It may be said that 2010 was a marker moment of for counter-culture.

That it witnessed the rebirth of Irish Rave culture, the warehouse party and the resplendent resurgence of Techno.

That in the wreckage of a recession and a country run by criminals for criminals – that the youth bandied together against out-moded Catholic conservatism and took back some of their freedom and some of the night.

That it was the opening salvo in a long awaited war against archaic drinking and event laws that had continental Europeans scratching their heads at just how really restricted the “party mad” Irish were.

Yes, I’m pretty sure some grinning simpleton scholar will tell you all these things. Possibly over a pint in Pygmalion (an Irish late bar associated with Techno and the electronic scene) before going on to tell you what amazing DJ they have coming over next weekend and you really should be there and by the way it’s twenty euros for the tickets, thirty at the door.

Really though, it was simply the –

Rebirth Of Drugs

Which isn’t really that difficult if you think about it.

Not like Drugs needed a rebirth.

I see drugs getting reborn every Friday.

That hotshot dumb lipped gibber-grin of oh wow drugs! Drugs Work! Wow – Love Drugs!

Some clenched fisted mongoloid tight-jawed half virginal freak standing in the haze of a strobe shouting YAAAY DRUGSSSS at you.

That sort of thing.

Drugs like alcohol never really need a time to suddenly happen and be rediscovered – they just need a new venue now and again. It is not like the people who know about them ever forgot how much fun they can be.

Don’t let anyone lie to you about this.

This is all it was.

People will try and tell you it was only correct to have somewhere open after the draconian half two closing time we have rigidly implanted by our Opus Dei fearing Catholic Conservative elite who have been telling us what’s good for us since we freed ourselves.

And for nightcrawlers like myself. It was. It was absolutely glorious to have somewhere to go late night. It is rather impossible being a night person and having your city shut up around you at about three in the morning.

But in reality a lot of those people needed somewhere to go to because they were going to be up awhile, what with all the drugs they’d just taken that were, obviously going to keep them awake sometime past dawn. And more truthfully, somewhere they could do more drugs until they felt like they didn’t need to do any more drugs.

Don’t mistake me – I count alcohol and Red Bull amonst those drugs.

It’s you me and a lonely left behind emotion called Truth – you can be you, I’ll be Frank.

And really, don’t get me wrong, I’m a Fan Of Drugs. I’m a fan in the sense that if Drugs were a football team, I’d be there behind the goal, face painted, screaming some sort of quasi-racist crypto fascist loved up about my side chant. Terrified that if I didn’t, my side would beat the shit out of me and cut my cheeks so I looked like a sort of sad yet somehow happy clown.

I can however, see the forest for the trees.

I think it started slow. Well slowish.

Gradually more Electronic acts begun to be brought over to loud notice. Some people somewhere had taken proper note that the market was either there again or had not gone away.

Maybe all it was, was one generation reaching maturity and there we go, the merry-go-round starts again.

Drugs, Drugs Work. drugs work…

Great things happened – Planetary Assault Systems and Ancient Methods came over and many others. It was glorious.

After something of a barren period, good things were happening in Dublin again.

A resurgence in electronica was very definitely helped and pushed by the surgent rise of the Pygmalion bar. A wretched hive of inequity and cheap Sunday booze populated by every known type of asshole, their pretty cool friends and the usual stream of scenesters and crawling alcholics looking for somewhere to top up cheaply and possibly have their drug use go unnoticed. I’ll readily admit I’m muddling the time frame here a bit, as the Pyg (as Pygmalion is commonly known) has been around for awhile. This piece is however not about it, it is about the resurrection of the late and private Techno club in Dublin. And obviously, it’s how I saw it, from off over here in the gutter. I probably missed things and definitely was not there from the ground up. As usually something else was happening – I was out of the country or had left the stove on or something.

You could mark it by the Electric Picnic and the drugs – most importantly the drugs.

The head shops were brought an ignorant, blanket stop to.

No longer did Dublin have easy access to the unknown mindwarp that were bags of plant feed, bath salts and other pills. A motley Wonka-Escobar assortment of screamers, laughers, uppers, sideways, left a bit and why can’t I sleep, christ-fuck I just want to sleep-ers.

Previously, it seemed like every day a new mix would come out, with often hilarious, often sleazy disco packaging. With names like Ivory Wave, Charleeze, Snow Blow, elephant balls banging off your mind and Gogaine. Whatever you were getting was not always what you just had, regardless of if you just bought the same thing.

With no regulations, a lazy criminal Government allowed us to see what happens when fourteen year olds become regular users of cathinone kreatine mixes and other things like mephadrone.

With no regulations, no enforcement, a lazy criminal Government allowed us to see what happens when people ship over constituent chemicals from China and mix them haphazardly in their warehouses.

With no regulations, not even an age limit, nothing, a lazy criminal Government allowed us to see what happens when a wider populace is given largely untested chemicals in unknown mixes and told it’s okay, it’s legal. People who had previously never dabbled before suddenly started dabbling.

For a brief, glimmering moment, Ireland had a chance at enlightenment – a sort of quick exit left on the Drug War and proper reasoning as to why. Rather than take it, they banned everything again and ran screaming, waving their hands over their heads into a new dark age.

Rather than bring in strict regulation, testing and taxation – perhaps even legalizing some of the older, more tried and tested drugs while they could figure out just what the fuck was in that bag of Ivory Wave. They instead decided to ban all psychoactive substances – a stunning move of idiocy which also would if you read it literally and not in the nudge-wink I knew what they were talking about when they made this bill, would include alcohol, coffee and nicotine.

Don’t ever mistake it. Most of the reason the headshop muddle mixes became so popular was because of the difficulty in accessing good safe value for money real drugs. Pills were dirty. The coke was shit. Speed, just glucose and caffeine. We only have one of the worst intravenous heroin problems because the heroin is so very bad.

If you wanted something that worked – worked well, at whatever it did, even if that was just giving you the horrors and making you sleepless until Tuesday, then the headshop was the way to go. Easy, quick, and most importantly – legal.

With these gone though, there was a soft drift lull. Like some sort cartoon rabbit moment, the real drugs came hopping back to pop their heads back around the door. Not that they’d ever really gone away – ketamine clawed in, would now never go away. Easily obtainable, it nearly always did what it said on the tin.

All of a sudden, real drugs were back with a vengeance and everybody was once again relatively on the same buzz.

!!Real Drugs – Now with greatly reduced rage, confusion and paranoia!!

Like Rocky in Rocky 2, after he has trained with Apollo Creed, when real drugs have been trained back up their fighting prime, they will come dancing back in and punch the mouth of the cheap alternatives.

And what do real drugs make most people want to do?

Dance.

And what music is the best for drug dancing? What music exists like some sort of aural sentience that it may well have created itself just so it could create better drugs to dance to it to?

Techno.

And if, in this rebirth of Drugs and thus resurgence of itself, Techno did not have places to live and be worshipped, then it would bloody well create them.

To Be Continued…