EDITOR'S PERSPECTIVE: Methylated spirits, drugs, drink and cough mixture

By his reckoning, it should start to take effect by the time he reached his destination and began his search for work.

He would call in shops, bars and the Job Centre – he wasn’t sure if they still had those – and see if there was anything going, even though he knew employment “opportunities” didn’t work that way these days.

Risks listed on the paperwork in the box included skin rashes, GI disturbance, nervous system disorders, including drowsiness, confusion, eye disorders, blurred vision and urinary retention (this one might actually be quite useful).

He was fine with all that as by the time it delivered its knockout blow he would have completed his fruitless calls and would still be in a much better state than most people in town. He would at least be able to function and at £4 for the bottle (other more expensive branded versions were available, but this did the trick) he couldn’t grumble.

It still worked out cheaper than drinking himself into a stupor (though the price of the own brand medication has crept up to within a couple of quid of a small bottle of cheap whisky or vodka) and came with less risks than buying drugs off some dodgy dealer. Also, it had the added bonus of allowing him just enough time to get home before it sent him spiralling into a 16-hour money-saving undisturbed sleep. The more he took, the more he saved!

The huge swallow caused an instant dry mouth and left behind a treacly residue on his tongue and in his throat, the initial hit on his stomach lasting only a few seconds.

This was what it had come to. It was the 1970s again, only with cough mixture replacing the methylated spirits favoured by the tramps of the day. There was more risk in drinking cleaning fluids – dizziness, blurred vision, seizures, vomiting, abdominal pain – but a bottle cost mere pennies back then and would last a day or so when shared between a group clubbing together to secure the purchase.

People had been forced out on the streets back then. They had lost their jobs, which meant their nights in the pub couldn’t be sustained anymore but they needed a replacement. Their relationships, if they had them, ended and out on the streets they went with no support network available and, many of them having moved over from other countries to work in the mils and factories, no family around.

They met others in similar circumstances and sat under bridges or multi-storey car parks drinking their flesh rotting concoctions, but largely bothering no-one, the shame keeping them apart before the spirits blocked out everything.

Tramps of this nature, usually requesting a mere 10p for a cup of tea, disappeared in the 80s, replaced by heroin addicts, and with that change came an increase in cost and so more crime.

Since then there have been sever shifts in fashion as to what is taken to remove yourself from reality, leading up to today where spice is the go-to, drink for most being far too expensive (the increase in price doesn’t stop people chasing an ending of a situation, however brief).

Jobs aren’t there, families maybe not for those who have switched countries, and life has become a whole lot more expensive.

There’s a yellow tinge to the streets again, spaces where once prominent buildings have been knocked down, half-constructed projects stand abandoned, the neon lights of burnt out bars and restaurants long extinguished and people again sitting in doorways, hanging about in car parks and under bridges, taking whatever they are taking to get there… wherever there may be.

He wasn’t at that stage though. He never would be. The full hit of the medication was almost upon him. He had about an hour of his day left before it comatosed him. He would have to find something cheaper tomorrow.