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of the group of ten who were there when I started, only one or two others and I were there ‘simply’ for alcohol; the rest were also addicted to cocaine, heroin, crack or other drugs. They included older Cockneys, who genuinely used rhyming slang, and Muslim rude boys who spoke in patois I didn’t understand (phrases like ‘raggle fraggle’). But people were often not as they seemed at first. I’d noticed a little plaster on someone’s inner ear and all week I’d thought it was some sort of ‘gang thing’, until they explained that it was from the previous week’s acupuncture session.