Joe - Interview 29

I remember when, when we turned, when we just turned eighteen and we started coming out of the town that we were in and into, into the City to go to clubs and pubs, there was a lot of pressure from the other boys, again like it had been when I was sixteen to drink beer as opposed to alcopops, when we started going to pubs the pressure was to drink pints, and not spirits and, you know, again it was ‘oh men drink pints’, so they would have six or seven pints on, you know, the course of a night and after two or three I would feel ill, I just, I’m not a massive beer drinker, I prefer to have a, have a spirit and take longer over it than it would if I’d have a pint. But again to follow the crowd I would drink pints and then after four or five I’d be outside being ill, you know and they’d be laughing, and it probably took me a few months of being eighteen and going out frequently to realise that just wasn’t, you know, I was happy to, for them to laugh at me if I ordered a spirit instead, than having a pint and being ill and not enjoying it. So, but I think there’s a lot of peer pressure around that age when you first start going out to fit in with the crowd and fit in with the norm, as opposed to standing out with my alcopop like a, yeah.

 

Yeah, and teased and, and joked.

 

Not in a, never bully as such and force you to have one but, yeah they’d make a comment if you didn’t have one, didn’t have a pint and yeah in a friendly way.

Okay,just like, you are not following the rules of the game?

 

I had what you, you call the come down the next day where you have the low after the high but, I was aware of that and it didn’t seem that bad to be honest I just felt pretty tired [slight laugh].

 

 

Yeah, about that. Smoked quite a lot when I was nineteen, once I’d moved out of home and moved into a flat with, with friends, and yeah I could smoke in, well I was, I was smoking in my flat so I hadn’t done that at home, but there I felt I could so, probably had it more frequently and stopped smoking it when I was about nineteen, twenty suppose, yeah must have been about, just about twenty.

 

I started to get Paranoia and I was also smoking cigarettes and I wanted to stop smoking the cigarettes and the, I was getting, yeah I was getting kind of social Paranoia sometimes from, from smoking the, the marijuana, so...

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah I think... yeah it probably was.

It didn’t stop me from interacting with them I’d still, yeah I’d still go out with them, or whatever, but I would, maybe, yeah we’d, we’d, if we were going out and we’d been drinking in my flat I’d maybe smoke a joint on the way out as well when we were walking to a club it wouldn’t stop me from, probably going out with them but yeah other, other times I’d, I’d say I got Paranoid about my, probably about my health, not social situations, I’d never had, I know there’s quite a lot of stigma attached to it with people being Paranoid about their surroundings which it wasn’t so much for me it was more about, my, like I overreacted to my health so if I got a sore chest I thought I was having like a heart attack yeah, or if I had a headache I thought I had something worse and I suppose it made me a bit of a hyper, hypochondriac but, socially was still fine with my friends, so I kind of wanted to, and I was aware of that so I wanted to stop smoking for that reason, and it took me a while, I had to, I found it difficult to stop when I was still smoking cigarettes so I stopped to, pretty much at the same time [em] which, took a while to, to be able to stop that but.

 

Yeah, so that was when I was about twenty that I, I stopped smoking, and stopped smoking the smoking the marijuana.

 

 

Yes, I think it’s something that’s brought up in the media quite a lot, particularly in Scotland, Scotland’s got quite a, quite a bad reputation for, for yeah alcohol abuse, it’s one of the, one of the main strains on the health service in Scotland I think is alcoholism, or high levels yeah so, yeah I’m aware, I’m aware of it it’s, I think it’s a bigger problem in the west coast of Scotland than the east coast so, and I can’t say any of my family have got, yes have a problem kind of alcohol problems so not directly, I’ve, I’ve not been involved in it but again from the media I’m aware of the, yeah the long term implications of yeah alcohol abuse.

 

 

Yeah probably the, they have a campaign aimed at sort of my age group I’d say, I remember they had posters, probably about two years ago which, they, the message hit you pretty hard and it was, they had adverts on tv as well actually but it’s, it seemed mainly targeted at the youth binge drinking sort of culture, you know, where do you draw the line? Where’s too much? And it would have... have [sighs] they were, they were good adverts and then they’d have posters that would remind you of the TV adverts but it was basically showing the same person on the same night out and two different paths they could take, one was having too much to drink and falling over the pavement and falling out the taxi, and losing their, their wallet or their bag and being sick and losing shoes and just what, yeah what can be associated with someone who’s had too muchalcohol and then one, someone who’s not had too much but still had a, they’ve still had a few, had a good time but been responsible, and then they’d have these posters on the bus stops sort of just like, like someone lying in the gutter, sick in their hair and just, like I say like a shoe missing sort of thing.

 

I think it was probably just a few weeks later we were at a party and they were having, having a joint and I got involved, and went on and smoked that with them after having a couple of beers, and like a few, a few drinks, not many, but just maybe three or four bottles , yeah we smoked, smoked cannabis , which I enjoyed , and I think over the next couple of years I probably smoked more than I drunk I think, I’d smoke, cannabis during the week at, like have a, have a, have a joint at night whereas I wouldn’t have a drink, so I think, personally yeah I was, I had more experience with that at that age than, than alcohol probably over the...

 

I think there needs to be, I mean they advise you that, a lot of the bad, points, you know, they, they give you the concerns about health and drug overdose and alcohol abuse and, but I think they need to realise and, and voice to the fact that young people, a lot of people do still try these things, you know there’s, and people are always, there’s always going to be some people who want to and will, and I think they should acknowledge that and say, “Okay here’s all the bad things, but if you still want to do it, if you’ve got any questions, you know, ask this person or, you know, if you, if you’ve.” I think there needs to be more, a bit more open about the fact that people will still want to do it and not just go on about the bad points because, you know, give, give the, give the arguments against them, you know the, tell people about the bad points, the negatives of it but also say, “But if you’re still going to do it then, yeah if you’ve got any questions then you can speak to your Doctor or you can go to this website and, you know, if, if there’s anything you’re unsure about.” Ask, it’s not just that yeah you shouldn’t do it, don’t do it.” 

 

Yeah I think they just need to maybe, provide more of a, yeah more services to, for people to access yeah it’s, they’ve got or if they want to stop, whether they want to talk about it or they’ve just got questions on it without being told, yeah the, just the bad sides if they’ve got questions about it then they should be able to be, ask that quite openly I think without worrying about being scolded for doing it.