ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A man who was once described by this newspaper as a ‘degenerate drug user’ has justified the purchase of a used set of golf clubs today by telling himself it cost less than a gram of cocaine.

Until he was caught by police at The Gelded Seahorse Hotel last year with a gram of low-grade narcotics and crushed methamphetamine crystals tied inside the ripped-off corner of a plastic lunch bag, Damien Murray was spending a small fortune each year on drugs.

The 29-year-old told the magistrate at his sentencing that he couldn’t go out on the tiles without some cocaine to keep him upright and able to talk – and drink – and talk.

In response, Magistrate Doug Rutland called him ‘a petulant, naive little cunt’ and that ‘his organs would be put to better use in people who need them’.

Because of the postcode he was born in, his parents’ combined wealth and various connections in business and our town’s legal fraternity, the self-described ‘misunderstood Cancerian’ escaped without a conviction being recorded.

“That put me on the straight and narrow,” he told our reporter today at the Betoota Heights Village Driving Range this afternoon.

“Which is why these days I’m pursuing more pure pursuits [laughs] like golf!”

Murray said he used to think golf was prohibitively expensive but then he started doing drugs.

Since getting pretty much off drugs recently, he’s found that his disposable income is now much higher than it used to be.

“All of a sudden, a $340 investment in a new driver doesn’t sound so crazy,” he said.

“Considering I used to spend the same on a little bag of meth that I’d snort off a toilet seat while try to keep my knees from touching the piss-soaked walls and floor of the pub’s cubical,”

“In hindsight, what I was doing was pretty stupid. Plus all that stuff about how drugs fuel that war in Mexico that kills hundreds of thousands of women and children every year. That’s pretty sad,”

“Anyway, that’s how I keep buying new stuff for myself.”

More to come.