I Thought It Was Cocaine

When I was seventeen, I went to Creamfields with my first proper long-term boyfriend.

He was twenty-two.

Five years isn’t particularly enormous when you’re older, but at seventeen, five years felt like he’d already lived an entire additional life.

He was much more worldly than me.

And his friends were definitely more worldly than me.

Creamfields itself felt like another planet.

Before we went, I’d been to Afflecks Palace in Manchester to find myself an outfit. I remember thinking I looked fabulous. I had this brilliant skirt and a black top and had clearly decided I was completely prepared for whatever Creamfields had to offer.

Then I got there.

I was not prepared.

People looked incredible.

There were furry boots and flashes of bright pink and turquoise. Glow sticks. Glowing hair. Things painted and stuck to bodies. Outfits that appeared to have been constructed specifically for dancing until daylight.

Everywhere I looked there was colour.

And dancing.

So much dancing.

People just danced and danced and danced.

There was a real community to it too.

For something that initially felt quite intimidating to seventeen-year-old me, I remember it being surprisingly beautiful.

People were friendly.

Everyone seemed completely committed to being there, dressed however they wanted to dress, dancing however they wanted to dance.

I loved watching it.

There was, however, another fairly significant part of the experience that I was considerably less prepared for.

Drugs.

My boyfriend’s friends were taking ecstasy.

This was not a world I knew.

I remember being offered something and declining, and my boyfriend being very definite about it too.

“Nope. She’s not taking anything.”

Fine by me.

I was quite happy existing in my fabulous Afflecks outfit with all my faculties intact.

And then I looked to the side of me.

There were some people with a tiny little jar.

Tiny.

A little screw-top thing.

And they appeared to be taking turns putting it underneath their noses and sniffing something from it.

I stared.

Oh my God.

My seventeen-year-old brain immediately knew exactly what was happening.

They were doing cocaine.

Obviously.

Here I was, little innocent me, standing in the middle of Creamfields while people openly snorted cocaine from tiny jars.

Oh my God.

They’re doing cocaine.

Where the hell have you brought me?

I remember being genuinely horrified.

Nobody else appeared remotely concerned by this apparently rampant public cocaine use.

Everyone just carried on dancing.

So I did too.

And the night carried on.

Music.

Lights.

Hundreds of people.

Furry boots.

Glow sticks.

Dancing into the ridiculously early hours of the morning.

And eventually Creamfields became one of those memories that got packed away with everything else from being seventeen.

Until a few years later at university. 

By then, I was a little more worldly myself.

And at some point I came across poppers.

Little bottles.

Screw-top lids.

People sniffing them.

And suddenly a very old memory came wandering back into my head.

Creamfields.

The tiny jar.

The people putting it underneath their noses.

My absolute horror.

They’re doing cocaine.

Oh.

My.

God.

They weren’t doing cocaine.

They were doing poppers.

I absolutely cracked up.

For years I’d apparently been carrying around the memory of the moment I’d witnessed people brazenly snorting cocaine in the middle of Creamfields.

Except nobody had been snorting anything.

There wasn’t even any powder.

I’d just been seventeen, completely out of my depth and confidently filling in the enormous gaps in my knowledge.

I think that’s one of the funniest things about remembering yourself when you were young.

At the time, you don’t feel particularly young.

At seventeen, I didn’t walk around thinking, I’m an incredibly inexperienced child who understands very little about the world.

I thought I was seventeen.

Basically an adult.

I’d been to Afflecks.

I had an outfit.

I had a twenty-two-year-old boyfriend.

I was at Creamfields.

Clearly I knew things.

Except every now and then, twenty-five years later, I remember seventeen-year-old me standing, staring in absolute horror at a tiny bottle of poppers.

And I’m reminded that I really, really didn’t.