MemoirA memoir about life on cannabis argues that the drug is far from harmless, writes Carlo Gébler
In its original meaning a truant, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, (from the Irish truaghán, meaning wretched), was "an idle rogue" who begged "through choice rather than necessity". In Truant, Horatio Clare uses the noun in this now largely forgotten sense to mean one (himself), who ignored the warning signs and gorged on dope for years, with disastrous consequences.
Clare was born in 1973. When he was a child his parents bought a Welsh hill farm and tried to live the good life, as he described in Running for the Hills. Unfortunately, the experiment did for the marriage and his journalist father returned to London, leaving Horatio plus brother and mother behind.
Truant starts when the author is a scholarship boy at public school, coming up to his GCSEs. He identifies madly with Malcolm McDowell's rebel in Lindsay Anderson's If . . . but naturally he never shoots anyone, he just drinks and smokes hash. Inevitably, he is caught, cautioned by the police and expelled just before his exams. Disaster. But then he manages the first in a long line of phoenix-like resurrections.
He applies to a high-status International School and, in the face of stiff opposition, secures a place. Two blissful dope-free years follow, and he gets good A-levels. Then he goes to France on his gap-year to teach English. Now he starts to really go at the dope in between riding freight trains, which he thinks romantic and countercultural, whereas in fact it's just reckless and dangerous. A few months of dope and already he's losing insight.
IN THE EARLY 1990s he goes to the University of York to read English. The place is awash with narcotics. He smokes himself silly and stops working. Suddenly, a third-class degree is looming. He cleans up and pulls a two-one out of the hat. He thinks it's a triumph, but really it's a disaster, for now he believes he can smoke hash (and do everything else too - alcohol, LSD, amphetamine, the full nine yards) and still succeed.
Next, he gets a job on a local newspaper in Devon. He loves it and thrives until an old university mate introduces him to the local dealer. He starts smoking again and now it's homegrown skunk - a sledgehammer to the brain. High one night, he steals a milk float, which he thinks hilarious, as a stoner would. He's arrested and charged. He loses his job on the paper. Off his face and very resentful, he sets fire to the newspapers piled outside the offices of his erstwhile employer and cops an arson charge.
Then he has another resurrection. He wins a place on a prestigious journalism course in Newcastle. Even though he's smoking heavily everything goes marvellously until, a fortnight from graduation, his girlfriend dumps him. She's in Skegness and he's in Newcastle and the last train's left. But never mind. His landlady has a Nissan. He doesn't have a licence but she'll understand, he thinks as he drives away high as a kite, that he had to get to Skeggie to save his relationship. But his landlady doesn't understand, and calls the police. He's bumped from his course and cops a third charge on his sheet (and there are others, too, Clare infers, that he doesn't mention). His parents have had enough. He starts sleeping rough in London.
Then he has another resurrection: by fluke he gets a job in a bar in Chelsea, which comes with a room; here he recharges and, though he's still smoking, he gets a job at the BBC. Now he really should stop the dope but he both can't and won't. He goes on smoking, becomes bipolar and loses one beautiful girlfriend after another until, finally, he has a terrifying psychotic episode on a 38 bus as it trundles towards Victoria. The glimpse of madness he is afforded so terrifies him he stops smoking - or at least he has to date. Clare is wise enough to know he could relapse at any time in the future, and this insistence that his redemption is provisional is typical of his honesty.
CLARE IS A GIFTED writer, adept at marshalling complex information (there are lots of characters and references but you're never confused as you read), as well as a brilliant mimic with a marvellous ear. His replication of drug-addled nonsense talk is pitch perfect and yet never boring. (That really is an achievement.) His recall is also extraordinary and so is his candour. Finally, there's no special pleading: he accepts responsibility without demur (though after the years of lying one suspects this comes as a relief).
But over and above this, what's most remarkable here is Clare's cool, lucid and detached exposure of the great lie we tell ourselves about dope. According to popular wisdom, it's relatively harmless, non-addictive and superior to alcohol. The fact that half the current Labour cabinet in Britain has puffed on a spliff, on top of which, let us not forget, cannabis was downgraded to class C in the UK three years ago, is proof of this. But it isn't benign: it wrecked Clare's life and the lives of many friends, and the lives of thousands of others, which is why there is now talk in Britain of reclassifying it as a class-B drug. For those interested in this debate, Truant is a must-read.
More importantly, if you're one of those who believe cannabis is soft and fluffy, you too should read this; or if you know someone who think's its soft and fluffy (and we all do), then get your stoner friend a copy. It just might save their life.
Carlo Gébler is a writer. His novel, A Good Day for a Dog, will be published by the Lagan Press in November
Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope By Horatio Clare John Murray, 310pp. £14.99