Addiction

What do we mean when we say we are ‘giving up’?

17 February 2024 9:00 am

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?

11 November 2023 9:00 am

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’

21 October 2023 9:00 am

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

21 October 2023 9:00 am

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

30 September 2023 9:00 am

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?

‘I disliked him intensely’: Richard Lewis on first meeting Larry David

26 August 2023 9:00 am

Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Richard Lewis talks to Ben Lazarus about addiction, his Parkinson’s diagnosis – and his friendship with Larry David

The Premier League’s sleeping pill problem

5 August 2023 9:00 am

Football’s sleeping pill problem

My life as a meth addict

3 June 2023 9:00 am

The highs and lows of being a meth addict

Has gambling become the great British addiction?

26 March 2022 9:00 am

When I was 14 my father took me to a bookmaker’s and encouraged me to place a bet. He wanted…

The scandal of OxyContin, the painkiller that caused untold pain

12 June 2021 9:00 am

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

7 December 2019 9:00 am

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

21 September 2019 9:00 am

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

21 September 2019 9:00 am

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]

Global Britain was built as a narco-empire

4 August 2018 9:00 am

China, wrote Adam Smith, is ‘one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious…

How to have your cake — and not eat it

26 March 2016 9:00 am

Sitting at her desk at the BBC in March 2006, researching a documentary about the Olympic Games, Caroline Jones pressed…

Hitting rock bottom in LA

19 March 2016 9:00 am

The title of this book tells you a lot. Jack Sutherland, who grew up in London and Los Angeles, worked…

Getty images

Carly Simon: funniest, most sexually blunt star of her generation

30 January 2016 9:00 am

I usually dread the final 15 minutes of a celebrity interview: the awkward section during which the writer must steer…

From Adrian Gill to A.A. Gill — with love and thanks

12 December 2015 9:00 am

Often, Christmas is a time for moaning after the night before, when the seasonal drinking is remembered (if remembered at…

Mr Nice Guy: Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is far too nice

12 September 2015 9:00 am

You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…

My new addiction: road-building

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Many years ago I was encouraged to read Roger Hutchinson’s Calum’s Road. The small and quirky book made a deep…

Smartphones are wonderful – until they take over your life

25 July 2015 9:00 am

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

4 July 2015 9:00 am

Two months ago, I set myself the target of losing 11 pounds in time for the Spectator’s summer party on…

Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)

14 February 2015 9:00 am

Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…

The real reason there’s a queue outside the Cereal Killer Café

10 January 2015 9:00 am

The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…

Help me become an addict

1 November 2014 9:00 am

When the White Queen told Alice she had sometimes believed as many as six contradictory things before breakfast, she spoke…