Celebs Have Nothing To Fear But Their Bathroom Cupboards

There are simply too many public stories: Celebrities in drug treatment rehab for addiction to prescription drugs; celebrities arrested for prescription drug possession; actor Heath Ledger’s autopsy results showing six different types of prescription drugs in his system.

My buddy told me the story of an unwanted packet of Valium that she has been keeping for more than 10 years! It always reminds her that special week at her house: the washing bright and flapping briskly on the line; the mellow evening of a lit fire in the lounge; the sound of Portishead wafting from a room down the hall, taking two pills a day from the bathroom cupboard for a week. It was stupid – and a harrowing lecture about addiction from a nurse friend soon after encouraged her not to repeat the experience.

Drug-taking, like many things, has a generational rhythm: dope and psychedelics in the ’70s; cocaine and amphetamines in the ’80s; ecstasy in the ’90s. This decade cocaine is back, a sign of our affluence and narcissism.