In the 80s and 90s the advertising industry was a playground for those driven by cocaine and adrenaline, but now it's just like any other mundane ride to retirement. Here's an account of the industry's carefree heydays according to ex-buyer David Allott, 40, Peckham Rye.

"The first time I realised that working in advertising was going to be a fast lifestyle was when my boss said: ‘What you've got to remember is that borderline mental illness in this industry is actually seen as a very positive thing.'

"Someone else they were thinking of hiring was a fucking nutcase always off his head on coke, but the only thing my boss wanted to know was if he made it into work on time.

"This was in 1989 when I was selling ad space for a TV channel in London. I was 21 years old and fresh out of university. After three months I was given the nod and told that if I was ever feeling a bit run down there was a huge bag of speed in the desk draw by the toilet. Co-workers were going to raves on the weekend and would add to the speed draw on Monday.

"We had partitioned desks and could knock out a few lines of coke without being seen in the morning. In the early 90s cocaine was getting cheaper (from £80 to £50 per gram). I was buying a quarter for £300 and splitting it into grams for people in the office to buy

"There was this expenses scam. Even though I was only earning about £400 a week, I was warned that if I didn't have at least £200 a week in expenses we're all going to look a bit shit. Everyone supplemented their income and drugs habit with ridiculous claims. I was given two books of London taxi receipts and instead of buying a sandwich from Prêt you'd get a taxi to a restaurant and order the most expensive thing on the menu.

"One of the first things you're taught in advertising is to stand up and argue when you're on the phone with a buyer - that way people in the office could chip into the brawl. It would usually start when you knew another buyer would pay more for a slot. You would get a sales assistant to phone them up and say ‘your spots been pre-empted' and just hang-up. The aggressive fuck-you mentality was caused by the amount of cocaine and speed people took.

"In 1995, after working for six years, I had to take a break. I was nine stone. I quit and bought a round-the-world ticket. But a year later I returned to join one of the world's largest ads agencies as a buyer.

"As a buyer the main skills needed were an ability to shout down the telephone at people - the more swearing the better a buyer you were. TV buyers in the 1990s were called ‘gorillas with calculators'.

"It was an incredibly sexist industry, probably still is. I had a boss who would threaten to swing women by the tit. A Punjabi girl I know who still works in the industry, had a top advertiser's buyer once say to her: ‘I bet you've got a black cunt.' She took the complaint to her boss who turned round and said to her, ‘well you have.' I suppose the mid-90s ladette and e-culture changed things because women toughened up and started trying to out-do the men. The result was that more women became buyers.

"Until 1996 ITV and Channel 4 had a duopoly, but when new channels started asking for your money, they would take you out on jollies. It was an unspoken thing. You would both drop vernacular hints into the conversation and if you lifted your eye they'd give you half a gram or you'd go for a line in the toilet. What surprised me was just how open people in the industry were.

"Unfortunately because of the amount of coke-heads no dealers would deliver in Soho. From Regents Street to St Giles Circus, all along Oxford Street and right down to Shaftsbury Avenue. We used to have to go to the north of Oxford Street, in a little pub around Portland Square to meet a dealer there.

"I certainly lost my mind. I don't think someone my age could do it now. It's affected my mental health in the long term. The industry has changed so much now that it's the opposite; any drug history is seen as unproductive. The industry used to be run by people in advertising but now most of it is run by WPP's CEO Martin Sorrell who's changed everything.

"Sorrell's a businessman and looked at things a bit closer than people had done in the past, including expenses. Everything was complicit but people took advantage and then the expenses bubble burst. We used to live fast but probably not get through as much of a workload, but now people in the industry are probably over worked and underpaid. And the jollies have stopped - TV companies would never buy you even a drink now, let alone give you cocaine. "