Jenni Gyffyn has been there done that when it comes to drugs. She tells how some of her friends didn't fare so well, losing their creativity and potential in the fray.

I have NO idea what people mean when they speak of the ‘hippie era’.  I have seen old documentaries from the 60s and 70s in which bare-breasted young women with long flowing flower-entwined hair cavort across fields and skinny lads wearing jeans and heavy beards make the peace sign at the camera while waving fat marijuana joints around and trying to look mystical and sexy simultaneously.  (I might add that this attempt fails to come off.  They only succeed in looking a bit nit-infested and deranged … which they may have been anyway.)

My husband and I used to take drugs daily, but at no time did I ever strip off my top and cavort across fields, nor did my husband make peace signs at people while waving etc. etc.  We would go shopping at the supermarket, sometimes standing for unnatural lengths of time at the deli section admiring the shapes and colours of olives and pickles.  For a bit of light relief, we occasionally turned our shopping trolley into a Formula One car and would go raging up and down the aisles, making screeching noises as we turned the corners.  Little kids used to follow us, also making screeching noises as they turned themselves into assorted racing cars or fighter planes, while their parents battled with whatever it was they were battling with (we never took any notice of the grown-ups).

We were fortunate.  Not everyone emerged from that era unscathed.

My husband went to uni with a very talented young man (I’ll call him Steve) who was interested in film.  My husband was interested in sound.  Between them, they had a plan to become proficient in blending audio and video and creating the first music videos in Australia (it would be nearly 20 years until MTV and Rage appeared).  Steve went off to England to attend a prestigious film school and demonstrated a phenomenal talent for capturing and exhibiting blends of light and shapes.  After a year of very hard work, he took a break and travelled to India to photograph mountains … and discovered Madam Opium.

He returned to Australia two years later, wasted and suffering from Hepatitis B, recovered and took up exterior house painting.  The grace and brilliance he once possessed was gone – it was like he had become a cardboard cutout.

Another casualty was Martin (not his real name), the mechanical genius.  He read a book by Isaac Asimov called “I, Robot” when he was 18 and decided he would build a robot.  He scrounged junk metal from scrap yards, purchased a Dick Smith kit of little lights and panels and raided his father’s workshop for welding materials.  Over a period of 3-4 months, he constructed a large silver robot with red flashing eyes and what looked like a speedo for a mouth (the dial, not the swimsuit).

Martin was a weird blend of geekyness and just plain dickhead.  When invited to a friend’s buck’s party, it was Martin who was black-balled (with boot polish) and left chained up and naked at a bus stop at 2 a.m. in winter.  If you went past Martin’s home very early in the morning on September 1st of any year, you would find him dancing (again, naked) in the front yard to celebrate his birthday (the first day of Spring), with Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” issuing forth loudly from the lounge room window.

One night in Sydney, Martin took three tabs of LSD as a dare and spent two days staring at the drain hole in the shower.  He never really came back. The last I heard of him, he was running a little general store/post office in an outback town and smoking a lot of dope to overcome his discontent.

“Pete” was a very close friend of mine who played classical guitar – not just dabbling, but at concert performance level.  Besides his expensive acoustic guitar, he also owned a Fender Strat electric and could swap from classical to rock effortlessly.  Additionally, he taught himself Zen cooking and opened up an illegal restaurant at his house.  Accompanied by a friend (who also happened to be our neighbourhood drug dealer), he made the most exquisite (if not bizarre) meals such as lotus-root puffs and miso salads and five-grain bread spread with tahini and honey.  A menu existed but it was pointless ordering anything off it – Pete cooked whatever he felt like on the day.  Opening times were a bit dodgy too – it wasn’t unusual to arrive at his house/restaurant at 8.30 p.m. to discover a mass of people loitering around the front yard smoking dope and waiting to be let in.  There were nights when Pete didn’t bother opening at all (his reasons were that he couldn’t be bothered, too stoned, too drunk, met a new chick, etc.), so you always had to keep in mind that you might have to eat somewhere else.

There were other hazards encountered when eating at Pete’s.  Sometimes he would get annoyed in the kitchen (too hot, too boring, meals not turning out the way he wanted them to) and just walk off.  If we heard his 750cc Honda roaring out of the driveway, everyone would look at each other and go “Well, that’s it for dinner!” and leave.  Those lucky ones who had actually managed to be fed would leave their money in a blue glass bowl in the hallway if they were coherent enough to think of paying.

Other times, Pete would see someone in the restaurant that he hadn’t seen for a while that he wanted to talk to about music/drugs/chicks/Zen, so he would shamble in and sit down at this person’s table and get rapping.  His drug dealer assistant would eventually appear in the kitchen doorway gesticulating wildly, smoke pouring out behind him or some weird smell floating into the room, and Pete would smile inscrutably and drift back to his work.  Again, sometimes he got annoyed about that too, and would head off on his bike, leaving his assistant to “deal with the drama, man”.

In spite of Pete’s work ethic (or lack of it) and the presence of the shady drug dealer, his meals were fabulous – nutritious, cheap (Pete never knew what to charge, so the prices varied from day to day) and absolutely perfect in flavour and presentation.

Unfortunately, Pete came off his Honda one day face first onto the gutter and spent the next few months in hospital having facial reconstruction.  He became addicted to morphine (which was hardly surprising, given his use of just about every other drug known to man) and then graduated to heroin.  He now delivers parcels for Australia Post, doesn’t cook or play music, and doesn’t receive visitors.

So as I say, my husband and I were fortunate.  We had what we considered fun in the 60s and 70s and played with a lot of alternate viewpoints, but we got out of that scene before it eroded our willingness and ability to be creative.

I sure miss those other guys.

About Jenni Gyffyn:
I came through the 70s (enough said) and studied classical music for 18 years whilst doing other things.  I have been a public servant; one of three working partners in a recording studio; a computer sales and training person; a Justice of the Peace (valid in Tasmania only) and legal secretary; assistant to senior executives (whatever that means) in a cardboard manufacturing company, and secretary to patent attorneys.  I am currently an administrator for a very fine organisation that provides cheap accommodation to patients and their partners or carers who come from the country or interstate needing medical treatment that may take days or weeks or months.  At nights and weekends I am on staff in a non-denominational religious organisation that helps able people become more able in all areas of their life.  And I love dogs!