Here in the Cotswolds so many middle-class women are snorting cocaine. I’m shocked at what these mums REALLY get up to behind closed doors – everyone can see the damage

The 50-year-old man in front of me was dressed as a pirate and gesticulating madly. He was incredibly talkative but also very dull.

For the past half hour he had been describing his ‘very successful’ – his words – property business. He appeared to think his bragging amounted to flirting.

‘I don’t think you’re ever too old to party hard,’ he murmured, leaning in sweatily and looking at me with vast pupils and a complete lack of self awareness.

Oh dear. It meant only one thing: summertime in the Cotswolds, where no posh party is complete without at least a sprinkling of the fairy dust that is cocaine, and where those of us who don’t partake book our taxis for midnight while the rest keep going till dawn.

I love living in the beautiful Cotswolds. We moved here seven years ago for the scenery and the schools, but I am astonished by the hard partying; think Jilly Cooper with a 21st century drugs upgrade.

Normally, the glam crowd doesn’t invite me and my husband to the more glittering events. In fact, at a recent drinks bash, a very drunk man commented on how ‘sensible’ I was (he meant ‘boring’), as I’d decided to drive that night and was sipping elderflower cordial.

I pointed out that I’m in my forties with two teenagers. I used to be ‘fun’ – as he thinks of it – in my early twenties when I was single, working in finance and living in London. But after babies, and the ensuing sleep deprivation, the thought of consuming something that keeps you awake… no thank you. Not to mention the hideousness of the come down and, of course, the toll it takes on your looks.

In fact increasingly I can spot the raft of horrors it unleashes. There’s something called ‘coke bloat’ – due to a build up of lymphatic fluid – where you look flushed and puffy, for example. Believe me, this isn’t a healthy looking, rosy glow.

Cocaine use often goes hand in hand with too much booze and smoking as well, a trio that may mean skin thins and wrinkles form, as well as causing a generally exhausted grey pallor.

Ageing is bad enough without speeding it up with the help of copious class As that no facials or expensive aesthetic treatments are going to counteract.

And don’t forget the fact that cocaine users are often very thin. Cocaine is a well-known appetite suppressant – it can lead to users over 40 looking haggard and unhealthy.

This summer there are a few 40th and 50th birthday parties coming up, as well as some 18th and even 21st celebrations, and a wider crowd is being invited – including us. High summer is the best time to showcase your grounds, put up marquees the size of small villages to keep teenagers away from the Farrow & Ball-painted bedrooms, and stay up till sunrise. Those who don’t party until dawn are, no doubt, talked about and mocked for being so laughably tame.

I once popped into a party friend’s house on a Sunday morning to return a book she’d lent me. It was a prearranged meet – I’d never just drop in on anyone – but she appeared very surprised to find me on her doorstep. She sat twitching in her kitchen looking rather bedraggled and very reluctantly offered me a coffee. It became evident, over the next incoherent half hour, that she had been up all night.

‘There’s an after party in the orchard,’ she slurred. ‘Come and have a drink.’ I looked at my watch. It was 11am, so I demurred, feeling slightly hurt, but also relieved that I’d missed out on the original invitation.

It’s a shame that drugs make people so incredibly tedious, because on the night I encountered the middle-aged pirate, the setting was magical.

The theme was ‘fairy tales’. Men swaggered across the large lawns in dashing outfits and women wafted in and out of the marquee in shimmering pastels, fake tiaras and expensive perfume. Large fire pits at the front of the Georgian manor house were lit the moment the light started to fade and the genteel clink of glasses and murmur of well-bred chat carried on the still, warm air. It was enchanting.

But as the sun dipped in the sky and the evening got darker, so did the mood. Diamante tiaras were discarded and you could hear Jack of the Beanstalk arguing fiercely with Aladdin about the merits of crypto. There was a shift, a slight sense of danger and a frenetic undertone.

What I always think of as the ‘second party’ was getting well under way, as the wraps of cocaine came out along with the bats and the music was turned up high, the pounding bass forming a – frankly exhausting – backdrop to the conversation.

The drugs element of a party is often incredibly well-planned. Hosts assume that their guests will expect to be enjoying more than a glass of fizz and want to make a night of it themselves. At a party I went to a couple of years ago, there was a little anteroom off the main marquee which I assumed was a chill-out area. It was anything but!

I wandered in for a sit down and felt like an uncool 16-year-old refusing a fag as a few amused but guilty looking heads bobbed up from a glass topped table covered in white powder.

To me, the huge middle-aged drug culture round here is baffling and – sorry – immoral, especially when there are young people around.

I worry enough about my teenagers taking drugs; to my knowledge my 15 and 16-year-old daughters aren’t doing it, but they tell me horrifying tales of friends taking too much ketamine – a horse tranquiliser – or skunk – a strong form of cannabis.

As a parent, I firmly believe in boundaries, and that means behaving like a grown-up.

Yes, I sometimes drink a bit too much, but apart from the fact that I think I’d die of a heart attack if I imbibed so much as a line of cocaine, I’d be ashamed to do so anywhere near children, mine or other people’s.

And believe me, the kids of the party people are doing drugs too, sometimes with the approbation and even collusion of their parents, which makes me absolutely rage.

I recently heard about a ‘cool’ mother, very rich and very glam, who happily shares a joint with her 18-year-old daughter’s friends. As you can imagine, other ‘strict’ and ‘boring’ parents were less than thrilled to hear this anecdote.

I’ve also heard of kids back from uni for the holidays or down for a break from their first job who have been welcomed home with a ‘big night’ by their parents. OK, they might be over 18, but doing drugs with your kids is sordid and – let’s not forget – still illegal.

At a recent 21st thrown by one of my husband’s local relatives for his daughter, a vast yurt was lavishly decorated inside with bright blooms and long trestle tables. No expense was spared as people spanning several decades partied. Cigars and early retirement at one extreme, vapes and first jobs at the other.

By midnight the older folk were packing the dance floor, far more raucous than the birthday girl and her friends, and the swanky Portaloos were heaving with 40, 50 (and even 60) year-olds cramming two to a cubicle as they gigglingly shared rolled up £20 notes. But less hilarious is the aftermath.

What I’ve learned about drugs – and especially as people head towards and beyond 50 – is that no matter how elegant the surroundings, the end game is always far from glam.

While some of us turn to yoga and juicing to stave off the ravages of ageing, others are heading rapidly towards heart attacks and strokes.

The gap between party people and the rest of us is always wide, but never more so than when that chasm is filled with mountains of cocaine.

I’ll always love where we live, but I’ll never be in the in-crowd. And thank goodness for that.

• Phillipa John is a pseudonym