Pills, thrills and belly­ach­es: the lost under­world of Human Traffic

Jip (John Simm) is pissed off at the world and at him­self. He’s sick of work­ing in retail and he’s sick of over­think­ing every­thing, some­times to the point of sex­u­al inad­e­qua­cy. At least his friends are just as dis­af­fect­ed as him – Nina (Nico­la Reynolds) can’t stand her job, Koop (Shaun Parkes) is wor­ried about his dad and Lulu (Lor­raine Pilk­ing­ton) is through with dat­ing. But it’s final­ly Fri­day night and as proud mem­bers of the chem­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, they will spend their week­end for­get­ting the woes of their dai­ly life by what­ev­er means necessary.

So begins Justin Kerrigan’s Human Traf­fic, the com­e­dy explor­ing the drug-induced highs of the 90s rave scene and the dopamine-defi­cient lows where fam­i­ly din­ners are spent try­ing meek­ly to hide a come­down. Kerrigan’s debut was released amid drug-filled cin­e­mat­ic fea­tures such as Trainspot­ting (1996), The Acid House (1999) and lat­er It’s All Gone Pete Tong (2005). These films demon­strat­ed Britain’s rav­ing youth and ten­den­cy towards recre­ation­al usage of Class As, but Human Traf­fic had a lighter tone than the hero­in-induced tragedy that is Trainspot­ting. But 25 years on from its cin­e­mat­ic release, what Human Traf­fic tru­ly under­stands is the wide­spread dis­en­chant­ment of a generation.

At the pub, Jip decides that Britain needs a new nation­al anthem which cap­tures social anx­i­ety dur­ing rapid tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments. Pint raised high he sings ​“I’m try­ing to be myself, under­stand every­one, it’s a mis­sion and a half.” The whole pub chimes in, express­ing the wide­spread alien­ation of the youth and how hard it is try­ing to be cool. It’s a moment that reminds me of some­thing Lena Dunham’s Han­nah Hor­vath says in the TV show Girls, which debuted more than a decade after Human Traf­fic: ​“I have work, then a din­ner thing, and then I am busy try­ing to become who I am.” Han­nah and Jip couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent but the sen­ti­ment remains the same. Try­ing to dis­cov­er who you are, com­pared to who soci­ety expects you to be, is an exhaust­ing task. Espe­cial­ly when you also have to be a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of late-stage cap­i­tal­ism, pay your rent on time and be ready to get absolute­ly anni­hi­lat­ed every week­end. Seri­ous­ly, who has the time?

Human Traf­fic has more in com­mon with the house­mates of the British sit­com Spaced, which debuted the same year. Tim (Simon Pegg) and Daisy (Jes­si­ca Hynes) are ener­getic ama­teur grifters try­ing to have a great time and work as lit­tle as human­ly pos­si­ble. Much of Human Traffic’s vibran­cy seeped into lat­er shows that cen­tred teen cul­ture – Skins (2007 – 2013) may have swapped the jun­gle beats and house tracks for the elec­tro-indie sounds of Crys­tal Cas­tles and Bloc Par­ty, but its char­ac­ters share much with Jip and co. The wast­ed youth of the Bris­tol sub­urbs are all in the throws of an iden­ti­ty cri­sis while the yoke of adult­hood is being tight­ened around their sweaty necks.

Jip would nev­er claim to be the ​“voice of my gen­er­a­tion“, but in many ways he is, and shares much with Skins’ Sid and Spaced’s Tim. Fears of sex­u­al inad­e­qua­cy haunt them all and they are con­stant­ly ques­tion­ing their mas­culin­i­ty because of it. But Jip has a cer­tain buoy­an­cy that is lost in Tim and cer­tain­ly in mopey Sid, as the cyn­i­cism and dull real­i­ty has set in by the noughties. Back in the 90s, the lack of social mobil­i­ty was – at least for Jip and his friends – a slight­ly trag­ic game. Jip encour­ages his mate Moff (a young Dan­ny Dyer) to move out of his parent’s house, sug­gest­ing he can eas­i­ly get a flat ​“on the social”. This might have been as Jip puts ​“a piece of piss” in the 90s when there was some assem­blage of a UK wel­fare sys­tem, but today obtain­ing social hous­ing is nigh impos­si­ble in the UK, even for the most des­per­ate. As doc­u­ment­ed by Shel­ter, many can­di­dates wait more than two years for a home. Where demand is high­er it can be much longer.

When Jip’s gang enter the club, they’re approached by reporters attend­ing to under­stand the ​“youth of today’s” incli­na­tion towards Class As and dance tunes above 120 BPM. This scene is a direct ref­er­ence to the BBC’s 1992 doc­u­men­tary E is for Ecsta­sy about British rave cul­ture, in which the sub­jects explain the pow­er of uppers trans­form­ing the drones of the work­ing world into hap­py week­enders. But the gang are wise to their mis­sion – anoth­er jour­nal­ist can’t get usable quotes from Lulu and Nina, who even in their wast­ed state joke about their impres­sion­able young minds. There’s no spir­i­tu­al pre­tence to their drug intake; the only truth in their sar­cas­tic respons­es is that they’re here to get ​“absolute­ly trashed”.

It’s not just the wel­fare sys­tem that has crum­bled in the two decades since Human Traf­fic. Rave cul­ture is dying a painful death. Kerrigan’s film may mock the drug utopia the talk­ing heads of the doc­u­men­tary describe – com­par­ing the rave cul­ture to a reli­gious expe­ri­ence – but today Human Traf­fic looks like a par­adise com­pared to UK club culture’s cur­rent state. Thanks to years of aus­ter­i­ty pol­i­tics, greedy real estate devel­op­ers and com­bat­ive drug laws, the hedo­nis­tic exper­i­ments of youth are less com­mon than before. We are liv­ing through an accel­er­at­ed clo­sure of late-night venues, with 3000 venues clos­ing since the pan­dem­ic in Lon­don alone. Time Out cites ​“soar­ing ener­gy bills” and ​“sky-high rent” while ​“young peo­ple are chang­ing their going out habits to cut back spending”.

But if you are inclined to pop a pill or cut a line at the week­end, buy­er beware. Jip and his mates feel drug use is a habit they will soon brush off, but today the dan­gers of drug use have rapid­ly increased with over­dos­es at an all-time high. Ella Glover’s recent Dazed arti­cle address­es how the men­tal health care cri­sis is a huge fac­tor in fuelling the rise in ket­a­mine addic­tion, and accord­ing to The Face, mod­ern ecsta­sy pills con­tain less than 50% MDMA, with some con­tain­ing none at all. Argu­ing this rapid decline in qual­i­ty down to a mul­ti­tude of fac­tors, name­ly the pan­dem­ic, and the police crack­down on dark web whole­salers. Instead of a soci­ety that decrim­i­nalis­es drug use and works towards safer con­sump­tion and edu­ca­tion, years of anti-drug pol­i­cy have made sup­pli­ers cut more cor­ners, mak­ing ille­gal sub­stances more risky for users.

All gen­er­a­tions have their own his­to­ry of drug abuse, and there’s no sense in roman­ti­cis­ing par­ty­go­ers past. But Human Traf­fic almost invites a nos­tal­gic lens; for Ker­ri­g­an chem­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion and hedo­nis­tic expres­sion are a right of pas­sage, today lim­it­ed by phys­i­cal and finan­cial costs that make the risks far greater. Human Traf­fic was always intend­ed as an affec­tion­ate salute to rave cul­ture, but only 25 years lat­er this world seems lost to us. Reach­ing for the lasers is becom­ing a rapid­ly dis­tant memory.