after discharge from psychiatric hospital, still dosed to the eyeballs on meds, a trip to a lothian road nightclub turns into a nightmare...
The anti-depressant I take each day is Chlorpromazine. In the hospital, patients referred to this as ‘the chemical straightjacket.’ When I was first given this drug on the ward my doses were administered as an oral syrup, the orange spoonfuls reminding my addled mind of custard, a childhood favourite. Now I’ve developed a degree of curiosity about Chlorpromazine. Last time I was in my local library, Fountainbridge, I looked it up in a medical dictionary.
“Chlorpromazine. The world’s first anti-psychotic, introduced in 1950. From a family of neuroleptics, principally used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, it also calms patients before surgery. Each member of this chemical family has subtly different effects on consciousness but Chlorpromazine counters many of the symptoms of psychotic illness, especially phantom voices, paranoid delusions, and hallucinations. Like any drug, medicinal or recreational, it has powerful side-effects. Impaired vision. Respiratory problems. Lethargy. Long-term usage can lead to liver damage. Chlorpromazine patients are often characterised by a zombie-like demeanour; the drug has earned its nom-de-plume because of one particular side-effect: reversible but deeply unpleasant muscle-stiffening.”
Having taken my ration of Chlorpromazine tablets an hour previously, I sense the straightjacket constricting my body after each mouthful of rum and ginger. This glutinous solution does provide a medicinal but sugar-coated hit, putting me in mind of something that might be have been administered to psychiatric patients during those notorious CIA experiments in the 1950s. But it also leaves a pleasantly honeyed aftertaste. I’m compos mentis enough to be pondering the advisability of blending so much alcohol with the Chlorpromazine in my bloodstream but Big Country are thundering from the HiFi speakers, and after clocking my depleted glass, Alex is merrily mixing our next round of doubles in-between air guitaring to Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson’s resplendent duelling fretwork.
The room is rocking pleasantly, enough to drive away the lingering sense of paranoia I still face when contemplating hitting rammed nightspots a mere five months from being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. I slug at my Red Stripe, alternating with the tumbler Alex has loaded with dark rum and Crabbie’s Green Ginger Wine: rocket fuels as we describe this brain cell obliterating concoction. I appreciate the medical staff who were so meticulous in writing out my case notes might not appreciate their efforts to rehabilitate me being so wilfully ignored. In the history of remedies, no medication has ever been prescribed without a proviso about avoiding alcohol, whether minimal amounts or the industrial-scale binging I am currently subjecting my system to. But that swaying sensation, the blaring post-punk backdrop, and the thought of horned-up gangs of single women prowling Lothian Road is an intoxicating fusion. That dousing the Chloropromazine tablets I swallowed just before Alex arrived is akin to pouring gasoline onto a fire ceased being a warning an hour ago. Now it’s more like Russian roulette, only with a slim possibility of casual sex to accompany the headwasting blows of our lager and rum chasers.
Putting out a fire, with gasoline. Bowie’s song comes to me, from the film Cat People. Malcolm McDowell. Natassja Kinski. Directed by Roman Polanki. Alex mentioned some news item about him from the other day, said he was rattling her when she was only 15. Before that, he was done for sex with a 13-year-old at a party being hosted by Jack Nicholson. Only film directors or Rolling Stones bassists could get away with that. Anyone else would be added to a sex register. Alex concluded that after what happened to Sharon Tate and their unborn child his moral compass probably took a jolt.
When I stand up to accept the three arrows Alex has just plucked from the board, the floor heaves like a ship’s desk. Although we’re still hours from any nightclub my head is starting to spin. This was the routine in the months before my illness, and resuming where I left off seems the most appropriate reaction to what was surely a temporary hiatus. Much as medical professionals will decry taking excessive alcohol, itself a potent anti-depressive, and especially in conjunction with strong anti-depressive medication, surely the psychiatric community must place some credence in an ex-patient simply wishing to return to his normal behaviour? This is what I try convincing myself.
I’m going for treble 18. That I’m presently seeing two versions of this red segment render the task hopeless. Alex cracks something about my first throw being about as close to their intended target as the Belgrano was to the Royal Navy Exclusion Zone during the Falklands War. My second misses the board completely, puncturing a Sounds cutting of Mark E Smith, right in his plums. I sing a helium-voiced version of ‘Industrial Estate.’ The way we both cackle at this is way more demented than its deserves. But I see this whole evening unfolding in the context of recapturing my pre-breakdown lifestyle. Regardless of any warnings from psychiatric professionals, this is a crucial component of my recovery, and like a fair proportion of the young adults in any Scottish town or city, weekends are for getting hammered. As he did most Saturdays before my derailment, Alex has dropped by with a bulging Victoria Wine bag. Our evenings have always commenced with these chaotic darts matches, washed down with enough drink to achieve 75% intoxication to off-set the need for digging deep when confronted with Edinburgh’s city centre bar prices.
For two hours we have been knocking back Red Stripes – a rare ostentatious choice given these were the first lagers to break the £1 barrier a couple of years back – and are swigged straight from the can in uptown bars as if aspirational trendies feel the need to remind themselves of teenage drinking sessions on park benches. To this Jamaican lager we delight in adding our self-styled rocket fuels: OVD Dark Rum mixed with Crabbie’s Green Ginger Wine, enticing your brain cells with a cloyingly sweet taste as it pulverises them. The initial few slurps give a satisfying glow. By the fourth serving our smiles were rigid as clowns. By our eighth we are roaring intense nonsense and would’ve struggled to hit two blue whales beached at Portobello, let alone double-tops.
When we take our drinking session into town our first port of call is the lounge bar upstairs from the ABC cinema. As well as offering shorts at 1970s prices, this watering hole is situated at the vortex of Lothian Road, Morrison Street, and Bread Street. From here pub crawls can head northwards towards Rose Street’s ‘amber mile’ of 12 bars, westwards to the Tollcross nightclubs, or eastwards to the West Port’s three Go-Go bars, colloquially the ‘pubic triangle.’
After a further four rounds, we fire over the road to Morrison’s, then slalom around the corner to Lothian Road and onto Lord Tom’s, Palmer’s, and finally The Amphitheatre. Although much smaller than its Roman namesake, young warriors engage in combat or prepare virgins for sacrifice with equal gusto. Except for me. After the supreme effort of standing parade ground straight to give the door staff a false impression of sobriety, I’m ensconced in a corner of the dancehall, staring at the flashing lights sparkling against an untouched pint of lager losing its fizz before my bleary eyes. It seems less a glass of refreshment as a challenge. Or a warning. I have gone way past the point of no return and am now concentrating on the rhythmic breathing I am convinced will pre-empt regurgitation of my stomach contents. Any time a prowling bouncer hoves into view Alex seizes the scruff of my neck and holds me upright like I’m his ventriloquist dummy.
Then the inertia alters. INXS blares over the club’s sound system. Alex tells me this is my song because I’m so in excess, lager is starting to leak from my ears. As I just about manage to snort at this vision, he clambers to his feet, announcing it is high time I have myself a shake before pestering ‘a couple of tidies.’ My defence that I am sorely cunted and just need to ride it out for a bit are ignored. As he hauls me up, further protest is annulled by the fact my tongue seems to have become stapled to the roof of my mouth with a glue tasting of honey. He marshals me into the dense throng. Next thing I know he has selected a pair of females and arbitrarily positioned me before one of them. While Michael Hutchence croons something masquerading as a romantic song but which is all about the bulge in his leather trousers, I attempt to wiggle my hips in approximate synchronisation to the Australian rockers. I scan other blokes on the dancefloor, although my vision reveals far more than there are and the motion hurts my eyes. I’m reminded of the motley collection of males in David Attenborough films, where everything from Fijian parrots to Galapagos iguanas are obligated to pass an audition process: seconds of bizarre body language that will decide whether or not there will be any sex in due course.
I check out Alex. The moment he tapped his partner’s bare shoulder and she responded with a coy smile, he seized the opportunity. Now he’s barely dancing at all, just twisting his thighs half-heartedly while leaning in to bellow into his victim’s ear. She is grinning inanely at his inane sweet nothings. My partner has a bored but perplexed expression. Perhaps she is wondering why I’m not spoon-feeding her my own chat-up lines. Worse than that, she might’ve got the impression I only tagged along to make up numbers. Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s an attractive woman, early twenties, beautiful eyes twinkling beneath a meticulously-styled black bob. Her emphatic make-up reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux circa ‘Love in a Void.’ Without the swastikas.
Alex catches my eye and fires a poisonous look. Because the truth of the situation is this. No matter how much of an impression he is making, even if his partner is smitten with his charm, her prime loyalty will be to her friend. And if her friend hasn’t clicked in the same way, then the moment this record merges into the next they’ll move on to the next two likely lads. Few girls get so besotted with drunken chat they would leave a mate high and dry. Guys do that all the time. We accept this as part of the ritual. But if I fail this audition, so does Alex. Growing more agitated, he breaks off from the dance and grasps my collar, insists I chat up ‘the pal,’ as ‘his yin’ is eating out his hand. He says this loud enough for his dancing partner to hear how she is eating out of his hand.
I try smiling at my concerned-looking partner. Closing my eyes I focus on the pounding beat. A hangover from my teenage days is an incessant need to analyse music, dismissing bands, or artistes I regard as lacking in integrity or credibility. An absurdly dismissive trait I’m sure John Foxx of Ultravox once referred to as ‘Punk Stalinism.’ Despite my musical snobbery and the fact stadium rock is usually a prime candidate for anathema to my tastes, the alcohol flowing throw my veins is making INXS sound brilliant. The Chlorpromazine in my bloodstream is saying otherwise. The medication has been spending the whole evening surreptitiously tightening its straightjacket. I try moving my hands. Even my fingers. They are locked by my side. It’s the weirdest sensation. This must be exactly how a spider’s prey feels after being injected with venom and shrouded in a web. Raising her eyebrows my partner eventually glances at her pal. Her friend mouths something at Alex, fires me the type of look normally reserved for shoe inspection after trodding on dog shit. The pair disengage and head deeper into the knot of bodies, there to be pounced upon by another pair of roving males; neither of whom have included antipsychotic drugs in their night’s intake. Grasping my lapels, Alex marches me backward several paces. Those in the vicinity recognise the body language. Nightclub punch-ups have been a regular occurrence since the protagonists wore quiffs and drape jackets. Dancers back away, anticipating the first blow. I pre-empt it. By a gut reaction, you could say. I throw up over him.
It is one of those occasions when no warning is given, no drawn-out minutes of nausea. I just gawk at him. Blink a couple of times. Then my stomach explodes. I hose his choleric features, his white shirt, his trousers, his buckled-shoes, and a three-foot radius around him. I splatter various innocent by-dancers. Alex grabs my arm and leads me from the floor. A bouncer spots the commotion. He looks like a Neanderthal in a suit. He makes his way over in the manner of a bull homing in on large red neon sign. Alex steps in front and murmurs something, pointing at me. I waited for the apoplectic bouncer to brush him aside like a fly. Instead, he is nodding. His expression relaxes completely. He gives me a thumbs-up.
Alex faces me and says he is going to get cleaned up. But he told the bouncer the score, namedropping Andy. When I stare blankly, he elaborates. He explained I was an outpatient from the Andrew Duncan Clinic and I’ve suffered a severe reaction to my meds. He adds the bouncer is going to request the doorstaff order a Joe Backsi. My jaw hits the deck as I gawk at this heavyset guy, reaching for a walkie-talkie that must have summoned reinforcements during countless brawls. Chewing gum, he relates the message, then winks at me. A few glances are cast towards the bouncer hovering by the wasted looking guy before everyone’s attention returns to ‘Theme from S’Express’ and the mating ritual.
“Chlorpromazine. The world’s first anti-psychotic, introduced in 1950. From a family of neuroleptics, principally used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, it also calms patients before surgery. Each member of this chemical family has subtly different effects on consciousness but Chlorpromazine counters many of the symptoms of psychotic illness, especially phantom voices, paranoid delusions, and hallucinations. Like any drug, medicinal or recreational, it has powerful side-effects. Impaired vision. Respiratory problems. Lethargy. Long-term usage can lead to liver damage. Chlorpromazine patients are often characterised by a zombie-like demeanour; the drug has earned its nom-de-plume because of one particular side-effect: reversible but deeply unpleasant muscle-stiffening.”
Having taken my ration of Chlorpromazine tablets an hour previously, I sense the straightjacket constricting my body after each mouthful of rum and ginger. This glutinous solution does provide a medicinal but sugar-coated hit, putting me in mind of something that might be have been administered to psychiatric patients during those notorious CIA experiments in the 1950s. But it also leaves a pleasantly honeyed aftertaste. I’m compos mentis enough to be pondering the advisability of blending so much alcohol with the Chlorpromazine in my bloodstream but Big Country are thundering from the HiFi speakers, and after clocking my depleted glass, Alex is merrily mixing our next round of doubles in-between air guitaring to Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson’s resplendent duelling fretwork.
The room is rocking pleasantly, enough to drive away the lingering sense of paranoia I still face when contemplating hitting rammed nightspots a mere five months from being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. I slug at my Red Stripe, alternating with the tumbler Alex has loaded with dark rum and Crabbie’s Green Ginger Wine: rocket fuels as we describe this brain cell obliterating concoction. I appreciate the medical staff who were so meticulous in writing out my case notes might not appreciate their efforts to rehabilitate me being so wilfully ignored. In the history of remedies, no medication has ever been prescribed without a proviso about avoiding alcohol, whether minimal amounts or the industrial-scale binging I am currently subjecting my system to. But that swaying sensation, the blaring post-punk backdrop, and the thought of horned-up gangs of single women prowling Lothian Road is an intoxicating fusion. That dousing the Chloropromazine tablets I swallowed just before Alex arrived is akin to pouring gasoline onto a fire ceased being a warning an hour ago. Now it’s more like Russian roulette, only with a slim possibility of casual sex to accompany the headwasting blows of our lager and rum chasers.
Putting out a fire, with gasoline. Bowie’s song comes to me, from the film Cat People. Malcolm McDowell. Natassja Kinski. Directed by Roman Polanki. Alex mentioned some news item about him from the other day, said he was rattling her when she was only 15. Before that, he was done for sex with a 13-year-old at a party being hosted by Jack Nicholson. Only film directors or Rolling Stones bassists could get away with that. Anyone else would be added to a sex register. Alex concluded that after what happened to Sharon Tate and their unborn child his moral compass probably took a jolt.
When I stand up to accept the three arrows Alex has just plucked from the board, the floor heaves like a ship’s desk. Although we’re still hours from any nightclub my head is starting to spin. This was the routine in the months before my illness, and resuming where I left off seems the most appropriate reaction to what was surely a temporary hiatus. Much as medical professionals will decry taking excessive alcohol, itself a potent anti-depressive, and especially in conjunction with strong anti-depressive medication, surely the psychiatric community must place some credence in an ex-patient simply wishing to return to his normal behaviour? This is what I try convincing myself.
I’m going for treble 18. That I’m presently seeing two versions of this red segment render the task hopeless. Alex cracks something about my first throw being about as close to their intended target as the Belgrano was to the Royal Navy Exclusion Zone during the Falklands War. My second misses the board completely, puncturing a Sounds cutting of Mark E Smith, right in his plums. I sing a helium-voiced version of ‘Industrial Estate.’ The way we both cackle at this is way more demented than its deserves. But I see this whole evening unfolding in the context of recapturing my pre-breakdown lifestyle. Regardless of any warnings from psychiatric professionals, this is a crucial component of my recovery, and like a fair proportion of the young adults in any Scottish town or city, weekends are for getting hammered. As he did most Saturdays before my derailment, Alex has dropped by with a bulging Victoria Wine bag. Our evenings have always commenced with these chaotic darts matches, washed down with enough drink to achieve 75% intoxication to off-set the need for digging deep when confronted with Edinburgh’s city centre bar prices.
For two hours we have been knocking back Red Stripes – a rare ostentatious choice given these were the first lagers to break the £1 barrier a couple of years back – and are swigged straight from the can in uptown bars as if aspirational trendies feel the need to remind themselves of teenage drinking sessions on park benches. To this Jamaican lager we delight in adding our self-styled rocket fuels: OVD Dark Rum mixed with Crabbie’s Green Ginger Wine, enticing your brain cells with a cloyingly sweet taste as it pulverises them. The initial few slurps give a satisfying glow. By the fourth serving our smiles were rigid as clowns. By our eighth we are roaring intense nonsense and would’ve struggled to hit two blue whales beached at Portobello, let alone double-tops.
When we take our drinking session into town our first port of call is the lounge bar upstairs from the ABC cinema. As well as offering shorts at 1970s prices, this watering hole is situated at the vortex of Lothian Road, Morrison Street, and Bread Street. From here pub crawls can head northwards towards Rose Street’s ‘amber mile’ of 12 bars, westwards to the Tollcross nightclubs, or eastwards to the West Port’s three Go-Go bars, colloquially the ‘pubic triangle.’
After a further four rounds, we fire over the road to Morrison’s, then slalom around the corner to Lothian Road and onto Lord Tom’s, Palmer’s, and finally The Amphitheatre. Although much smaller than its Roman namesake, young warriors engage in combat or prepare virgins for sacrifice with equal gusto. Except for me. After the supreme effort of standing parade ground straight to give the door staff a false impression of sobriety, I’m ensconced in a corner of the dancehall, staring at the flashing lights sparkling against an untouched pint of lager losing its fizz before my bleary eyes. It seems less a glass of refreshment as a challenge. Or a warning. I have gone way past the point of no return and am now concentrating on the rhythmic breathing I am convinced will pre-empt regurgitation of my stomach contents. Any time a prowling bouncer hoves into view Alex seizes the scruff of my neck and holds me upright like I’m his ventriloquist dummy.
Then the inertia alters. INXS blares over the club’s sound system. Alex tells me this is my song because I’m so in excess, lager is starting to leak from my ears. As I just about manage to snort at this vision, he clambers to his feet, announcing it is high time I have myself a shake before pestering ‘a couple of tidies.’ My defence that I am sorely cunted and just need to ride it out for a bit are ignored. As he hauls me up, further protest is annulled by the fact my tongue seems to have become stapled to the roof of my mouth with a glue tasting of honey. He marshals me into the dense throng. Next thing I know he has selected a pair of females and arbitrarily positioned me before one of them. While Michael Hutchence croons something masquerading as a romantic song but which is all about the bulge in his leather trousers, I attempt to wiggle my hips in approximate synchronisation to the Australian rockers. I scan other blokes on the dancefloor, although my vision reveals far more than there are and the motion hurts my eyes. I’m reminded of the motley collection of males in David Attenborough films, where everything from Fijian parrots to Galapagos iguanas are obligated to pass an audition process: seconds of bizarre body language that will decide whether or not there will be any sex in due course.
I check out Alex. The moment he tapped his partner’s bare shoulder and she responded with a coy smile, he seized the opportunity. Now he’s barely dancing at all, just twisting his thighs half-heartedly while leaning in to bellow into his victim’s ear. She is grinning inanely at his inane sweet nothings. My partner has a bored but perplexed expression. Perhaps she is wondering why I’m not spoon-feeding her my own chat-up lines. Worse than that, she might’ve got the impression I only tagged along to make up numbers. Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s an attractive woman, early twenties, beautiful eyes twinkling beneath a meticulously-styled black bob. Her emphatic make-up reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux circa ‘Love in a Void.’ Without the swastikas.
Alex catches my eye and fires a poisonous look. Because the truth of the situation is this. No matter how much of an impression he is making, even if his partner is smitten with his charm, her prime loyalty will be to her friend. And if her friend hasn’t clicked in the same way, then the moment this record merges into the next they’ll move on to the next two likely lads. Few girls get so besotted with drunken chat they would leave a mate high and dry. Guys do that all the time. We accept this as part of the ritual. But if I fail this audition, so does Alex. Growing more agitated, he breaks off from the dance and grasps my collar, insists I chat up ‘the pal,’ as ‘his yin’ is eating out his hand. He says this loud enough for his dancing partner to hear how she is eating out of his hand.
I try smiling at my concerned-looking partner. Closing my eyes I focus on the pounding beat. A hangover from my teenage days is an incessant need to analyse music, dismissing bands, or artistes I regard as lacking in integrity or credibility. An absurdly dismissive trait I’m sure John Foxx of Ultravox once referred to as ‘Punk Stalinism.’ Despite my musical snobbery and the fact stadium rock is usually a prime candidate for anathema to my tastes, the alcohol flowing throw my veins is making INXS sound brilliant. The Chlorpromazine in my bloodstream is saying otherwise. The medication has been spending the whole evening surreptitiously tightening its straightjacket. I try moving my hands. Even my fingers. They are locked by my side. It’s the weirdest sensation. This must be exactly how a spider’s prey feels after being injected with venom and shrouded in a web. Raising her eyebrows my partner eventually glances at her pal. Her friend mouths something at Alex, fires me the type of look normally reserved for shoe inspection after trodding on dog shit. The pair disengage and head deeper into the knot of bodies, there to be pounced upon by another pair of roving males; neither of whom have included antipsychotic drugs in their night’s intake. Grasping my lapels, Alex marches me backward several paces. Those in the vicinity recognise the body language. Nightclub punch-ups have been a regular occurrence since the protagonists wore quiffs and drape jackets. Dancers back away, anticipating the first blow. I pre-empt it. By a gut reaction, you could say. I throw up over him.
It is one of those occasions when no warning is given, no drawn-out minutes of nausea. I just gawk at him. Blink a couple of times. Then my stomach explodes. I hose his choleric features, his white shirt, his trousers, his buckled-shoes, and a three-foot radius around him. I splatter various innocent by-dancers. Alex grabs my arm and leads me from the floor. A bouncer spots the commotion. He looks like a Neanderthal in a suit. He makes his way over in the manner of a bull homing in on large red neon sign. Alex steps in front and murmurs something, pointing at me. I waited for the apoplectic bouncer to brush him aside like a fly. Instead, he is nodding. His expression relaxes completely. He gives me a thumbs-up.
Alex faces me and says he is going to get cleaned up. But he told the bouncer the score, namedropping Andy. When I stare blankly, he elaborates. He explained I was an outpatient from the Andrew Duncan Clinic and I’ve suffered a severe reaction to my meds. He adds the bouncer is going to request the doorstaff order a Joe Backsi. My jaw hits the deck as I gawk at this heavyset guy, reaching for a walkie-talkie that must have summoned reinforcements during countless brawls. Chewing gum, he relates the message, then winks at me. A few glances are cast towards the bouncer hovering by the wasted looking guy before everyone’s attention returns to ‘Theme from S’Express’ and the mating ritual.
