The Lost Year II – Jay Myrdal

The Lost Year

The Lost Year is the concluding chapter of "Like a Shadow Lean". The first few paragraphs have been published elsewhere on this site. For completeness I have repeated them below.

My upstairs neighbour, the effusive Desmond 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 Methedrine with his speed freak friends.

Methedrine is a high-grade amphetamine, not to be confused with Methadone the well-known heroine substitute. Methedrine is the head of 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 for 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. I had been offered the drug many times but always declined. Until!… I got a message one day from a beautiful and sexy favorite 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. Anxious as I was to see her, I wondered if I had the energy for such an excursion. Simon motioned to me.

“This little vial has the answer” he said.

I went for broke. Under Simon’s instruction and using a clean, unused works and a new needle, I sucked up a full ampule of methedrine. Feeling only slight pain, I 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, confirming that the needle was indeed in the centre of the vein.

“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 bloodstream.

I removed the needle and sat motionless for a few moments, hypnotized 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.

A Weekend on Eleven

Liverpool was spectacular, seeing Jenny again was wonderful, the whole weekend was glorious. After a romantic and passionate night in her small student bedsit, we walked hand in hand through a beautiful morning to the nearly completed Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. It was astounding! I immediately saw it as a gigantic and glorious space capsule. I was enthralled with the architecture and took many photographs of the impressive cut glass murals. everything was magical.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral was nearing completion in 1967

Was this the inspiration I wondered?

There is no doubt that it would have been lovely anyway, but in my heightened state, everything was kicked up to eleven. This drug is a power booster. It enables the brain to work faster and better and longer, or so the user believes. It is a lie of course. It turns out that the apparent improved performance is just a loan; the extra resources need to be paid for with a come down; a hang-over. It can take a few days of feeling like shit and being irritable to recover. As the weekend came to a close, I began to experience this change and told Jenny the reason. Sadly, she decided it might not be a good idea for her to do her practical training at St Mary’s in London after all and I never saw her again.

Back in London, a few days later a friend and I decided to work on a music project together. We approached Simon in the top flat again and got a vile of Methedrine from his ample supply. Mike drank half of a vile and I, for the second time of my life, shot up the second half. As before, simply the process of jacking up gave me a huge rush. Seconds later, as I was winding up through the gears, the drug found my brain and I was kicked into overdrive.

I was in that wonderful space again. I was empowered; I felt creative and inventive as we walked back to the flat he shared with his girlfriend. Over the next few hours, with occasional interruptions from the girlfriend to “shut up and come to bed!”, we set to work. We attached one end of a four-foot length of broken slinky to the case of my harmonica and the other end to a needle holder from a 78rpm record player. We plugged the needle holder into a powerful amplifier and presto! We had invented the Spring Reverb. It sounded fabulous! It was the first time I had heard such a rich and full sound coming from my simple harmonica. Long echoed notes cascaded from the speaker with a haunting overtone, and if we touched the slinky, it caused the spring to knock together, and a hugely loud resounding and strangely familiar crashing sound filled the room. Great fun!

I said invented, obviously we didn’t invent it. The spring reverb has been packed into guitar amplifiers for many years, but it was a new invention to us. It was magical and we played and experimented until morning when Mike had to go to work, and I went home. It had been a very intensive and creative night.

This drug was special, I had finally found a way to get the very best out of myself. Whatever I tried to do, I did it better than before. The world was brighter, more golden on meth. I was also very aware of the dangers. I had seen what it did to some people. I decided to keep a record, a rather cryptic record that only I would understand. Fifty-five years later, I still have this little red book. The record simply consists of little circles around some of the days in my 1967 pocket diary. The first date circled was the 9^th of June, I remembered that these marks meant fix days, but I wasn’t sure when I started keeping the record, or how complete it was. Recently I had an opportunity to cross check. I was able to confirm that the first circle, the one on Friday the 9^th of June, marked the day I set off on the train for Liverpool to see Jenny, the day of my very first fix.

The next circle was on the 12^th of the same month. Only a few days later. That must have been the night we invented the slinky reverb. It was six weeks later, the 26th of July, before that cypher appears again. I was indeed taking it carefully. “Well done” I probably said as I rewarded myself with a fix and drew another circle on the number 29.

In August there are circles on the 13^th, the 20^th the 25^th and the 28^th. On the 31st there were two circles. It was obvious that my usage was slowly increasing… The slope was always slippery, now it was getting steeper.

The Day Job

Earlier, in the spring, my photo assistant’s job in Marylebone had come to an end. I had asked for a raise. I was getting £10 a week, a very low wage indeed, even at the time. Unfortunately, although I was a good assistant, I wasn’t a very good timekeeper, and I was often five or ten minutes late arriving at the studio in the morning. My request for a raise was an excuse for the studio manager, fed up with glaring at me as I rushed in a bit late many mornings, to fire me and hire another inexperienced lad for even less money. (Sigh)

My photographic ambitions might have ended there if I had been allowed to take an ordinary job. This path to regular eating was blocked by the British Home Office who would only let me remain in the country as a self-employed photographer. I had no choice but to struggle on.

I wrote to my father in Montana, I was fine, but I wanted to stay in the UK a while longer to pursue my photographic ambitions. I was able to persuade him to loan me a sum of money to help me get started. It was enough to keep me for a few more months while I worked out what to do next.

I made a deal with two well established advertising photographers, to let me use their Dover Street studio, rent free, for 25% percent of my fees when I did jobs. They provided a cupboard under the stairs as my office. It really was a cupboard, complete with mop and broom, but it had a phone, a stool, and a shelf space big enough to use as a small desk. I set out ringing all the advertising agencies in London to get an opportunity to show my portfolio and tout for work.

It was around this time that I began to use meth and I increasingly found an excuse to pick myself up with another little hit. I was gradually using more and more often, but only a third or a half an amp at a time, and Simon upstairs could easily supply that. Nevertheless, he advised me to register as an addict. It was unnecessary and untrue (I told myself), but it would mean I could get a prescription and have my own supply. Simon gave me the details of a private doctor near Piccadilly Circus and I made an appointment. His surgery was in an aging office block in Shaftesbury Avenue, complete with a rickety iron gated lift and hallways that smelt of floor polish. Exiting the lift on the 4^th floor, I found the name on a glass door and rang the bell. The door buzzed, and I entered a rather seedy office to see an old man sitting at a desk in a white coat. It was immediately obvious to me that this sad old man, the doctor, was in the sunset of his career. I felt rather sorry for him as he went through the familiar mechanics of the registration process. Simon had instructed me to tell him that I was an addict, and I was using 13 ampules of methedrine a week. The doctor examined me and said, as my friends had predicted, that in an effort to get me to reduce my dependence, he would prescribe me 10 amps a week and I should come back in a fortnight for a further consultation. Well, I was only using 1 or 2 amps a week at the time so I would have quite a bit extra to share or sell, result! I paid his fee, not cheap but affordable and headed off to Boots to get my script filled. I passed my prescription over the counter and a few shillings later, I walked out of the chemist with a paper bag containing: two brand new plastic syringes, a pack of ten needles and a box of twenty Burrows Welcome, pharmaceutical methedrine ampules.

The portfolio I was showing the advertising agencies was rather … well, naïve would describe it generously. Nevertheless, it was very inventive and included some early experimental effects work. After three months of pounding the office blocks of the West End, I finally got a job. WOW! The ad I was to create would promote an up-market record player cartridge. The brief was simple … “photograph sound”.

Whether methedrine helped or not, I was doubtless using it when I came up with the solution. The “Hero” in the shot was the cartridge which I mounted upside down on an angled glass plate in front of my 5×4 view camera. Behind it was a large diffraction grating lens through which a very distorted and colourful image of a metal developing reel appeared as the background. It worked pretty well and when turned up the right way, it appeared that the cartridge and needle “tracked” the colourful and distorted spiral “sound” lines. Job done.

The client was happy, and I was able to invoice the modest but not unreasonable fee of 25 guineas being 25 pounds and 25 shillings. It was normal in those middle 60s days for professionals including photographers, to charge in this archaic manor. As agreed, I paid 25% of that to the studio but there was still enough left over for a month’s rent. I was now a Professional Advertising Photographer.

One photo job in three months was obviously not enough however, and my studio deal came to an end. I needed a new place to work. Simon upstairs had a day job with an Avant Garde new company called Keith Albarn Partners. They were doing very creative, 60’s influenced environments and had just moved to a small warehouse in Clerkenwell. I was able to make a deal with them to set up a darkroom and access to a space that I could use as a studio if needed. With some of my borrowed capital I had bought a very high-end Durst Laborator enlarger from a retiring photographer and set up a first-class darkroom in the building. As I remember I then got a small wage from KAP by taking pictures and making prints for the firm. I also had one or two small clients.

Over the next few months my drug use continued to increase: Not quickly, I was still trying to be careful, but the little marks in my record were getting closer together. My ’67 diary shows a new set of marks: 1/3 and 1/2, obviously parts of an ampule. This was apparently my new way of keeping track of my usage. By the beginning of October I was using almost every day, sometimes even twice a day. To make things even more difficult, Simon was now my work mate and therefor a constant reminder of what we were both doing. It was not an easy atmosphere for keeping one’s usage under control. And anyway, methedrine was still my big crutch, my enabler, even my hero. It was a creative time. I was working with top artists and artisans. We were part of a movement, we were using the energy of the flower power days to move forward into the new beckoning world. It was an exciting time and I needed all the help I could get to keep up.

Keith Albarn Partners landed a contract to build a Psychedelic Fun Palace in the seaside town of Margate, at the mouth of the Thames. The building would be made from the giant fiberglass spheres and tubes they had designed and manufactured. Keith, having seen me play with lenses and filters, hired me to make a light machine for this new building. It was a fabulous opportunity. The whole KAP crew, most of whom were not users, went down to Margate to build the facility over several off-season months. My light machine was to be at the heart of the labyrinth. The customers would look through little portholes onto an hexagonal array of screens. Within these screens I had built an arrangement of light sources, motors, gears, strings and pullies, to move prisms, lenses and filters that created a moving display of light and colour. It was great fun and worked surprisingly well. I was achieving some success, but would I be able to work this well without my magic drug? Could I function at all without it?

The answer was no, as it turned out. It was all too late. The prediction made by the ethereal junkie in my Romilar out of body experience had come true. I had stepped over the line. I had lost control. With a belated sense of urgency I began to make more of an effort to reduce or even end my usage. It was proving very difficult. I was always able to find an excuse to shoot up when I was in a comedown. But now, when I gave in to temptation; instead of a rush, I felt a huge wave of guilt. I chastised myself. I had been too weak. I should be better than that.

I was entering a new reality. When I was in a come down, I could not resist the temptation to get high, but when I was high, I hated myself for being so weak and wanted to be down again. I was in a spiral, a downward spiral. The spiral seemed endless. I tried many things to break it. The third to the last mark in my 1968 diary shows, 8 April, Margate – 1/3, 1/2. On the 14th – 1/3 – 1/3 and the 15th April 1/3 – 1/2. The rest of the diary contains no further information on my usage. I may have stopped recording but I hadn’t stopped using. We finished the construction, and Margate opened a few weeks later. I have no recollection or record of the next ninety days.

In an old metal box, I found a note that I had written to myself toward the end of that time. It lists 10 points to consider before injecting. It is quite rough and basic, even childish but I believe it did some good. I was trying at least. The note is not dated but the it mentions a banjo. My recollection is that I got the banjo just before leaving for Paris, so it must have be early August. I was in the final count-down.

Maybe the above helped because in late August 1968, there was a small break in the spiral. Somehow, I finally committed myself to go back to Montana. I sold my wonderful enlarger and some other stuff and bought the return half of a cheap charter flight to Chicago from an American hippy who decided he liked London and wanted to stay. I would have to go to Paris to catch the flight. At the time I believed that I would probably stay in the states but just in case, I kept some belongings in my little room at in Packington Street. Clasping a rucksack, my cameras and a newly acquired Framus long neck banjo, I set off on the boat train for The Guar du Nord, Paris.

Following all the instructions for catching the flight, I ended up, not at a flight desk in an airport terminal, but in a large drafty and mostly empty warehouse somewhere at the back end of a large French airport. After standing around for an hour or two it became increasingly obvious that my passport name was not going to match the ticket and thus it would be invalid. An hour later the plane took off without me.

It was a bitter disappointment. Still, I had, by that time been free of meth for more than 36 hours and my head was beginning to clear. I had no way of getting another fix so there was no point in looking for one. I had failed to get on my salvation flight, but at least I was away from the meth scene, I was coming down, and I was in Paris. Things could be worse.

I have never seen such an atmosphere in Paris, before or sense. I locked my few possessions in a locker at the Gar-de-Nord and, taking only a small sum from my salvation fund, and my uncased banjo, I set off into the streets of the left bank.

I have never seen such an atmosphere in Paris, before or sense.

The streets were full. They were full of “heads”. The flower children, the beautiful people of the 60s. Everywhere were performers or artists or craft sellers or just smiling hippies sitting cross legged behind the word MERCI chalked on the pavement next to a little circle for the spare change. Every few metres there were boundaries chalked in the pavements giving each performer or seller or beggar his own space. The streets were also full of curious French Citizens. The Parisians were strolling up and down the boulevard, observing, enjoying the atmosphere and even parting with a few franks from time to time as they walked along the seething streets. The whole of the Latin Quarter was buzzing. After a bit of wandering, I met up with an American guitar player. He decided we should team up and he would play along with my banjo. The truth was that I had only got the banjo a week or two before I left the UK. All I could play was a rather frantic version of Boil Them Cabbage Down. Our partnership didn’t last long of course and I soon found myself playing on my own. My playing was very rough but no one seemed to mind, and people did occasionally throw me money. It wasn’t very much of course. I worked out that with the money I made in a day, I could either get a cheap room and sleep in a bed or buy a meal and sleep under a bridge. I switched back and forth every day.

I was in Paris for about a week, and it had been a life changing experience. I was in a new world, the daytime world. I was meeting many lovely people and none of them were on speed. Nothing that I experienced had anything to do with the night-time world I had left in London only a week earlier. I had forgotten about the normal world, and I now discovered it was huge. My world of a week ago was miniscule, a few flats and houses, no more. I was now even more determined to get back to Montana, but a regular flight from Paris was much too expensive. I would have to return to London and arrange something more affordable. I arrived in London a day later, and I was still clean, but I couldn’t resist visiting a flat in Lynden Gardens, Notting Hill, to say one last goodbye to my old friends.

Tempted

Bill had offered me a little pick-me-up. What can it hurt I thought in anticipation, as I followed him up the spacious curving Victorian staircase in Judith’s Linden Gardens Flat. There was a noise. The front door opened below and two smartly dressed speed freaks swept in, looking very official and business like; they were guys I knew. They stood at each side of the door, like security guards, as an ageing figure in a long pale raincoat appeared, framed by the doorway. It was “The Doctor”. Not the sad old man in the seedy Shaftsbury office but “The Doctor”. A man well known to the night people, the cynical, ageing, Machiavellian man with a bottle shaped paper bag poking from his overcoat pocket. He was the source, the fountain head of this epidemic. The man with the prescription pad. Ferried from place to place by his methedrine fueled lieutenants, he would sit down at a kitchen table and write scripts, several at a time, collecting his fee from each before being chauffeured to the next house on the list. I had an overwhelming feeling that I was in the presents of the devil himself or if no such creature exists, the very personification of evil. The whole scene below me reeked of malice and destruction. I had been clean for a week; I could now see clearly what I had so nearly slipped back into. I ran down the stairs, pushed past the angel of darkness and his drones in the doorway and ran out of the house into the street. Nearly overcome by panic, I jumped on my motorcycle and raced home, much too fast and much too excited. I rolled a joint and calmed myself down.

It had been a close call. Miraculously I was still clean. I was now convinced that getting back to Montana was the only path to salvation for me. The guy who sold me the unusable ticket was able to refund my money, and I added a bit more from my fund. I bought a new ticket, kept myself to myself and within a few days my banjo and I were on a legal Air Icelandic flight bound for Reykjavik, and on to New York City, USA. One way.

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The first part of this 60s story "Like a Shadow Lean" and a number of other memoirs are on my web site: www.myrdal.com under the "More" tab. Click here to link