"Try and get a year's worth of food into your freezer..."

Mephedrone - meow meow?

Yeah, I mean you can find it in Soho. You can buy it for twenty quid a bag. It's like E basically, but I think it's probably worse. I've tried GHB - it's absolutely brilliant! It's fantastic, but now they've made it illegal because, well personally I think because a couple of stupid people didn't know how to handle it.

Most doctors, in my experience, aren't even aware of GHB.

Exactly. And there are two types - there's GHB and GBL. I was on call when GBL - which you have to take a tenth of a dose compared to GHB - first came out. It was really funny: we were all standing there when a kid from G.A.Y. was brought in, in a coma. Then another person was brought in, and then someone else was brought in from the Charing Cross road - and this happened again and again. "Why are all these people in a coma from Charing Cross Road, specifically all with G.A.Y. stamps on their hand?" In the end we had to close ITU because it was just full of clubbers. Somebody had bought this new GBL and was selling it in G.A.Y. and people were taking ten times the dose and passing out. We called the poisons unit at Guys and St Thomas' and they had somehow managed to get a tip off that this was happening. We ended up intubating them, then a couple of hours later they just woke up going, "where's the party? Oh wait, hang on. Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?"[laughs].

So, to get back on track, I think it kind of depends what drug you're talking about. If you were going to make one legal I'd say make ecstasy legal.

I think what's really interesting is everybody thinks that [cannabis] is ok because those people who do become psychotic, and who may or may not develop schizophrenia later on, they're totally invisible. You see alcoholics all the time, bumming around on the streets. You never see people who go psychotic from cannabis abuse because they're almost immediately locked up in psychiatric hospitals so it gives us this false sense of security.

I didn't have a particular feeling about cannabis, one way or the other before working in mental health. Now, I think it's really serious. I can see us opening up this whole hideous Pandora's Box if we legalise it.

Have you got any advice for anyone starting their first year as a junior doctor?

Yes. Stock up your fridge. Stock up your freezer. These are the two major things. Try and get a year's worth of food into your freezer. That's your aim. That's key because I didn't see that coming and me and my flatmates just kept living on the food from the 24-hour garage, which was just horrendous.

We always seemed to have lots of condiments in our fridge for some unknown reason, and that's all we had. You'd open the fridge, starving, and there'd be mayo, HP sauce, "This isn't food! I can't cook with this. What can I do?"

So, number one - get lots of food in. Because you'll get back late, all the shops will be shut and you'll be physically too tired.

I would also say write everything down. So get a notebook, or clipboard and write down absolutely everything anybody tells you to do. Because you'll think that you'll remember something, and at that moment Mrs such and such's blood test will be incredibly important, but 10 seconds later you'll turn around, deal with someone else and forget.

If your consultant tells you to do something, you HAVE to do it. So make that your priority.

Both of Max's books can be bought via his website http://www.maxpemberton.com/ and you can read his columns in the Daily Telegraph.