Laugh? I Nearly Had a Legal High
Young people discover a new way to enjoy themselves that doesn’t adhere to the official social guidelines and the government intervenes on behalf of those it doesn’t affect under the guise of doing so on behalf of those it does. Nitrous Oxide, colloquially known as Laughing Gas, is the current cause of minor moral panic on account of some British youngsters publicising themselves inhaling it on social media. Once again, a little historical perspective is in order, though I wouldn’t necessarily expect that from our PM, who reacts to every transient tabloid headline as though his birth certificate gives his date of birth as yesterday.
Laughing Gas Parties were a short-lived craze amongst the younger members of the English aristocracy as far back as the turn of the nineteenth century and continued to be used for recreational purposes by medical students well into the twentieth. During the pre-corporate outdoor festival era of the early 1970s, balloons were often sold containing Nitrous Oxide to enhance the vibes, no doubt. The practice has drifted in and out of fashion ever since, though had always remained one of the best kept secrets of the chemical netherworld until users started to broadcast their experiments on Facebook and YouTube. It was only a matter of time before officialdom stuck its oar in, and Lambeth Council have now banned the substance for non-medical purposes, threatening the now-compulsory ‘on-the-spot fine’ of upwards of £1,000 for those naughty boys and girls caught offending.
Twenty years ago, another illicit drug was causing a far greater social pandemic across the pages of the newspapers and on the nation’s television screens, Ecstasy. In some respects, the limited attention span of the public has rendered the scale of hysteria surrounding E an almost forgotten phase of youth culture in this country, even though it was the last seismic scene in a tradition stretching all the way back to the Teddy Boys. The 60s, Glam and, especially, Punk have all been reassessed and celebrated by the pop nostalgia industry, whereas (bar half-hearted revivals by young clubbers) the original Rave era remains locked in a cultural limbo.
In the late 1980s, as Mrs Thatcher famously issued her ‘There is no such thing as society’ proclamation, an alternative society was taking shape right under her nose. It had travelled from the abandoned industrial warehouses in the ghost town centre of Detroit, where electronic music stripped of its accessible melodious coating was reborn as a sleek, hypnotic beast called Techno. In Chicago, like-minded alchemists grafted sampled vocals from old Soul records onto Techno’s backbone and, in the process, created House. The sonic scientists who had cooked-up this radical reinvention were shady, shadowy figures who certainly had no desire to be famous or see their pictures in the papers. Anonymity was essential; what counted above all else was the music. There was no attempt at making it palatable for the mainstream or the charts; it was purely designed with the discerning clubber in mind, preferably one who had ingested Ecstasy, the one-time wonder-drug of early 80s New York club-land that had now decamped to the sunnier corners of Europe.
On E, the pulsating bass-lines and mesmeric drum-beats of Techno made perfect hallucinogenic sense as it imbued the same harmonious feeling of brotherhood with one’s fellow man and desire for a chilled-out ambience that cannabis had for the hippie generation twenty years before. When those who had sampled the liberating effects of Balearic vibes on holiday returned to a Britain in the grip of cold, calculating casino capitalism, they set about recreating the euphoric effects of Ibiza on home soil by importing the right soundtrack and locating their own empty warehouses to reclaim – and in the old industrial wasteland of Thatcher’s Britain, there was no shortage of those. The indoor warehouse parties that preceded the more publicised outdoor illegal raves largely took place far from the media spotlight, but soon the demand for the records that acted as a backdrop to such events proved so great that they began making inroads into the Top 10. It wasn’t long before those in attendance at the clubs and warehouse parties that had promoted these new sounds began to have a crack at their own records – with unexpectedly spectacular results. Soon, the charts were not only awash with the American pioneers of House and Techno, but with those they’d inspired on this side of the Atlantic – S.Express, D-Mob, Coldcut, The Beatmasters, Bomb The Bass; and when the significant role E had played in this revolution reached Fleet Street, the British mash-up of House and Techno acquired a memorable moniker – Acid House.
Naturally, the more sensational the reports became on the warehouse parties, the greater grew the number of youngsters who wanted to check them out. By the summer of 1988, the nation was in the throes of its greatest moral panic since Punk as stories of drug-crazed teenagers dancing the night away in vast, jam-packed derelict factories or in the middle of the countryside reached hysterical proportions. Yet, behind the tabloid frenzy and the knee jerk response of MPs, few acknowledged that those who were choosing to spend their weekends in a mad dash to the destination of another secret party were embarking on a quest to find an alternative, and once they’d downed a couple of Es and evaded police pursuit to congregate in the latest location, their senses had been tuned-in to a world where the smash & grab gains of The Yuppie had no meaning whatsoever. Here, everybody genuinely was equal; here, everybody was on the same soothing wavelength – a blissful, peaceful Nirvana where one generation rejected the values of another, just as the hippies freed themselves from the restrictions of the 50s. It was a wonderful illusion, naturally; but one that captured the imaginations of those who felt Thatcher’s material world had nothing to offer them.
Of course, the perpetrators of the society that the Acid House generation were escaping weren’t going to let them get away with it. The clamour for putting a stop to it all came from a tabloid press who relished something new in youth culture to get hot under the collar about; but there was now intense pressure on Parliament to introduce legislation that could curb the freedoms of the ‘Ravers’, and it eventually came in the shape of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which passed into law under John Major’s Government in 1994. It describes the Rave soundtrack as ‘sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’, something that was relentlessly mocked by those it was aimed at; but the scene itself carried on regardless.
A 1992 BBC documentary, ‘E is for Ecstasy’, interviewed several Ravers who were in their early-to-mid-20s at the time, all of whom enthused as to the effect E had had on them, in contrast to the medical experts featured, who warned of ignorance concerning the long-term damage of the drug on its users. It was still far too early into the widespread use of Ecstasy then to predict what that long-term damage might be. Well, it’s not anymore. All of the Ravers interviewed in the documentary will now be in their 40s (scary realisation, I know), and it’d be interesting to see where they are now and what, if any, impact their time spent raving the night away on E as hedonistic youths has had on their health, both physical and mental. I’d hazard a guess that the answer is probably not much.
I suspect most are now responsible parents with more mundane concerns on their minds. What politicians forget in their rush to condemn and legislate is the rapid pace of change one goes through in one’s teens and twenties. At 16, you’re embarrassed by your 13-year-old self, and at 23, you’re equally ashamed of your 18-year-old self. Even Shakespeare said, ‘I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting…’
Nothing new in this world, eh?
Petunia Winegum
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August 18, 2015 at 9:14 am -
Just for the record:
“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society.htm-
August 18, 2015 at 9:33 am -
Also just for the record, the transcript of the interview by Douglas Keay of Margaret Thatcher (for Woman’s Own in 1987) in which she used those words – and THE CONTEXT IN WHICH THEY WERE USED.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689
Come on, Petunia. Just quoting those words out of context like a blinkered political activist is downright lazy. You’re better than that – or should be.
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August 18, 2015 at 2:02 pm -
As this isn’t a retrospective piece about Thatcher’s Britain, I paraphrase the quote to place the Acid House scene in the context of the times into which it was born, just as Macmillan’s ‘You’ve never had it so good’ is wheeled out whenever the late 50s are discussed.
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August 18, 2015 at 2:41 pm -
Did someone say Thatcher?
https://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaupload/tmp/aff05421520fe2a0ebfa92849ff8b1c149a9374ac802519eb97dacb1/original.jpg-
August 18, 2015 at 4:16 pm -
Are yes, “The Downing Street Years.” The book that was very nearly never written, let alone published, largely because of Mark Thatcher’s unsurpassed combination of greed and incompetence!
An excerpt from John Campbell’s, a Thatcher biographer, review of the book…“Of course it aggrandises her role, exaggerates the degree to which she knew where she was going from the beginning, slides over her moments of doubt and hesitation and diminishes the role of most of her colleagues, aides and advisers. It is a shockingly ungenerous book, shot through with gratuitously withering comments not only about people like Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe whom she had some cause to feel bitter about, but also about other inoffensive colleagues who had served her well. Only Willie Whitelaw, Keith Joseph and Denis are beyond criticism, plus of course Bernard Ingham and Charles Powell. Other officials are barely mentioned.”
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August 18, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
On the contrary, I was surprised at how much she admits that much of the time she wasn’t really in control of events at all, but rather just tried to surf the political waves, stay on the board and get some kind of result – even if it was merely the least worst. She was constantly being rail-roaded by bureaucrats of all colours – especially the EU. She seemed to take in all in good heart for the most part, and obviously the longer she was around, the more she knew what to expect and so pre-empted the Humphrey counter strikes. In one section I recall that she professed complete powerlessness about the embedded marxism in education. She might well have been more determined about the socialist tendency within, if it were not that she first sought to resolve the exterior Communist threat, seeing the outside forces against Capitalism as the more pressing danger. She also surprised me with her commentary about her difficulties keeping Reagan on the straight and narrow path to freedom, and was appalled by many of the wonkish pressures he was evidently getting in the American establishment/bureuacracy.
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August 18, 2015 at 9:49 am -
The properties of NO have been well-known, particularly in the USA, when it was widely used in dentistry as an anaesthetic. When the internal combustion engine arrived, it was discovered that being oxygen-bearing, it has an explosive effect on engine power, hence its development during the war, when the RAF, Luftwaffe and the USAAF used it for high-altitude work.
It screws the engine eventually, but what fun! I recall it featured strongly in ‘Mad Max’. I discovered it at a drag racing strip in Tennessee. The mechanic was preparing a car and, as we were chatting, he said; “Here, take a sniff, this is great…” Which I did.
I vaguely recall the rest of that memorable weekend; there was a dwarf-throwing competition, a wet t-shirt display, all topped off by a chilli-eating contest, all floating on a lake of beer.
It appeared that everyone was on it (including the winning dwarf-driver combination). I rather liked it, but I never made a habit of it.
What terrible low-caffeine lives we are expected to live nowadays…
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August 18, 2015 at 9:54 am -
There was scene in “Carry on Doctor” where the patients indulge wasn’t there?
This one [Doctor in Clover] is on youtube but it’s not the one I was thinking of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6FTaVYUs7U
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August 18, 2015 at 10:03 am -
I seem to recall a lot of brouhaha surrounding Ecstasy and the death of a teenage girl named Leah Betts (the daughter of an ex police officer I believe). If my memory serves me, I think it was that incident which led to the appointment of the 1st UK drugs czar, a position held by Keith Hellawell – a lot of good that did!
Every few years we get this sort of garbage, albeit in a different guise. During the “punk years” it was glue sniffing. The government reaction was to make it very difficult for the vast majority of us to purchase glue for its intended use. It’s a miracle that they didn’t ban the sale of crisps at the same time, the packets also often forming part of the sniffing accoutrements.
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August 18, 2015 at 2:18 pm -
The one memorable thing about Keith was his moustache. Moustaches had gone out of fashion by the 90s and it was only cops that still had them. I cannot believe that the ‘Leah Betts’ thing was 20 years ago!
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August 18, 2015 at 3:24 pm -
My brother, who was a regular raver in the early 90s, used to tell me you could always spot the undercover cops a mile off due to the hairy bogies settled on their top lip.
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August 18, 2015 at 3:45 pm -
Nowadays it would be their shining baldy heads perhaps.
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August 18, 2015 at 10:03 am -
I even wonder if there’s some kind of confusion between Nitrogen gas and Helium, which is what Brenda Leyland committed suicide with, after her chat with Sky TV. It’s apparently a popular internet suicide recommendation and many of the web conversations about the hapless Brenda seemed to be demanding the banning of Nitrous Oxide rather than Helium. Perhaps the use of Helium by men at weddings to make themselves speak in a very high voice and make everyone laugh has the establishment completely flummoxed and they’re actually banning the wrong thing.
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August 18, 2015 at 6:32 pm -
Nitrous oxide, or dinitrogen oxide (N2O), unlike helium, makes your voice lower.
It’ll be annoying if it’s banned, as I use it in analytical equipment at work: an acetylene flame burns much hotter & brighter with N20 than with air.-
August 18, 2015 at 7:27 pm -
Involvement in the village fete a few years back always meant giving away helium balloons.
We couldn’t stop the cadets etc taking balloons to their tents to suck the stuff down. What we could & did do was put up a notice explaining that the gas was recycled North Sea diving mixture (it was) , and if the diver had been on the beer & curry the night before, this second hand gas might have a tang to it.
Didn’t stop them all.
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August 18, 2015 at 10:19 am -
“those who felt Thatcher’s material world had nothing to offer them”
Except, of course, three square meals a day, a nice home to go back to, cheap trendy clothing available everywhere, free healthcare when you need it, etc etc.
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August 18, 2015 at 2:04 pm -
Did the Thatcher Government introduce the NHS?
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August 18, 2015 at 2:31 pm -
No, she introduced the material world of consumerist plenty based on rawer Capitalism that has made everyone so well off that they now think it needs to be regulated more…
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August 18, 2015 at 3:46 pm -
She just did exactly what her mentor Keith Joseph told her to do, after he had blown his chances of becoming Tory Leader by voicing his true opinions on the poor in 1974. Milton Friedman and the Centre For Policy Studies were running out of contenders to try and wrestle the party away from the old “One Nation Conservatives.” First Powell, then Joseph, both gone for actually expressing their true political convictions, an unforgivable Sin it seems! What was needed was someone rather more Malleable, Joseph and Airy Neave managed to persuade Friedman ,at al, that Thatcher could be remade into just such a candidate.
So began the complete transformation of Thatcher. They told her what to wear, they changed her hair and makeup, taught her posture and how to carry herself, they told her what to say and how to say it, they had her change both her voice and her delivery. It was the biggest makeover since Julius Caesar said “This whole Republic thing… I think I can do it better this way!”
Of course, over time, Maggie became more and more her own woman, but it was always the woman that they had created, she just didn’t need the training wheels anymore. In the end, like Caesar, she was stabbed in the back by those closest to her when she was no longer considered an asset to them.
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August 18, 2015 at 6:04 pm -
Except, of course, three square meals a day, a nice home to go back to with Robin Of Sherwood on TV, cheap trendy clothing available everywhere, free healthcare when you need it and , etc etc.
My work here is done.
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August 18, 2015 at 10:38 am -
I think there’s a bit of a danger of getting a little too nostalgic here. I have little doubt that the dangers of ecstasy were and are exaggerated but less we forget, there is evidence that long term use of the drug can lead to short term memory loss and depression; not that I’m saying therefore it should be prohibited.
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August 18, 2015 at 11:29 am -
Ravers interviewed in the documentary will now be in their 40s (scary realisation, I know),
I was outside one Monday morning a couple of years back when my neighbour, early 50s, returned from whatever muddy field he, his wife and young son had spent the weekend in. Genus “Festival Dad”. I asked him how it had been and his reply was archetypal; “Sunday night it hit me, I’ve been at a festival all weekend and the only drug I’ve taken is ibuprofen”.
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August 18, 2015 at 11:43 am -
Petunia Winegum….PLEASE write a book. The writing and grasp of contextual background is excellent!!
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August 18, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
I never got into the whole Ecstasy an general mind altering substances thing, unless you count the special cocktail named “The Zombie” they used to sell from time to time at my alma mater college – nearly a pint of heavy duty mind altering substances there! I find watching or listening to PMQ’s tells me all I need to know about altered states of reality….
Mind you, it comes to the old “Alter” wine….see what I did there? – OK, I’ll get my coat….-
August 18, 2015 at 2:31 pm -
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August 18, 2015 at 2:32 pm -
..and yes I did miss what you did there!
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August 18, 2015 at 2:30 pm -
You know, all these media panics about teens getting high sometimes piss me off. Does no-one ever simply look down onto the dance floor daze and smile, thinking how nice it is for all these young people to be actually enjoying something?
As for Nitrous oxide, there’s a version called Entonox (50/50 NO2 and Oxygen) used during spinal taps and on gynaecological wards. The only problem I recall was the cylinders used to run out very quickly, as the world and their wife used to take the odd hit while passing through the wards on night shift. Tried it once. Very nice.
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August 18, 2015 at 5:17 pm -
Sir Humphrey Davy was the man who discovered nitrous Oxide. He also discovered previously unknown elements and was undoubtedly one of the greatest scientists Britain has ever produced. Taking the young Faraday (a trainee bookbinder) on as his assistant was a stroke of genius that further advanced the state of knowledge.
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August 18, 2015 at 6:01 pm -
I thought Priestly discovered “nitrous air” and as he hailed from Yorkshire it is doubtful if he might be described as ‘British’
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