Blurred Lines

We now use more cocaine than any other nation in Europe, with the drug cheaper, purer and more ubiquitous than it has been in a decade. So, how does this sit with modern Britain’s otherwise health-conscious and ethical outlook? And how concerned should we be? MH meets users, dealers and researchers to get to the crux of a strange contradiction

- Tom Banham

By the time Craig Strippel found himself at the end of the Albert Pier in Penzance last October, willing his frozen legs to step onto thin air, he had lost control. Cocaine had taken over his brain. After 17 years of use, the drug had hijacked the chemical pathways that would normally have steered Craig towards the things that make life worth living. It had robbed him of his ability to assess risk and exercise self-control, the brakes that might have slowed his descent into addiction. It had burrowed deep into the primitive parts of his brain that summon emotions and memories, to provide constant reminders of just how good cocaine made him feel, like a bell that never stopped ringing.

Three hundred miles away, in London, a man we’ll call Ian was wondering whether his own relationship with cocaine was becoming something of a problem. They’d been seeing each other on and off for the best part of two decades, though Ian wasn’t as loyal as Craig: he was as enamoured of ketamine and had dalliances with MDMA and GHB. Now, following a period of unexpected job insecurity, things were starting to slide. He was using more during the week. He was, on occasion, using it alone. It worried him, but he was confident that, with a bit of effort, he could wrest back control.

Cocaine has long been Britain’s illegal stimulant of choice. The drug of Britpop benders and Met Bar toilets remains our favourite way to get buzzed. For a while, it looked as though its crown was slipping: between 2008 and 2013, the number of cocaine users in the UK fell by a third. The party that had raged since the early 1990s was seemingly coming to an end. Then, like someone who doesn’t know when to call a cab, coke sat up, shook itself awake and sat back at the table. In the past five years, usage has recovered almost to its 2008 peak. The reasons behind this shift are hard to unpick, but they are also very simple.