palace is a huge space, mostly empty apart from the massive Pipe organ at the far end of the building which, being under repair at the time, was covered in scaffolding. Beneath the organ and again at the opposite end of the building, large stages were constructed for the event. These stages would host our favourite bands including Pink Floyd, Arthur Brown, The Soft Machine, The Fugs and pre Lennon Yoko Ono among others. These bands would be encouraged to play as loudly as possible, from each end of the building, at the same time. The resulting cacophony was an incomprehensible wall of sound. It was extraordinary, very loud and very surreal.
Sometime during the early evening, I was given an acid tab. Wondering around an hour later waiting for it to come on, I met the same guy again and told him that not much had happened yet with the tab. His solution was to give me another tab. I probably should have waited for the first one though because I was soon coming up fast and everything was getting very strange indeed… Toby then reminded that It was time for us to go on stage for our performance.
My acid trip was now coming on stronger and stronger and while I was on stage in the middle of the dance/play I became completely confused. I lost my place and mistook an early part of the performance for my call to action. I rushed out with my club and began beating the paper mâché mushrooms into a pulp, encouraging my fellow policemen to follow. By jumping ahead I had managed to cut out half of the play, leaving one performer dressed as the Pope, sitting on a high row of seats from which he was meant to emerge a few pages later. Unable to fulfil his well-rehearsed roll he simply had to climb down, his dreams of glory shattered. It was a total disaster although I don’t expect anyone but the performers noticed.—I fled into the crowd. This was the beginning of what turned out to be my first “BAD TRIP” and as such became most important LSD trip of my entire life.
Everyone looked like me! — That was my alarming confused, conclusion .. I was wondering through the crowds, my senses assaulted by flashing lights and the indescribable sounds. Everyone who came into my view looked like me, men and women alike. How could that be? I became increasingly anxious and confused. What was happening to me. My reality was slipping away, no, my reality was being dragged away. The harder I tried to hold on to some vestige of reality, the more impossible it became to resist the pull away from it. I was being pulled into a gaping tunnel. The tunnel to what? I was being drawn into the tunnel kicking and screaming and I could do nothing about it. –I was terrified.
I was in the void, my reality no more than a vague tissue of memory. Nothing was real. I had finally to come to understand that I was the One. … My entire life, my entire future was nothing but an illusion. This was the God head, I was the God head. There was no good, there was no evil, there was simply The One. My entire existence was simply a momentary fantasy, I had awoken from a dream of a reality that had never existed. It seemed impossible that it would ever exist again.
The idea of One-ness It is a well-known philosophical concept. It is a concept which is impossible to refute however and fanciful it sounds to the sober mind, under a strong LSD trip, mental activity gets so intense that one is forced to accept this as the only possible reality. Oneness is the mental equivalent of a black hole. It is a singularity of the mind…..
… Somehow, I was able to push myself through the countless images of me until I discovered a sanctuary under the stage; our dressing room, complete with some of the Exploding Galaxy dancers taking refuge from the din and confusion outside. I found an unused jambe drum. There were others playing drums too, they were setting a rhythm and I wanted to join in. To my amazement my rhythm and co-ordination was much improved compared to my normal abilities, or at least so I believed. I played for hours, I played myself out, I played myself down. Reality slowly began to return. I knew I could never go back to square one, to the life I had known up to that time. That life had vanished into the One. My old life was never real, it could never be fully restored. It was also obvious that anything that came in the future could never be relied on to be true and real forever. The One is the All. The All is the One.
Even today, after more than half a century, if I really sit down to think, it remains impossible to deny that all of life is a dream, conjured by my imagination. I can find no measure that can prove that anything is actually real. Of course we have all known this for years as an interesting philosophical theory but going through the tunnel on LSD simply makes one realise that the One really could be the true reality after all. I don’t live my life that way, of course. It only took a few hours for me to re-connect with what I believed was reality or at least close enough, and I simply accepted it and live happily and solidly in touch with normal life. Still … you never really know.
As the sun came up on May Day the fourteenth hour passed and the Technicolor Dreamers began to awaken. I exited the under-stage dressing room to discover sunlight streaming through the large windows. There were still lots of people wondering around, most of them in a daze it seemed. There must have been music too, perhaps sounding uplifting and romantic. A fellow acid head girl, also coming down, was dancing gracefully around among the discarded food containers and fag packets; I found myself joining her. We spun and wheeled around for several minutes working the somewhat unsettling experiences out of our systems.
Somehow I met up with Toby and we made our way back to his parents’ house which was not far away. I had now completed the initiation, I had done my bad trip, I would know the signals next time, I had learned that the best thing to do in these extreme tripping situations is to give in to the inescapable and go through the tunnel willingly. The other side might be a completely different reality but it would probably all be OK in the end. Anyway, once the tunnel has you in its grip, you will have no choice and giving in is the only answer.
A few weeks later, I was sitting in Jean’s Queensway flat watching television. It turned out that the event had been filmed. We watched enthralled as BBC 2 presented a special documentary film of the event. I was astounded to discover that I actually appeared in the film at the very end. The dancing scene that I described above was actually filmed and the camera follows the two of us dancing in the dawn light while the credits rolled. The final shot is a freeze frame of me, mid leap, with the final credits written over the top.
Thanks to the Internet, a 30 minute version of this film still survives on YouTube complete with this final shot. Our clip is from 29:04 to end but I suggest you watch the whole thing. I just watched it again all the way through and it was just as I remembered. It is notable the way the way the event is so differently interpreted and reported by the stoned hippies and straight types who just didn’t get it.
The following is only a preview of the chapter that encompasis The Lost Year.
The Lost Year
My upstairs neighbour, the effusive Demond had taken a new lodger. His name was Simon, an heir to a sugar fortune and thus privately and expensively educated, he was friendly, creative, and popular; but he was also a speed freak, injecting ampules of Burrows Wellcome pharmaceutical Methedrine with his speed freak friends.
Methedrine is high grade speed not to be confused with Methadone the well-known heroine substitute. Methedrine is an amphetamine The family of drugs that includes Dexedrine and Benzedrine. Often shortened to just Meth, it is the same dangerous, crudely manufactured and overused drug, featured in in the popular TV drama “Breaking Bad”.
In 1967, the same UK rules that allowed the discorporated American junkie, in my Romular out of body experience, to obtain his legal heroin, were also applicable to methedrine. The idea was that junkies were the unfortunates of our society and rather than have them roaming the streets mugging old ladies for fix money, the National Health Service would allow a small number of doctors to treat addicted drug users by providing advice and treatment in an attempt to get them to taper off their addictive substances. To accomplish this they would prescribe gradually reducing doses until, in theory, the patent was completely recovered from the addiction and able to re-enter productive society. This was of course an unworkable idea. Addicts would simply lie about their needs in order to get a bit extra to sell for spare money. If anything the supply of drugs actually increased. Simon and his friends were able to get plentiful, clean, legal supplies of this “Magic drug” with little difficulty or expense.
I had been offered the drug many times but always declined. Needles and very addictive drugs were still a step too far in my hippy adventures … Until!… I got a message one day from a beautiful and sexy favourite girlfriend who had recently moved to Liverpool. She had invited me up stay with her for the weekend. Not being in a relationship with anyone at the time, it was a very welcome invitation. Excellent, I thought I would love to see Jenny again.
Liverpool was a long way away from London however and it would involve a complicated train journey. Horny as I was, I wondered if I had the energy for such an excursion. Simon motioned to me.
“This little vial has the answer” he said.
Under Simon’s instruction, I went for broke. Using a clean, unused works and a new needle I sucked up a full ampule of pharmaceutical methedrine and feeling only slight pain, pushed the needle into the skin over one of the blood vessels generously distended by the tightened strap on my upper left arm. As I pushed a little harder I felt the pressure give way slightly and the needle entered the centre of the vein.
“Pull the plunger back a little bit” Simon instructed. As I did so, a thin red ribbon, like an expanding silken thread, began to enter the chamber from the needle end–the needle was in the centre of the vain.
“Now slowly push the plunger in all the way”. As i followed his instruction, the silken ribbon retreated the way it came and the rest of the contents of the syringe followed it–into my blood stream.
I removed the needle and sat motionless for a few moments, hypnotised by the experience, It was very powerful. The act of fixing is itself very powerful. I was transfixed by the act alone and it would still take a few seconds for my heart to pump the contents of the syringe around my body before the drug hit my brain.
I took a sharp intake of breath–my eyes opened wide–I was enabled–I was transformed–I was superman!
The effect of this drug, especially to a first time user, is to give great confidence and energy. I was now brimming with confidence and energy. I was overflowing with enthusiasm. With the prospect of hedonistic pleasures waiting for me in Liverpool I wasted no time getting to Euston Station. I bought a ticket, boarded the train and settled into the long journey to the North, toward Crewe Station, where I would have to change trains for the land of the Liver Birds and the alluring Jenny.
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13 Comments
Jay Myrdal
Leave a comment if you wish. I will only remove comments if they are offensive.
Ivan Peter Pawle
Spot on, Jay !
You have a good flowing descriptive style 😎. Conjures up sweet memories.
Remember you made a tent from your GI parachute. Dear Des. The Irish family downstairs in Tavistock Crescent were remarkably tolerant . The electric hash pipe. Stone Monkey evolved out of the Exploding Galaxy. I am so glad I was not seduced by speed.. .likewise later coke passed me by… phew/whew. (Proofreading-wise the pedant in me found a few spelling mistakes, but that really is a quibble !!!)
Thank goodness you survived that black year of meth 😵💫🤯🤠🥸🤩
Talk soon
IPP
Jay
Wow! Thanks for the detailed comment Ivan. You have inspired me to carry on writing these memories if only as a record for my family and friends.
Bryan Ellery
Great and fascinating stuff. Though I didn’t meet you til Easley 70s( I think through Francis M or maybe Tony and Cathy in Fulham) I must have passed you Pretty close by at Alexandra Palace. I was also on acid…. I remember everyone was shouting for “Dick Gregory for President!”…… I guess he there, but I was not in a fit state to know!! Look forward to your next episode. I also enjoyed smack, but in Italy, where I was based for awhile
Jay Myrdal
Wow! Thanks for the comment Bryan. I can’t place Tony and Cathy so it must have been Francis who introduced us. I still see him often. He is just completing a new set of sculptures; mini versions of his tube series of the 60s. He is surprisingly well for his late 80s. Great guy.
I never got into smack thankfully I smoked it a few times separated by years. It was not hard to see why people liked it so much so I stayed away. That was the valuable lesson I learned through my meth saga. I understood the signs of addiction and got out before it took hold; like coke which I dabbled with much later. The hardest drug I ever had to give up was tobacco.
I’m trying to get myself psyched up to finish the Lost Year. It is quite emotional bringing these memories back after so many years.
Watch this space.
Cliff
crazy story Jay, I went through similar experiences in the 70’s and 80’s. hope all is well for you and your family. it’s been a long time. Hit me back sometime.
Jay
Hi Cliff, Good to hear from you. I doesn’t surprise me that you had some similar experiences. You were always more like your dad than your mom. I am in the process of writing the second part of “The Lost Year”. As I expect you can understand it is not easy to write but I am very keen to tell it like it was.
Jay
Jay Myrdal
Wow! Thanks for the detailed comment Ivan. You have inspired me to carry on writing these memories if only as a record for my family and friends.
Tim Booth
That is really interesting Jay. I especially enjoyed your dance.
When Strangelys were gigging in London, we stayed in Joe Boyd’s place in Fulham. I had A German girlfriend called Crystal and she and I often dropped Acid together. One morning, perhaps a Saturday, we took a tab and Ivan suggested he would bring us off to visit you. (This was post Kip, so we had met.) As we waited for a bus in World’s end, the patterned bark on the Plane trees started to stretch and beckon. Crystal always had the best acid and by the time we arrived at your place ( somewhere in Islington?) we were well gone, but you were the height of understanding. You offered us food, but the beetroot was way too hallucinatory, so we spent a wonderful afternoon in your living room listening to Pearls before Swine while you and Ivan and a few other people grooved quietly in the kitchen. Then, Ivan guided us back to Fulham. I always remember the day – and your courtesy – with great affection.
So…thank you. And thank you for your memories.
Jay Myrdal
Wow Tim, Really glad you read my recent memoir. I have been writing a few since the beginning of lockdown. The Dance? (I thought) ah! in the film. The film of the 15 hour TCD was amazing to watch. Were you there? It certainly brought images of the night.
I don’t remember the incident you described of course, the 60s being what they were, but it sounds about right. Ivan has been a very close friend since we took that trip back in 1965. I fondly remember our photographic ramble through Hampstead cum Islington as futured in the book, and I have the famous Dr’s version of “trucking” framed on my kitchen wall. I love that shot if I say it myself.
I am often tempted to visit the Isle and one day will indeed do so. More memories to come and already written including my first meeting with Ivan in “Hippy… what’s That?”. It is all on my web site under the more tab/stories and memoirs/..
I can feel inspiration rising again and hopefully will be able to start on the dark year of my meth addiction soon. Will be emotional to write me thinks.
Jim Lacey
Beautifully written, as honest and courageous and open as it’s possible to be. Shocking on many
fronts, none of which I ever had reason to question during the time I was in London and knew you.
I’ll be re-reading it again because it has caught me so far off-guard! And yes, as others here have
said, by all means keep writing!
David Baker
Wow! Jay. Wonderful account of an erstwhile time. I didn’t meet you until the 70s when we worked together. We were both single and we would often dive-off suddenly to Ibiza or the Trois Vallees. In fact you taught me to ski. I remember particularly my second ever ski trip with you. You were keen to find some virgin snow, off-piste. I wasn’t even sure what off-piste meant but I dutifully followed along. 6am we somehow reached the top of the world. As an art director I was totally smitten. If you had asked me to launch myself into the void I would have obliged, willingly. Actually, funnily enough that’s exactly what we did but not before you gave me in-depth instructions that went something like this,”David, place your skis about a foot apart, lean right back with you bum almost touching the back end of your skis, follow me and do everything I do. Ready? Go!” You barstard. Somehow though I got down. I think I fell once. Jay we did have some fun and other stories maybe for anther time…
Jay Myrdal
Great to hear from you David. We did indeed have some good times. We made good travel companions. I am in the process of completing the final chapter of “The Lost Year”. It is slow going because it is hard to write. Bring up all these old memories is rather emotional sometimes. Things never forgotten but rarely remembered if you know what I mean. I hope your health remains good. I’m not too bad considering I will be 80 in June. Onward and upward! … Well onward anyway.
Speaking of other stories, I have written several more memories including my first job setting pins in a bowling alley at the age of 13 and my days as a rifle spinner on the Fort Monmouth Drill Team Honor Guard in 1963. Follow the “More” tab to Stories and Memoirs. Ill let you know when I have posted part II of the Lost Year.