After professing to use “a lot” of the natural hallucinogen DMT early this year, Welsh, whose books largely chronicle the hard drugs and petty crime underbelly of Edinburgh, Scotland, declared, “I’m still pro-drugs for hedonistic purposes, but not for medicinal purposes.”

Welsh blamed “Big Pharma” for medicating people the wrong way. “It’s a scam like the banks. You can live to 100, but you’ll spend half your time being miserable. But you can watch TV and be fed this propaganda that somehow you can roll back the clock to when you were young and healthy and happy.

“Our politics, from Trump to Brexit, is people being duped by having all this crap fed into them. It’s a kind of brainwashing.” Welsh shrugged, “In most places, it seems like they’ve been lookin’ for the bigger wanker in the country and when they found him, they made him leader.”

It literally took an accident for Welsh to begin writing in earnest. “A bus turned over. I was on the top deck at the front and went out the window. I got a settlement from the bus company and local council, a few grand. It seemed like quite a bit of money, so I’m taking some time off to write,” he said. He gave himself a “few months” and found a career.