I like that it's practically impossible to offer any depth or insight into the experience of doing NOS in a NOS lounge after you've just taken a lungful of the stuff. Unless giggling counts as insight.

My favourite part was when the NOS lounge guy said there had been visits from "celebrities". I immediately thought "Christchurch celebrities = rugby players", and then he said rugby players had visited.

Good old Christchurch.

Even if I was mentally able and willing to take party pills, listening to that man from the shop would totally put me off ever taking them. He seemed so skeezy and so ignorant of the laws around what he was doing, and oh man, just so skeezy.

I don't know about the youth of today. In my day, we didn't need pills to have parties.

Perhaps I'm giving you an insight into why I've got so much grey hair at the age of 35-ish, but you can remember what you were pouring down your neck back in the day? Someone wasn't trying. :)

Seriously, I think you've got a point: I was too wimpy to move past ethyl alcohol in the recreational drug stakes but, my God, the conversations become a lot less profound when you're not toasted.

Perhaps I should defer to the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who made this observation in an address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, June 29, 1870, later published as Mechanism in thought and morals:

I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to
put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the
thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the
triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and
filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities which made me an
archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one
great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to
all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed
upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the
cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my
resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote in ill-shaped,
straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my
consciousness. The words were these (children may smile, the wise will ponder): 'A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'

but you can remember what you were pouring down your neck back in the day?

Why, yes. I can remember - the perfectly named Purple Death, Velluto Rosso, Bernadino spumante, and this rubbish from Robbie Burns called Bully Hayes (that could not legally called rum, so was a "general alcoholic beverage" with a pirate on the bottle) mixed with Coke.

All of which are probably worse choices than NOS, if not most party pills.

Oh, Liddle Bubbie Jeebus... thanks for the hitherto successfully repressed memories Robyn.