Taking Drugs for the Win

When I was fifteen I made a bomb in the chemistry lab and tried to kill the school's star rugby player. Apparently.

When I was fifteen years old I nearly killed one of my friends. Or so the story goes. 

Lance Armstrong. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Barack Obama. I hope you’re beginning to draw the pattern for yourself. At some point in their lives all of these men have tried drugs. Some more successfully than others. But that all depends on your opinion I suppose. Michael Phelps, a cult hero amongst stoners and fish alike, is known for using his enormous lung capacity to break Olympic Gold Medal records in the pool. And of course, to get high. I remember seeing Mark Spitz the American gold medal swimming sensation of the 1972 Olympics, being interviewed once on the BBC. I can’t remember what for, but he was a member of some panel or other. I remember him saying that after he retired he was approached by the Russian olympic swimming coach at the time for advice. Jokingly, Mark Spitz told the man that it was his moustache that allowed him to swim so much faster than others. He convinced the coach that while he was swimming, his moustache would break the water in front of his face and allow him to cut through the water marginally easier. At the following olympics the entire Russian male’s swim team were sporting glorious lip warmers. The Americans took home most of the medals.

I wonder if Michael Phelps were approached in the same manner today would he jokingly reply, “Well for me it was the kush. There’s nothing greater than a nice body high right before a race. It helps me remain calm and focused.” I can see it now. Every aspiring young swimmer across the country coming home baked to their inquisitive mothers and telling them, “It’s how Michael Phelps does it.” Me, personally, I’d just blame my red eyes on the chlorine and go to my room with my ice cream. Michael Phelps. American hero. Role Model. Stoner. 

What about poor old Lance then? Well, he just wanted to win. So much so that when a doctor told him that he was going to die from testicular cancer, he told him that not only was he not going to die, but he was going to go and win the Tour de France seven times. “You mark my words! I’m gonna do it. Don’t you tell me I can’t.” Now I doubt that’s how it happened but when the film inevitably comes out thats how I imagine Matthew McConnaughy will deliver it. It didn’t work out so well in the end for Lance though. I mean, what kind of a*****e uses drugs that will make his body stronger just after he had to endure excrutiatingly painful treatment for an illness that almost left his young children without a father. Really, I mean, some people...

I have never openly asked my parents if they have ever taken drugs. Well I kind of have. My mum told me that she tried smoking weed once but it made her feel sick. I wouldn’t dare ask my dad. 

When I was a one year old my dad came home from his beloved fox hunt in Kilkenny. He was just out of the car after the two hour drive back to Dublin and he still had his hunting clothes on. His tight cream trousers, his ruffled white shirt and waistcoat. The black soon to be red jacket was invariably left in the car. I was in the living room with my mum, bouncing on her lap, and my dad came in and leaned in to give my mum a kiss. And me too, or so I like to believe, I can’t remember, I was only one but it sounds nice and anyway it’s my f*****g story so I’ll tell it how I want to. 

Within a minute or so I began to cough and choke and my face went all red and I was crying hysterically. My dad didn’t know what to do so he took me in his arms and ran out the door in the direction of Dr. Veale’s house. We were lucky that his house was in the same complex as ours so within minutes and on Dr. Veale’s much trusted advice, my parents were driving frantically towards Beaumont hospital with me in the back of the car gasping for air. 

It turned out that I was extremely allergic to horses and if my parents hadn’t have rushed like they did, I might have died. I was put on steroids as it was realized that I had weak lungs and chronic asthma. The steroids I took until I was about four or five. I remember it so well. My mum would take a small pink tablet and put it on a spoon. She would then take another spoon, and using the back of it she would crush the pill into a powder. Then she would add some milk to the powder and create a pink paste which I would then willingly swallow in one. It didn’t taste particularly nice, almost chalky and metallic, but I loved doing it. 

My lungs repaired and when I look back at photos of myself as a four year old I honestly think I had some pretty sweet abs. The pecs weren’t too shabby either.

My asthma never went away but it was manageable. One puff of the blue inhaler and one puff of the brown, every day and everything should be grand I was told. As always, whatever you say Dr. Veale. It did hold me back with sports though. My lungs were still weak and the blue inhaler just didn’t work the same way as the pink tablets but it was the only option. Also, I doubt that the three cigarettes I’d smoke one after the other with Johnny and the lads out in the forest once school was finished helped either. 

I was good at most sports though, often excelling at team games such as rugby, our school’s chosen religion. It was a Jesuit boarding school so you can imagine how serious we took it. In my first two years at the school which, for no particular reason at all, I should mention was probably the most prestigious boys school in the country, I played on the first team. We were good but we weren’t spectacular, winning just over half of our games. Most of our best players had been called up to play with the guys in the year ahead of us for the Junior Cup team. This was a very big deal and the players were rewarded accordingly. “Murphy, convince me why I shouldn’t have you gated this weekend for not doing your English essay. McCarthy it’s ok I know you had a match on Saturday. How is Gilsenan’s kicking coming along? I hear Blackrock have a tidy little outfit this year.” 

The cup matches came with as much intensity, romance and passion as described in Homer’s Illiad.  Our Junior Cup heroes would take to field as crowds of proud parents, classmates and orange faces from the finest girls schools would scream and shout with pride. Puddles on the ground, when it wasn’t raining. Those were times when you knew history was happening in front of your very eyes. Achilles would only be shitting himself. 

When the time came for our year to take to the colusseum, I didn’t make the team. The coach hated us. Well that’s what me and Johnny would tell ourselves as we passed the Silk Cuts back and forth on the roof every night at three in the morning. Most likely eating a Marks and Spencer's pesto pasta courtesy of either of our mothers. Really, we were just fat and lazy. 

That year our team won the cup thus bringing the trophy home for the first time since the nineteen fifties and ended an eight year trophy drought in the school. The celebrations were as if Fr. Bradley the school Rector had gotten the big call from the Vatican. 

A few weeks later when the final bits of debris from the parades were all cleaned up, the Irish Times contacted our school. They wanted to feature a piece in their weekend magazine on the star player from that years Junior and Senior Cup. Our talisman, Quirke who danced and jinked his way to the top of the podium, was asked to go to the newly opened Hackett London store just off Grafton Street were he was to meet with the other chosen one and none other than Jonny Wilkinson himself. World cup winner and notorious good boy of rugby. The Irish Times wanted to do a photoshoot with the two young rising stars and their supposed hero. The trio would model some Hackett threads and smile and pass a ball on the Trinity College cricket crease. Quirke was from a tiny fishing town in West Cork and had no idea how to find where he was supposed to go. This is where I come in. Dublin born and bred, I stepped forth and offered to take the ring to Mordor. Or rather, show Quirke how to get to Dublin. 

So off we went on the bus form Clane. The photoshoot itself was funny enough, with me trying to make Quirke laugh in the backround and so forth. When all was done, we made our way back towards the bus. But not without realising that we were two lads who had managed some freedom from boarding school. Now we were alone in the city. Phil Lynnott was almost ringing in my ears. “Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak!”. My mum happened to be in the city that day and she met us and gave us money to go for food. We decided to spend it on drugs instead. Wait hold on, not drugs but legally available “incense sticks”. Salvia, from the head shop in Temple Bar. So after convincing somebody off the street to go in and buy us some, Quirke and I headed back for school. When we got there everyone was still engaged in evening study. So rather than walk in and join our ever studious classmates in the two hour ritual of drawing penises all over each others copy books, Quirke and I made for the woods. We decided to smoke as much of the stuff as we could until everybody finished study at eight o’clock. At that point we would join in on the evening games, as it was April and getting bright enough for some tip rugby after evening study. 

I had taken some twisty looking pipes from the Chemistry lab a few weeks prior. I don’t know why. We brought them with us to see what use we could make of them. In the end, they were never put to use, but we did end up smoking about four joints in twenty minutes. The bell went to signal that everyone was finished study so we made our way back towards the school, passing a ball back and forth and laughing our heads off. By the time we reached the school though, Quirke had slowed down and was holding his chest. At that point the school doors burst open. Half the school then began making their way out to get the best pitch for their game of tip. That’s when Quirke collapsed. Cue the scenes. Nurse Molloy was sent for and the crowds gathered as if Quirke had been snipered down. It was lively, to literally say the least. All that was missing was an NYPD squad car. 

I was brought to the infirmary and interogated but not before I had managed to run to the bathroom and flush every bit of evidence I could find. I’d have probably burnt my clothes too, only Mr. Egan’s booming voice was calling my name. I lied and said we had smoked menthol cigarettes. I lied a second time and said we had smoked pipe tobacco, which wasn’t entirely a lie as we did from time to time, because you got a funny buzz off it, a bit like when we’d try snuff in the toilets at night, but that’s neither here nor there. Before I could lie a third time, Mr. Egan produced the pipes from the Chemistry lab that he had found in Quirke’s pocket. The jig was up. Within an hour I was in the back seat of my mother’s car headed for home. Home home. My sister was in the front trying to calm the situation. All the while I was in the back, higher than a giraffe’s vagina.

The rumors started as echoes of what we had told our friends. From home I explained to the lads the various details, from Hackett London to Temple Bar to the forest to the crime scene to the interrogation and finally my new life in solitary confinement. I remember ringing Johnny and telling him everything as we laughed at my inevitable doom. What else could I do at that point. My dad was constantly reminding me that I had broken my mother’s heart. As if her sobs and puffy red eyes wasn’t reminder enough. People were texting me though, asking what chemicals we were smoking from the chemistry lab. Disgusted Mothers in their long coats were whispering to each other after mass on Sunday’s.

“O’Farrell. The kinda big one. And Quirke of all people. He drugged him with chemicals he stole.” 

“You’d know him. Brought poor Quirke into the forest and made him smoke chemicals from a pipe that was laced with something else. He had a heart attack Mary.” 

“They were giving Quirke CPR on the grass because he had made some sort of concoction and forced Quirke to drink it and smoke dope.” 

“Good god Angela have you heard? Apparently he had broken into the chemistry lab and made a bomb and was taking young Quirke out to the forest and tried to drug him first.” “So after he slit his throat he then forced himself on the poor nurse!” 

Alright, nobody said the last one but it got out of hand. And then just downright creative.

When I got back to school I felt like a villain. But the not the kind that you fear or expect to meet down a dark alley. When I passed guys in younger years I felt like a supervillain. The kind that you see in the cinema or Dick Dasterdly. I half considered designing an elaborate costume to go with my new persona. Some people would snigger or laugh when they saw me, but never with malicious intent. Not from the students anyway. Before, I might just have been a passively recognizable face in the school crowd. From then on though, people knew me as the guy who almost killed Quirke. Some teachers would look at me as if I entered their class each day and relieved myself on their desk. As I progressed through the years in the school,I never managed to win some of them over. I sat down at a meeting with my parents and the headmaster and his crew. I was given a stern talking to and I remember my dad kicking me under the table when I answered wrong. It was all in the past now we were told. I had a lot of trust to earn. Right. All would be forgotten and Quirke and I would be given a clean slate. If that was the case then I imagine they wiped my slate clean using a toilet brush. To be honest though, I enjoyed it. It gave me an excuse. And what else does a moody teenager want?

I can’t remember exactly what it was that happened to Quirke but I know he went to hospital to get looked at. I remember listening in on while my mum called his. The school has a no tolerance drug policy. Because we had bought the “incense” legally, the school took their time in deciding what to do. To be fair, ours was a delicate situation. If they kicked us out they knew that another top level rugby school would be all over Quirke. Also, they couldn’t get rid of me and keep Quirke. So after two weeks of endless council meetings that I like to imagine went down like Twelve Angry Men, it was decided that Quirke and I could stay. We both spent those two weeks at home thus letting the rumors and our reputations amongst our classmates barge through the school like Godzilla rampaging through an unsuspecting Asian city. Those two weeks resulted in both us of setting a record for longest suspension in the history of the school. It’s what I’ll be remembered for. If even.

Quirke went on to earn more memorable distinctions. He justified the risk and helped the school to an unprecedented back to back Senior Cup triumph. I didn’t see out the rest of my time in the school. I left before my final year. Quirke’s rep wasn’t really tarnished at all. One foot back on the pitch and all was seemingly forgotten. I seemed to take all the thunder though and it definitely followed me around the school. I’d hate to sound bitter. I always enjoyed it in my own head. Somehow it made me feel rebellious. Now I could relate to my idol, John Lennon. Well that’s what I told myself as I re-read his biography whilst on suspension. I wonder though, how things would have panned out if it wasn’t Quirke that I had tried to kill. Funnily enough, he also had asthma, Quirke. I wonder if he ever had to take those pink tablets. If the school had have found him crushing pink pills into a milky paste on a spoon, would that have been a different story? Would anyone have found out even? Poor old Lance suffered the consequences when he was caught. But Quirke wasn’t crushing up steroids. No. He was smoking weed. Or something similar. And hey, if it works for Michael Phelps...