Another thing about me is that drugs and drink have never affected me the way they’re supposed to. Clean and sober, I am sharp, spiteful and shameless; add intoxicants to the equation, however, and I become another, nicer person — someone who, amazingly, agrees with everyone, loves everyone and gives away their favourite possessions freely. In my hell-raising heyday, I woke up more than once to find my most treasured books and jewellery missing and imagined that I might have been the victim of nocturnal thievery, only to gradually have it dawn on me that I had pressed said items on various characters the night before, while in my cups/off my head.

So I am both amused and perplexed by the habit of some former drug users to give self-congratulatory interviews about how horrid drugs are, how horrid they were when they were taking drugs, and how perfectly wonderful they’ve been since they stopped taking drugs. What’s wrong with this picture? Well, the way that certain former drug users seem to spend far more time obsessing about Not Doing Drugs than drug-takers do finding, getting and taking them, for a start. And second, the way that their “bad” behaviour “on drugs” is actually indistinguishable from their supposedly “good” behaviour when “clean”.

Without naming names, would a truly happy “new” man, who had turned the right corner, scream: “Vile pigs!” at paparazzi and tell a female photographer that he “hopes she dies from cancer of the clitoris”? Then there are the totally self-centred übermodels who, in their own minds at least, move from Lucrezia Borgia-sized bitch-hood to Florence Nightingale-style sainthood simply by virtue of not sticking baby-laxative up their snouts. Bad übermodel “on drugs” physically attacks people who do not do her bidding and talks pretentious, self-deceiving toss whereas Good übermodel in her “clean” state . . . um, allegedly berates people who don’t do her bidding and talks pretentious, self-deceiving toss.

The exception, as always, is Miss Kate Moss, a young lady of some substance whose lifestyle is currently under scrutiny because of her friendship with an embarrassing diva who can’t handle his drugs, Pete Doherty. This motif interestingly highlights the uniquely sour, thwarted attitude the British media has towards Kate Moss; envy masquerading as concern.

And a lot of the press’s attitude is focused on drugs. Experimentation, intoxication, disillusion, abasement, redemption; this is the contemporary drug equivalent of the Five Boys chocolate bar drama which celebrities must play out for the media. If you fail to do this, and refuse to move beyond Act II, then it will be open season on you, and your smartness and self-possession will be used as proof of your moral decay. And here, amusingly, the Daily Hell plays into the hands of the do-gooding, crim-licking lobby who it normally holds in such revulsion. Almost every week now you can open the Mail and read about the man — they are always men — “forced” to kill by cannabis or some Class B drug. Which seems a bit too close for comfort to the old liberal line about the criminal being a poor little oofums who had no choice in whether he committed a crime or not. Shame on you, Daily Hell! Whatever happened to people taking responsibility for their own actions?

Some people can take drugs, some people are taken by the drugs, and it’s their own responsibility to find out which type they are as early as possible and then act accordingly. What type you are has nothing to do with your level of intelligence but rather your emotional make-up and your constitution. And if you ignore this, and pursue an unwise path, you alone are responsible for the bad things they may lead to. This is what we should be teaching children and writing in newspapers; not “Oooo, drugs horrid, screw up as much as you like and blame it on them!” which is actually babyish and irresponsible beyond belief.

I have no time for heroin, but maybe this is simply a matter of taste; I need no encouragement whatsoever to stuff myself and fall asleep on sofas, thank you! But last month Glasgow Caledonian University published a report which stated that the drug can be taken for a long period without necessarily leading to a life of wrack and ruin. Researchers identified 126 long-term users in the city who were not experiencing any of the problems, be they health or otherwise, that we have come to associate with the drug through such entertainments as the books of Irvine Welsh and the breast-beating interviews of Will Self. Three-quarters of them were working and only two had lost their jobs because of drug use; they included chefs, computer analysts and plumbers. I particularly like the idea of the plumber; what a refreshing representation of a junkie, that he’s usefully unblocking lavatories as opposed to foolishly diving down them à la Ewan Mc in Trainspotting!

Drugs have a built-in bullshit-detector; come and have a go if you think you’re hard/rich/smart enough to survive us, they whisper in your ear. There is no shame in walking away from a fight; on the contrary, it often proves that you are, in your own way, strong, and so I have every respect for people who choose not to use drugs, or for people who try them, find them not to their liking and leave them alone.

No, it’s the cleaned-up cry-babies I can’t stand; the ones who couldn’t handle their drugs, poor ickle diddumses, and are now engaged on a life-long hissy-fit over the fact that some of us can, and do, with no detriment to our lives in both bedroom and boardroom. Life richer, better, more productive after drugs? I doubt it. A cautionary, comparative tale; I know someone who has been snorting white drugs, on and off, since they were 17. Yet when it snowed last week, I saw them chortle and squeal like an innocent kiddie at Christmas, tickled to bits by this everyday miracle. Whereas one cleaned-up ageing rocker told a magazine only a few weeks ago: “When I fly over the snow-covered Alps, all I think about is the cocaine I once took.” Now, I’m asking you to judge impartially — which one sounds the more obsessed with drugs?

julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk