High society: Britain’s drug-taking clubbers

t’s Friday midnight and, in the corner of a vast Manchester nightclub, I’m having an earnest discussion with Becky, a sensible, homely-looking woman in her mid-30s, who has two lines of cocaine and several Ecstasy tablets coursing around her bloodstream.

“Plus I’ve just taken some MDMA powder, but it hasn’t kicked in yet,” she tells me, as if discussing headache remedies. “I won’t touch ketamine, though, not in a million years.”

Within 36 hours, the wholesome, sturdy Becky, normality personified, will be back at her desk as a middle manager in a big Manchester company. But right now, in the hammering maelstrom of the club, with the glaze of chemicals on her face, she’s planning to finish her £50 of coke — good stuff, she says, not any old rubbish; you’ve got to be careful who you buy from — take more Ecstasy, and then dance until daylight.

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