📸 Photo

BANGED UP ABROAD: HELLHOLE

his feet sticking out. It turned out his name was Jimmy –

we'd met him the night before and invited him back to

our room, although none of us could really remember.

Anyway, he asked us if we fancied some coke, so we gave

him £10 and he disappeared off to score some.

It was kind of odd that we'd never really set eyes on

any coke before, seeing as though we were about to

smuggle ten kilos of the stuff, but it was the truth. We

knew it was white powder, and that you took it up your

nose, but that was it.

Three hours later, Jimmy was back with a lump of

something, and started saying, 'Right, let's wash it up!'

We didn't have a clue what he was on about, but it

turned out he meant to cook it up into crack.

All we'd ever heard about crack was: 'One hit and

you're an addict'. To us, it was a serious drug linked with

violence and squalor. But Jimmy brushed our fears to

one side. 'So long as you don't inject it, you won't get

addicted,' he said. 'Chillax, man.'

Jimmy cooked the cocaine up with some baking soda

in a jam jar on the apartment's stove. And that was our

first introduction to crack cocaine. Little did I know that

we'd learned a skill we'd use many, many times over the

coming years.

We didn't have any idea how much coke there was

before it was cooked, but it was a big lump. It only cost

Jimmy £1 a gram, and we'd given him a tenner, so you

could safely say there were about ten grams there.