Monday 6 October 2008

The long palm of the law

One thing I've never really encountered here in Turkey is the recreational use of drugs (as long as you don't count coffee, fags, booze and over-the-counter medicine which are all abused to the extreme). My only experience of drugs here in Turkey was a dicey drive in a taxi cab to the fields out the back of Ladies Beach to score some weed off two complete strangers. I was accompanying some English friends who fancied a smoke (I was only 14 and didn't really know what was happening). We all survived and my friends paid over the odds for a bag of something with all the state changing properties of curly kale.

I was chatting to a Turkish girl about this the other day who found it shocking that I'd never come across more drug abuse here in Turkey. "It's everywhere" she said. "Most of my friends take something or other". Interesting. So why is everyone hiding it from me? "I'm always carrying Viagra" she stated matter of factly.

OK, I'm no doctor but I was a little confused as to what Viagra could possibly do for a woman. We then got to the truth of the matter and the real reason that some girls carry blueys...

It turns out that Turkish girls carry Viagra to bribe traffic police if they get caught over the alcohol limit. Everyone's happy. She goes on her way a couple of pills lighter and the copper gets a stonker for 4 hours.

I tell you what, rooting around in this culture throws up more priceless goodies than the lucky dip at Ivanka Trump's 18th birthday party.