Well, as it turns out, there was one thing that Britain had to offer. My journey into the early stages of adulthood coincided with the birth of underground rave culture. If you came of age during the late 1980s or early 1990s, you would have had to walk round with your eyes shut to avoid the rave scene. It was huge. And from the moment I attended my very first rave, I was hooked.
Had I started my new life in Tenerife the minute I left college, I probably would have missed out on the rave era. As it was, I chose to stay in England because I wasn't ready to move across and I also hadn't saved enough money. I loved to dance and I loved anything with a heavy beat, so rave was the perfect music for me. It was fast, it was energetic and it was uplifting. I liked it all, from the pumping, synthesised beats of Judge Jules and DJ Dougal, to the garage-influenced, electronic rhythms of Jon of the Pleased Wimmin. MC Conrad and LTJ Bukem were another of my favourites. They were drum 'n' bass rather than conventional dance music, but I was into anything that sounded good, regardless of what genre it fitted into. They were originally from Aylesbury and made me proud to be from Bucks.
One of the first ever raves I attended was a warehouse party in Luton, organised by a group of squatters known as 'Exodus'. The Exodus boys threw the biggest illegal events going, drawing crowds of up to 10,000 people. One week they managed to pull in twice the attendance of Luton Town Football Club, which shows you how big rave culture was. So many people went to their raves that it was impossible for the police to shut them down. Their deejays played a mix of jungle and techno with a strong dub influence. It was immense.
A good number of the raves took place in either disused warehouses or abandoned buildings but one of my all-time favourite events had its own purpose-built venue. The Sanctuary in Milton Keynes looked like a big, dirty warehouse but was actually a rave club. It could hold up to 3,000 people and played a mixture of hardcore, drum 'n' bass, hard dance and garage. It was always very loud and very hot in there. You could feel the baseline reverberating throughout your entire body and there was sweat dripping off the ceiling.
There were two main types of ravers in existence at the time; 'chavvy' ravers, who wore designer clothing, and what we referred to as 'smelly' ravers, who had dreadlocks and dressed like hippies. The Sanctuary was more popular with the chavvy type of raver because it cost a lot of money to get in and the smellies didn't like parting with their cash. Some of the venues tended to draw more chavs and some were more hippy-orientated. Although I dressed more chavvy than smelly, I would socialise with anybody, regardless of their style of dress. That was what raves were all about to me; different types of people coming together for the love of the music.
The Rectory, just outside Aylesbury, was another of my favourite clubs. It was around the size of your average living room but usually rammed to capacity and there was always a good crowd. There was never any attitude in the venue itself, but normally a fight occurred outside at closing time, which eventually led to it being shut down. It was a shame because for the most part, everybody got on. One of our mates worked behind the bar and we went there every time we got the chance.
The Rectory was the first place I encountered drugs. Getting off your face was, unfortunately, part and parcel of the rave scene. The events would go on well into the early hours of the morning and the partygoers would need mountains of drugs to stay awake.
'Try a bit of this,' one of my raving buddies implored me. 'It's good stuff.'
'What is it?' I asked her.
I had never come across amphetamines before. Nobody at our school had taken any kind of drugs so it was something completely new.
'It's whiz. Take some.'
It would be easy for me to pass the blame onto my peers and say that they pressured me into taking speed but that would be a lie. I took it because I wanted to take it. I didn't even think about the dangers of consuming a completely unknown substance. It could have been anything for all I knew, but yet there I was, dabbing my finger into the powder and putting it in my mouth.
The first bag of amphetamines didn't seem to do anything, so I had another. The moment the second lot had entered my body, I got a sudden rush of adrenaline and couldn't stop talking. I had a strange, tingling sensation in my head and felt completely energised from top to toe. It was phenomenal.
I was working at Tesco at the time and the following morning was gruelling to say the least. I hadn't slept a wink and kept falling asleep behind the till. That was the downside to taking speed. It kept you awake all night and you ended up feeling worn down and exhausted the next day. I couldn't help thinking that I should have stuck to just the one bag.
Ecstasy was the other ravers' drug of choice. The first time I took an E was at a night called Dreamscape at The Sanctuary. The pills back then weren't all cut with heroin and rat poison like they are nowadays. They were pure MDMA and cost between £15 and £20. I took a quarter of a pill and was rushing all night. My skin felt ultra-sensitive and whenever anybody brushed past me, it sent shivers down my spine. I had the time of my life.
Es and speed soon became a routine part of my nights out, although I usually stuck to the speed because Ecstasy was a lot more expensive. We went to rave events all over the south of England. Some of them were in warehouses, some were in aircraft hangars and disused quarries and some were in your regular, run-of-the-mill nightclubs. The Paradise Club in Islington, North London was one of my favourite places to get high and dance. It was a dark, dingy little hole but the music was amazing. There was a café area, a garage room and a drum 'n' bass room and they had an emcee walking around in the crowd, rapping as he went. You would be dancing away and the next thing you knew, he'd be right next to you, emceeing in your ear.
The nights at the Paradise Club went on until eleven o'clock in the morning and there was always a bustling market in full swing when we spilled out onto the streets. It was pretty daunting walking out of a gloomy, dimly-lit club into the daylight and seeing people who had been working all morning. That year, I had moved on from my part-time job at Tesco and had a full-time job as an income support officer. I couldn't imagine looking out of the office window during the day and seeing a load of ravers leaving a nightclub. It was quite surreal and we had to sit in KFC for a while to calm down before we made our way back home.
Whenever I got back from a rave, I was always still a little bit wired, but my parents never seemed to pick up on it. I didn't hide the fact that I was taking drugs from them; I just didn't bring it up. I don't think the possibility even entered their heads that I was taking Ecstasy and amphetamine during my nights out. It wasn't something that they would ever have suspected me of doing. My sister knew that I was getting high but didn't see it as particularly dangerous because lots of other people were doing the same thing at the time. She would sometimes go to raves with me and stay teetotal whilst I got off my head. I knew she wouldn't grass me up to Mum and Dad because we had a very close relationship and trusted one another.
I never worried about my speed and Ecstasy use; there is a hierarchy within the drug world and I always thought the things that I was taking were at the more acceptable end of the spectrum. I took recreational drugs, not hard drugs like crack or heroin. The people that used those kinds of substances didn't move in the same circles as us and we saw them as a level below. I think that this had something to do with the nature of these drugs. You can take Es and whiz recreationally, but most people who take crack or smack are addicts and take them because they have a habit.
Since then, I have worked as a substance abuse counsellor and discovered that a similar hierarchy exists amongst heroin users. There are three tiers of addicts; those within the top tier smoke their drugs on foil or sniff it, the users in the next tier down stick a needle in their arm; bottom-level users inject themselves in the main artery that runs through their groin. The top-tier users look down on the other two tiers and the middle tier look down on the groin-injectors, but in reality, it is all a matter of control. It doesn't matter what drug you a
re taking or how you are taking it; it's the level to which you grow to rely on it that dictates how much danger it poses. I was playing a dangerous game, which would eventually land me in a whole heap of trouble.
Crack and heroin were firmly imprinted on my mind as drugs I shouldn't take. I had seen what had happened to Zammo in Grange Hill after he started using heroin and it had put me off for life. It's amazing how a kids' TV programme can have such a lasting effect on the way you think. Similarly, the crack-addicted character of Pookie in the cult 1990s gangster film, New Jack City, showed me that crack was another substance to avoid at all costs. TV taught me more about the dangers of substance abuse than teachers ever could. In fact I can't remember ever being warned about drugs at school.
Although it didn't rank alongside crack and heroin in terms of the level of danger that was associated with it, I was always wary of LSD. I didn't take it until a long time after I had started taking Es and speed, because it wasn't a drug to be taken lightly and I didn't want to end up having a bad trip. My first two acid trips were both a lot of fun. A myriad of patterns danced around in front of my eyes and the satellite dishes on the nearby houses started talking to me. It was a little intense, but nothing I couldn't handle. Then came trip number three, which I took whilst round at one of my raving buddies' flats in Milton Keynes. This time the effect of the tab was different from the times before. I was sitting waiting for it to kick in when the entire world suddenly folded up inside a box. I was terrified and genuinely thought that I was going to die.
'I can't believe she's dead,' sobbed a hallucinatory image of my mother, hanging over me and sobbing violently.
'She was far too young to die,' a mirage of my dad concurred.
By this stage, I was hysterical. I was writhing around on the bed, bawling my eyes out and shouting, 'I'm dying! I'm dying!'
I felt one of my friends stroking my head and heard her laughing at me.
'What the hell are you laughing at?' I screamed. 'I'm dying here!'
'You're not dying,' she assured me. 'You're just having a bad trip.'
The minute the words had left her mouth, my brain began to calm itself down a bit. The world edged tentatively out of its box and Mum and Dad disappeared from my side. I spent the next six hours crying my eyes out about what had happened and vowed never to take acid again. It's a good thing I was with my friends because we were in a high-rise block of flats and I would have probably jumped over the balcony if they hadn't been there. It was a harrowing experience and one I never want to repeat.
The 'world in a box' incident wasn't the only time that taking drugs ruined my night. Dealers were starting to cut their ecstasy pills with LSD because it is a particularly strong drug and made it seem as if their produce was more potent than it was. A couple of weeks earlier, I had hallucinated that the deejay at the Paradise Club had transformed into a monstrous, demonic clown. I was scared out of my wits and immediately left the club. My entire body literally shook with fright and no amount of persuasion from my friends could get me back inside.
Over the past year, the drugs had started getting more and more impure and I was becoming increasingly worried about taking them. Getting off my head had changed from being a pleasurable experience into something that had the potential to leave me scarred for life. It was time for me to call it quits. What's the point of carrying on doing something that has grown to be a constant source of stress?
Even though I no longer enjoyed the drug-taking side of things, I still liked the atmosphere at the raves so I decided to get a job behind the bar at The Sanctuary. That way I could watch everybody dancing and having fun without being tempted to get high with them. My sister Kelly worked there with me and it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I've ever had. I loved the music and the vibe was just as good as it had been when I was getting off my face. It was the best job England had to offer, but still had nothing on my dream of working in Tenerife. Every time we went on holiday, I longed to move there. I couldn't wait until I had saved up enough cash to leave my tiny, country village behind and laze around in the sun all day, sipping exotic cocktails and living the life of Riley.
In an effort to spend as much time as possible in Playa de las Americas, I began to save up all my holidays and go there for a month at a time. I would spend two weeks with my family and two weeks with Kelly after my mum and dad had gone home. During the final fortnight, I would work as a PR girl whilst my sister lay around in the sun. She didn't like the PR thing and wanted to spend as much time as possible partying it up and having fun.
The club that I did PR work for was on Veronicas Strip and I got to know a couple of the other people who worked in the surrounding bars. One of the blokes that I got talking to was a sleazy-looking, overweight Majorcan by the name of Antonio, who looked like a stereotypical hairy-chested, medallion man and who owned a nightclub called Heaven a couple of doors down. He was so obese that he had to wear a tunic because there weren't many other clothes that fitted him. My sister always thought that he was wearing his pyjamas. He had an aura of untrustworthiness, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and chatted with him whenever I passed his club.
Although I was completely oblivious to the fact that my newfound friend was involved in crime, I knew that some of the other residents of the island could be a little bit on the dodgy side. There were a lot of English ex-pats who were on the run from the law and drugs were absolutely rife. One of the clubs got raided whilst I was heading inside to visit a friend and the police uncovered a stash of Ecstasy pills concealed in the toilet ceiling. Everybody who worked there got arrested, which included quite a few of my mates. The Spanish police don't mess about. They will usually arrest anyone who may possibly have had something to do with whatever illegal activity had taken place. It's not like in Britain, where they only arrest the main suspect. They will take in whoever they deem responsible, regardless of whether there is anything to suggest that they were actually involved.
Some of my friends ended up in court over the drugs that were discovered, even though there was no proof that they belonged to any of them. If the raid had been carried out in England, the police would have resigned themselves to the fact that it was impossible to tell who had stashed the Es but the coppers in Spain don't work that way. I was lucky because I was on the steps leading into the club when they came running in and they charged straight past me to arrest everybody else. I could well have ended up being nicked, despite the fact that I had nothing to do with the pills and hadn't taken any drugs since I had had my dodgy acid trip.
The raid shook me up and left a nasty taste in my mouth but it was going to take a damn sight more than that to put me off my yearly island holiday. I knew that Tenerife had a dark side but as far as I was concerned, it was nothing to do with me. I was there to get drunk and have a laugh – nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, in a place like Veronicas, drink leads to drugs, drugs lead to dependency and dependency leads to trouble. A series of events was about to take place that would make my dream of island life a reality, although I would end up becoming part of the seething underbelly that I had always sought to avoid. Sometimes your dreams can quickly transform into nightmares and in my case, it was to be a nightmare that would haunt me for the next thirteen years of my life. I was about to gain my passport to hell.
Chapter 2
LIVING THE DREAM
Sometimes something drastic needs to happen in order for you to follow up on a promise that you have made to yourself. Although I constantly told myself that I was going to move to Tenerife, it wasn't until my life in England started going pear-shaped that I made concrete plans to move. It started with a bang. I was driving round a blind bend on the main road towards Aylesbury when I suddenly became aware of a trailer with a hayrick on it sitting in the middle of the road. It managed to take me completely by surprise because it wasn't visible until I got close-up. Panic set in as I realised that I was about to crash.
Bam! I went straight through the windscreen of
the car. I was with my boyfriend Peter and he went flying through the air and dislocated and fractured his hip. I was out cold, but he managed to remain conscious and shouted, 'Quick! Get out, now!'
I later found out that he had had a recurring nightmare in which he was in a car that crashed and blew up. Luckily the vehicle remained exactly as it was, but it was nice of him to try and save me from the imaginary explosion.
My neighbour had been behind us on the road at the time and went rushing off to fetch my mum. I was lapsing in and out of consciousness and all I can remember is her taking me to the hospital and a doctor saying, 'I can't do anything with that!'
'Mum, give me a mirror,' I whimpered, wondering if my injuries were as bad as he was making out.
'No,' came her reply, 'it's probably best that you don't see.'
I have since been told that my face was in a right old state. There was skin and flesh peeling off left, right and centre and I looked like something from a horror film.
Passport To Hell: How I Survived Sadistic Prison Guards and Hardened Criminals in Spain's Toughest Prisons Page 2
