Black And White
Today’s post is FREE. I invite you to start your weekend enjoying a great lost classic of drug piggery.
Eventually, Joanna and I were pretty much living together in just one bedroom of our big old house.
I was our chief chef. Like a dutiful husband, I’d go down to the kitchen each morning to cook up our first hits, shoot mine, and then take a full needle back upstairs for Joanna.
It was midwinter by then and we had an electric heater going night and day. Joanna was fascinated by old-time movie stars and vintage Hollywood glamour, so the TV would always be tuned to the Turner Classic Movies channel.
She would pore over all these books on the subject as well, so that it felt to me as if my whole life was being lived in stark black and white.
The other substance we began to use was the anaesthetic that Michael Jackson was on when he died — Propofol. It’s a white, creamy, quite thick liquid used in hospitals for surgical operations. Joanna had access to a ready supply of it, because she would use it when she performed liposuction.
Since it was thicker than morphine, we had to shoot it up using different, bigger needles, but the effect would be near-instant. One second you’d be wide awake and able to hold a conversation, the next totally out for the count.
In fact, one of our party games would be to see how high we could count before the Propofol put us under. Of course, I was aware of the risks but I enjoyed the feeling I got from using it and Joanna was very careful to measure our doses.
She also made sure that she was never fucked up when she had to go into work. She’d shoot up just enough heroin to smooth her over and get her through the day, but not an amount that would cause her to nod out.
Of course, it was highly illegal for a physician to be using in the first place, but not unheard of either.
Just like I had come to do on the road, I developed a daily routine of my own.
I’d wake up at 7 a.m. and have a shot of either heroin or morphine. Morphine was easier to fix up and had the same effect, so I began to use that more often. Then I would have a shot of liquid Valium and follow that up with a handful of slimming pills mixed with speed. And that, pretty much, would be the cocktail I’d give myself every morning before breakfast.
In UFO, we had once more lost our edge, gone a bit Barry Manilow here and there. By complete contrast, I wanted my first solo album, Amphetamine to be very basic and in your face.
It finished up being a great album, and one I still take a lot of pride in. The problem was I put it out through a small record label and it wasn’t made widely available.
Very sadly, the Pete Way curse also struck yet again through the making of Amphetamine. The two guys I had got to engineer the record for me both ended up dying of overdoses.
Wherever I went back in those days, there was a certain amount of drugs being supplied, and unfortunately it seemed to be the case that I unwittingly encouraged a number of people to go beyond their limits.
Sometimes, the sheer chemistry of it alone would be a distraction to me. Joanna began to work on a theory that if we took enough beta-blockers to slow our heart rates down, we would be able to do as much coke as we liked.
Scientifically, she worked out the absolute maximum amounts of both that we should be able to take if we were injecting the coke to prolong the rush. It was, though, a very high-risk strategy and Joanna had a couple of seizures testing it out.
On the first occasion, I made the mistake of calling for an ambulance. I didn’t mention that Joanna was a doctor and managed to get her out of the seizure before it arrived, but she woke to find herself surrounded by medics.
Way died on 14 August 2020, one week after his 70th birthday.
Wife number four, Dr. Joanna Demas-Way, the first doctor to pose for Playboy magazine, died of a multiple drug overdose while he was on tour in December of 2000.
DISCLAIMER: All extracts are works of fiction
©Amphetamine Sulphate ©Philip Best 2023
I read his book a few years back. I’m surprised he was coherent enough to dictate his sordid life to his “co-author”. Was he cremated in his tight, striped UFO pants?
Loving how inspired you've been to write lately. I have everything in a separate folder and 25 entries in just over two months has been fantastic... Didn't know much about Way other than his work with UFO and Fastway but i'm definitely keen to check this solo project out.