Drugs

I've never got involved with drugs, and in some ways it's been a bit of a disappointment to me.

I don't think of myself as staid in any way, but my drugs history would seem to say otherwise:

I have never smoked tobacco
I have never smoked cannabis
I have never tried cocaine
Or any other recreational drug
And now I can't even drink alcohol because of the tablets I'm on for diabetes

But I do drink quite a lot of coffee, though not enough to be interesting in itself

Ah yes, very commendable, but surely there's got to be a happy medium, somewhere between my track record, above, and being hooked on heroin for years? Smoking the occasional spliff, perhaps, just to show that you're not the kind of woman who has a preference for frilly blouses and tweed skirts and pearl necklaces?

I don't know why, but it just never happened. Something about never having liked parties much, I suppose.

Over the past few days the Communist has been on morphine for the pain in his legs. It has made him extremely confused and it has made him shake a lot.

This shaking rang a distant bell with me. I'd forgotten about it completely until that moment, but at some point when I was pregnant with Emily I had an operation and was then put on a drug that made me shake. I woke up, shaking, and asked them what on earth they'd done to me.

"It's the drug you're on, for the pain" they said. And I'd forgotten the name of it, because, as with the Communist, it made me rather confused too. Something like a cross between pompom and poppadum.

And then I remembered. Omnipom. But at the time I hadn't a clue what it was.

In the intervening eighteen or so years they have invented the Internet, so I googled Omnipom. They don't use it any more, so it took me a while to find, but finally I did.

And it's Opium. Now there's a Proper Drug. Hah.