OXY: Welcome To The New Love Club
by
K.J.B. Rickards
Oxy: Welcome to the New Love Club
​
1110 Words
When was the last time you went clubbing?
For me it was probably ten years ago. I had returned to Sankey Soaps in Manchester—a place where I spent pretty much every Friday and many Saturdays during the mid nineties raving my tits off to the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Laurent Garnier, Dave Clarke and the seemingly ever present Justin Robertson.
I was left quite disheartened by this attempt to relive my youth. The clubbers were now "clientele". Everyone seemed more arrogant, self entitled and stand offish. The old trainers and T-shirts for sweating and happily stinking in had been replaced by high heels and designer labels.
Circa 2008's Sankeys had become Swankies.
There's always that one old pill head at every gig and festival looking wiry and haggard, but still grinning and spreading the positivity—and occasionally some pretty nice pills.
Carl B. was that bloke.
I met him when I started working at my latest zero hour job. He told me the secrets of a world that had completely passed me by. I asked if I could do an interview.
KR: How do you keep up the energy?
CB: Music and chemistry, innit?
KR: Do you not worry that years of chemically enhanced highs will take a long term effect on your brain's natural ability to produce dopamine?
CB: I reckon I started feeling it towards the end of the nineties. You know, proper bipolar. Down as fuck all week until I got to the club on Friday. I tried self medicating with spliffs and bananas, because someone had told me they boosted your serotonin levels, but in the end I had to stop popping Es.
KR: When was this? Do you think you had become addicted? What was the quitting process like?
CB: Actually I was quite fortunate. It was just after the millennium, the pills were getting weaker [Or your tolerance levels had grown. KR], I was getting sick with the cocaine and booze mentality prevailing in the clubs, and I had finally met the woman of my dreams.
KR: Would you say she was the main distraction away from the club culture of your youth? Or were you just outgrowing the scene?
CB: I'd say it was definitely her. I think that through all my years of clubbing I was searching for "the one", so when I found her, it didn't matter as much.
KR: Did she not go to the clubs or partake in the drugs?
CB: No, she was a proper wreck head when we met—and we actually met in a club when we were both off our tits—but then she graduated as a veterinary nurse and we settled into the mortgage and jobs part of your thirties that everyone does.
KR: How was the transition into a mature adult? How did it affect your mental state? Did you miss the clubs?
CB: I don't reckon I did transition into a mature adult. I don't think I missed the clubs or the drugs that much at all—I suppose if I did mature, it was that we started going to proper band gigs and festivals instead of the nightclubs.
KR: But then you found a new high. Tell me about that.
CB: Fuckin' oxys, man. This stuff can change the world.
Carl was talking about oxytocin, a hormone and neurotransmitter produced naturally in the hypothalamus and delivered directly to your pituitary gland during moments of social bonding such as sex, childbirth and breast feeding. This is the body's way of creating love and long term connections.
I just assumed it was the next street craze like "bubble" or "miao miao". I'm forty years old and have been out of touch with the UK's drug trends for over a decade.
CB: It's certainly changed my world and it's starting to have an effect on this next generation of music lovers.
KR: Where did you first hear about it? Because before I met you, I had no idea.
CB: The missus had to go and see a talk by some French childbirth guy called Michel Odent, and he reckons that the use of synthetic oxytocin for caesarean sections in bulldogs or some other such breed, because their heads are too big to fit through the birthing canal, is the reason they are such an aggressive breed. She told me about it and I asked if I could try some.
KR: Did you?
CB: She bought some through her work, but because it was for an IV drip, we dried it out on a baking tray on the kitchen windowsill and sniffed a bit.
KR: What was the effect of that first line like?
CB: It was like ecstasy loving euphoria without the speedy amphetamine. We just lounged on the settee looking at each other and feeling each other's skin, you know what I mean? It was beautiful.
KR: Inevitably you took more?
CB: We did, but only in the house. Then we had tickets to a festival up in Ullswater in the lake district and we took a load with us.
KR: What was the difference in the effects when you took it in these new surroundings?
CB: This is when we realised it bonds you to everything; it's natures gift. We found ourselves making loads of festival mates, and then we started providing it to them for free. Our corner of the festival was full of love for each other, the music, the natural setting we all found ourselves in. Other people naturally noticed and before long I was selling it for a tenner a line.
KR: Nice. Did you turn a profit? Did everyone get off, too?
CB: I think I made a good portion of the ticket price back, and as far as I was aware, everyone had a great time.
KR: So did this start a nice lucrative side line for you?
CB: Well, I got made redundant from two separate jobs in two years, because of Brexit, and, because people recognised me as this old psychedelic guy with a new high, I bought a simple pill compacter maker thing off Ebay, and soon I had enough people buying oxys from me to cover the bills in between jobs.
KR: And that's why you are the happiest person in our workplace on a zero hours contract?
CB: Fuckin' Tories need to pop some oxy, then maybe they'd outlaw all these bullshit Victorian working rules.
Maybe he's right. Maybe we all need a little more love in 2019.