The writer of this piece begs that the reader will, in spite of the recent glut of articles, exposés, and satires on the subject within the undergraduate press, be so kind as to pardon this quite superfluous account of an experience concerning drugs. He apologises, moreover, for this ghastly charade of anonymity, and wishes that society permitted him to be more candid.

A better writer would no doubt subtly introduce the characters through the narrative, but in the absence of such a writer we will continue, in theatrical fashion, with a dramatis personae, followed by a list of properties. It is hoped that the benevolent pardon of the reader will be extended to this rather laboured conceit.

There were four principal actors – one classicist and three English students – and two minor roles, for a Romanian NatSci and an Austrian philosopher. The writer was, he has subsequently concluded, the classicist. Beside the pillows and blankets and rolled cigarettes, the central props were four small paper tabs, emblazoned meaningfully with yin yangs and suchlike and saturated with a certain not-wholly-legal substance beginning with an L and ending with a D.

The crucial fact that must be grasped is that everything that happened happened almost precisely a day and a half before the beginning of our first year exams, which, as astute readers will have worked out, places the action on the night of April 19th. Returning from a sensible revision session to what was intended to be a sensible night’s sleep, the writer went to talk to English student number one, who had just finished a sensible telephone call to her mother and was intending much the same. We agreed that a sensible, calming drink with a friend would not go amiss – for no more than an hour, mind, before bed. The only flaw with this plan was that English student number three is not a massively sensible person, and after a couple of hours of gin she suggested, with an enticing, Puckish glint in her eyes, that we "do some acid". Experience is valuable in itself, we said, citing the changeable tenets of a convenient faith.

The substance was duly sourced (don’t ask me from whom), ingested, and quickly the writer’s desperate attempts to continue revising the Ars Amatoria were confounded, as the words started to float from their positions and signified drifted from signifier. The four or so hours that followed (according, at least, to the testimony of the clock) were a mess of blankets, pretty colours, and unsettling womb imagery. The writer’s identity shifted from ornament to eunuch to the unborn child of English student number three and English student number four. Troubled by the happy family that was developing across the room, English student number two began to see evil things in the magazine pull-out reproduction of Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles on the wall, convinced herself that we were poisoning her, and decided to go for a walk, alone; she has still not entirely forgiven us for it.

On to Act Two. At around dawn, the three of us that were left decided that we would also go on a walk. After much fumbling for shoes, we departed, following the course ordained by destiny towards the Fellows’ Garden. Destiny, appearing to us in the guise of co-incidence, picked up the Romanian NatSci in the middle of his nocturnal vagaries, and resulted in a curious yet meaningful meeting with the Austrian philosopher, who jogged past us on Orgasm Bridge, and, with a good deal of bemusement (the writer was, you must understand, in his pyjamas and dressing gown at the time), stopped to greet us, before returning to his “stoic timetable” and jogging away. As the four of us walked the path that stretched endlessly before us, the UL loomed into view, a more imposing erection than usual, and we (except perhaps the sober and by now rather impatient Romanian) felt sure that our predestined goal – the button that would end existence – was to be found on the top floor of the UL. Consistency not being an effect of the drug, however, we turned to the Fellows’ Garden, and the rest of the night was flowers in the dawn mist and the composed serenity of the morning backs as we returned to college.

Act Three should probably contain a retributive sting and a moral lesson, and tell of how the writer’s residually addled mind produced only scribbles on the exam paper and Mephistopheles dragged him down to hell. But, to be honest, all was fine. Certainly the following day was alarming, lying down in bed alternately trying to reread Medea and sleep, with about as much success in both: lurid colours and disgusting images kaleidoscoped the mind in lieu of sleep, and it was impossible to read any more than a couple of lines of Euripides at a time. But the psychedelic haze had entirely dissipated by the morning of the exam; and, if there is any moral to this story, it is that a puritanical attitude to exam term is unnecessary, and that experience is indeed good in itself.