“Drugs are just a normal part of the London lifestyle”

[Pollstrox]

DD is single, in her early 30s and has been living in various professional house shares in London for the last 10 years or so. She’s got a fantastic job and social life; in fact (outside of Lockdown!) she’s barely ever at home. She’s often out for drinks after work during the week and the weekend will almost always consist of trips to bars and restaurants with friends accompanied by nights of heavy drinking. DD and I are very close and she chooses to share a lot of information with me about her life, which I love.

Lately she mentioned her drug use which I now find out has been a regular occurrence throughout her time living in London. She tells me that her and her friends will spend a weekend at least monthly, staying up all night using cocaine and occasionally they will have a night in using MDMA. Having met DD’s friends and housemates, I’m absolutely shocked. They are all lovely, have very successful careers (mostly in creative industries) and have clearly been raised well. I would never ever think they’d spend most weekends using drugs without a thought for the consequences. In fact, ironically DD and a number of her friends very health conscious and most are vegan!

DD is completely blasé about her habits and tells me it’s a completely normal part of the London lifestyle for single professional people. In fact, according to DD, she doesn’t know anyone else who DOESN'T partake! AIBU in thinking that this cant be true?!

I went to university in london and work in London. In my late 20s and would not dream of doing drugs. My London born and bred DH only did marijuana in Berlin.

Drug use is well known about in some industries in London, especially top law firms and banking.

I'm early 30s and have been in London for 11 years and have never taken drugs, nor has DH. It all depends on your circle.

@Rosehip10 I haven’t posted about this before and this has nothing to do with wanting DD to settle down! It’s a question about drug use.

TracyBeakerSoYeah truuuuuuueeeee!!!!

I used to split my time between London and another place.

Drug use depends completely on social circles - I’ve never taken coke or mdma and even when you hear of people doing so, tbh it’s not as frequent as this OP’s DD is.

I think middle class drug users are absolute scum. The police seem to only go for the gangs - they could literally walk into a lot (had named names... won’t!) of bars and workplaces and find drug residue and use. But the middle class kids have no repercussions, nothing. Have you ever heard of one being arrested, having a record, for drugs use?

I’d say maybe 20% of these same idiots have gone on a gap yah to South America and are either too stupid or too inhumane to connect any dots. They’re just scum.

@Dontcarewhatmyusernameis

I’m surprised at people saying it’s rife in medicine. My dh is a doctor and medical researcher and does not see this among the doctors he knows, at least. What he does see is a lot of patients in their 30s having messy heart attacks because of cocaine use. I agree it’s vile, have they not seen all the stuff about children being caught up in county lines So much cruelty.

I remember watching a big documentary on Cocaine in the 80s when it was its peak (in America) and one of the main suppliers was a talking head who said his biggest clients were doctors. They couldn't get enough of it. This was 40 odd years ago.

To keep anonymity posters do tweak a few details e.g. ages & sex of children. Easier than to keep changing user names.

I gather it's not uncommon but, no, I never have and plenty of people don't.

The 'everyone does it' is a nod to it being fairly common but in my experience it's also something people tell themselves to reassure themselves there will never be any consequences - physically, legally or with their jobs. Which there may not. On the other hand, I have known someone (white, middle class) be stopped and searched while they had cocaine on then and I believe they lost a job in the ensuing fall out.

So. You pays your money, you takes your chance.

Waves at Notmy

In fact, according to DD, she doesn’t know anyone else who DOESN'T partake! AIBU in thinking that this cant be true?!

It is clearly not true that every young, single professional in London uses illegal drugs. But it could quite easily be true that every one she knows does. Drug users tend to enjoy the company of other drug users.

OP's (new username) "DD" has aged couple years in under a month

God, I know that feeling! My reflection is telling me I've aged a good 10 years in the last 2!

I don't see the point of drug taking. Do people feel so miserable in their normal lives that they have to escape them artificially? What's holding them back from having a good time without drugs? Just not something I can wrap my head around.

Another reason why I'm glad I don't live in London.

I’m very like your daughter. Very few of my friends take drugs, and for the majority of those that do, it’s a bit of weed. Drinking is pretty common, but most are social drinkers, and aren’t silly with it. I don’t drink, and I’ve never had any stick about. Perhaps because quite a few of my friends are Muslim and don’t drink either.

Depends on your social circles.

But none of my friends, who work across top banks, law firms, accountants, insurance firms, doctors etc, have drugs as part of their lifestyle.

I'm sure there are people in those industries who do use. Certainly in none of those is it expected or commonplace.

Sadly completely normal in a lot of social circles at that age - not all obviously but it’s not unusual.

It depends on your friends and which circles you mix in (and sometimes which industry you’re in) but yes there are a lot of people who do drugs in London. There are also a lot of people who don’t.

It's highly localised. DH and I have both lived and worked here for 15-20 years. Neither of us partakes or has ever hung out with friends who have, although I'm sure there were users in our broader social networks.

Creative professions and those requiring long hours, like law, often tend to mean people take coke to stay awake. I think it's probably part of the reason they have such a high burnout rate.

In general people do grow out of it, not that that excuses it. I wouldn't be very happy were it my DD.

This was absolutely my life when I was younger. 20s-30s, living in Central London, worked in media and we all did cocaine, Ecstasy etc. (much more frequently than monthly) In those circles I think it's a bit of a rite of passage.

@notmyrealname I agree. I lost a friend over this.

She's a nurse who was telling us that so many doctors and nurses used cocaine at parties. I thought that it was utterly unacceptable and should be reported, alongside random drugs tests.

It's illegal and definitely NOT a victimless crime.

I remember going to a work do (random sector with colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds). Someone got some coke and literally everyone out of a group of 10 had some - and I was quite shocked at some of them as I would never have expected it.

I'm a born and bred Londoner, higher tax bracket earner, and neither myself or my friends do any kind of drugs/have ever done any kind of drugs.
We're all in our 30s and nobody has kids.

Cocaine use is definitely more of a white middle class thing - as in, it's more widely accepted than in other communities- and often by people who have no idea of the impact their drug use has on the lives of those in the supply chain.

why does your daughter talk to you openly about taking drugs? i don’t buy it. i’ve never taken drugs and never would, but if i did i certainly wouldn’t tell my mum! i’m not in london, but no one my age i know does coke - it’s all the 30 - 40 year old middle class mums doing it.

why does your daughter talk to you openly about taking drugs? i don’t buy it

Why not? I was open with my parents about it when I was younger. And I'm glad I could be.

What?! I’ve lived in London for 20 years and counting and this is completely alien to me. Friends in finance, government, teaching, medicine... we drink way too much wine and that’s it.

Again...it depends on what circles you move in.

My DH (top 10%) and I would not be part of any drugs scene, regardless of where we might live or what sector we might work in, because we’re both extremely straight in that respect and it just isn’t something we’re interested in. So we’d find individuals that we can easily gel with and spend time without being around things we don’t want to partake in. Similarly, people from certain other circles would know fairly quickly that we’re not of their ilk (because one can easily get a sense of these things). Hence, our lifestyles would never overlap.

All of the ‘everyone does it in London’ posters probably want to take a good look at who their friends are. I’ve been in London since my mid twenties and never once found myself surrounded by coke sniffers. Same with my husband who, along with most of his friends, are traders brokers etc in the city. Most of them don’t do it either, so that’s the ‘all bankers do it’ argument out the window.