Addiction
What do we mean when we say we are ‘giving up’?
Adam Phillips explores the various implications of the phrase, contrasting giving up smoking or alcohol with giving up hope – and being given up on
What do sugar and cocaine have in common?
Stephen Fry is a national treasure whom half the nation can’t stand. He drops his façade of loveability mid-chortle as…
They call me the ‘problem teetotaller’
My guts went on strike last July. I was staying in a hotel and I spent several days sprawled on…
‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance
The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion
Blow your mind
The UK seems on the brink of a ‘psychedelic renaissance’ – but, stripped of shamanic ritual and sanitised for medicinal purposes, will psilocybin retain its power?
The last laugh
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Richard Lewis talks to Ben Lazarus about addiction, his Parkinson’s diagnosis – and his friendship with Larry David
Losing game
Football’s sleeping pill problem
Speed demons
The highs and lows of being a meth addict
A dicey business
When I was 14 my father took me to a bookmaker’s and encouraged me to place a bet. He wanted…
An addiction catastrophe
The Sacklers’ callous greed has unleashed a tsunami of pain, says Ian Birrell
Will Self’s memoir of drug addiction is a masterpiece of black humour
Well, it was always going to be called Will. More than once in this terrifying, terrific book, Will Self refers…
The screaming souls on London’s streets
When I first moved to London N1 four years ago, no one seemed to notice let alone discuss all the…
The untold story of Judy Garland
Judy Garland is now a myth, a paradigm and a warning: don’t let your daughter on the stage! It’s the…
![The First Opium War: The East India Company’s Nemesis and other boats destroy the Chinese war junks in Anson Bay, 7 January 1841 [Bridgeman Art Library]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/opiumwars.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Global Britain was built as a narco-empire
China, wrote Adam Smith, is ‘one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious…
Sick transit
Sitting at her desk at the BBC in March 2006, researching a documentary about the Olympic Games, Caroline Jones pressed…
A sex vampire on wheels
The title of this book tells you a lot. Jack Sutherland, who grew up in London and Los Angeles, worked…
A legend in her own time
I usually dread the final 15 minutes of a celebrity interview: the awkward section during which the writer must steer…
Here’s to Bill
Often, Christmas is a time for moaning after the night before, when the seasonal drinking is remembered (if remembered at…
Nice work
You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…
Building this lay-by is all I can think about now
Many years ago I was encouraged to read Roger Hutchinson’s Calum’s Road. The small and quirky book made a deep…
Long life
The smart phone is a wonderful thing. We are never out of touch anymore, neither with friends nor with the…
Giving up alcohol is not as much fun as I’d hoped
Two months ago, I set myself the target of losing 11 pounds in time for the Spectator’s summer party on…
Addicted to trouble
Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…
Sugar rush
The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…
Whatever happened to the stiff upper lip?
Sarah Ditum 6 September 2025 9:00 am
When oversharing – and even inventing – stories of personal trauma is considered ‘validating’ and laudable we are in real trouble, says Darren McGarvey, speaking from experience