Frances Grant: Be there or be square

The energetic, mobile and happening former hippie - and now Invercargill Mayor - Tim Shadbolt.

A social history of illegal drug use in New Zealand should have been sobering watching, the kind of experience which might leave you worrying about flaws and weaknesses in the national character.

Sadly, my overwhelming response to the first of the three-part Inside New Zealand offering, High Times: The New Zealand Drug Experience, was one of guilty, vicarious enjoyment.

The first instalment covered the guileless years of experimentation from the late 1950s, when a bottle of sherry and a joint was the makings of a fine night out, to the early 1970s, as the Baby Boomers enthusiastically adopted the hippy ethos, turned off, tuned in and dropped acid, man.

A host of interviewees shared their reminiscences about experimenting with drugs, memories which fairly dripped with pleasure.

The joy was alarmingly infectious. The inevitably grinning mayor of Invercargill, Tim Shadbolt, summed up the zeitgeist: "We were energetic, we were mobile, relatively wealthy - we were happening!"

As a Kiwi nostalgia trip it was hard to beat: all that hippy hair, the beads and beards, the bare feet, tripping through the flowers in the Domain, the wild Dionysian parties such as the Nambassa Festival.

Those were the days when bedside reading featured such transcendent titles as Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, when people calmed a crowd with the soothing words, "let's cool it and have a groovy scene". And was that actually a scene of mass folk dancing in Auckland's Albert Park?

The kaleidoscope of psychedelic memories rather put paid to that old saying, "If you can remember the 60s you weren't there".

There were no coy "but I didn't inhale" assertions in this show. High Times is remarkable for its candid confessions and stories from a wide range of people, including former members of the police vice squad. And, of course, it took a wider perspective than just rebellious young folk having a groovy time.

Last week's episode also looked at the Chinese opium dens in Auckland and Wellington and, much closer to home for most, the abuse of drugs available on prescription. There were sad stories, too. Former pop star Larry Morris tells how drugs stuffed up his life. In a painful interview from the period, an unnamed mother, a haunting picture of buttoned-up polyester and desperation, talked about her daughter's addiction.

There were reminders, too, of the dark side of an era in New Zealand when a Prime Minister could personally ban a pop star's music from being played on the monopoly state broadcaster, the NZBC.

But for the most part, even the more sombre tales were recollected with a kind of nostalgic glow. Anna Hoffmann told of being the first woman to be sent to jail on a marijuana conviction. The episode made her famous, something the party girl then felt obliged to live up to.

One former vice squad member recalled rather gleefully his first narcotics arrest and the anonymous retaliation in the form of a parcel containing a dead, maggoty rat. Ah, those were the days - when the enemies of the hip and happening counterculture were "squares" and "the fuzz" and proud of it.

Tonight's second instalment looks at more serious stuff: the rise of the drug dealer and illegal drugs as big business. It begins with the stern assertion, that like it or not, drugs shaped our nation. So far, the series has straddled that divide in attitude quite nicely. High Times is a social history of fun times and the ravages of an anti-social menace.