: How to creatively handle intoxication when you yourself haven't experienced such a thing? Now I wouldn't call myself a true writer. I'm about 14 now and I'm currently preparing for my IGCSEs

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Writing 'soppy prose' is an entirely separate issue from writing accurately about intoxication.

If your examiners are primarily interested in your writing skills and language use you should focus on the soppiness rather than the accuracy.

I don't know what marking schema they work to in your area but it would be incredibly harsh if they were to mark down someone in their early teens for not writing accurately about prostitution and drug abuse rather than for writing about it in a stilted or poorly expressed way.

If your profile is up to date and you are still just 13, they really are not going to be expecting you to write with a maturity significantly beyond that age. You are talking about them testing your creative writing skills, not your skills in journalism or philosophy. They are most likely looking for your writing to be 'appropriately mature in its use of language' rather than for you to have a precociously mature personality.

For my taste your prose is often on the overblown side, but that is because I am both a different age and in a different culture. I don't expect you to write like I would and your examiners will not expect you to write as though you have the life experience of a young adult in the west.

So my suggestion is that you focus on the language use. if you want to assume that someone sees coloured blobs, fine (though personally the only thing that has ever made me see coloured blobs is a classic migraine with aura)... just work on the description. eg 'impossible colours' is good , but how does that impossibility relate to 'technicolour'? What does 'technicolour' mean to you, what will it mean to the examiners? Are the colours usually described as technicolour in any way 'impossible'?
How do coloured blobs blur your other senses? I'm not saying they can't but my mind snags on that because I want to know how a colored blob blurs smell... what would a blurred smell be like?

If you describe a wondrous experience of watching coloured shapes swirl and distort other senses then it becomes redundant to describe them as 'wondrous things', you've already shown us that.

Look out for redundant words generally as they make your prose more pedestrian; does 'part fear and part awe'add anything that 'fear and awe' doesn't? Does the 'rush of noise' need to also sound? Couldn't it just 'jolt'? 'A rush of noise jolted her from her reverie'.

So, my advice is don't worry about the detail of the accuracy of things you can't be expected to have experienced. Focus on the quality of your language usage, internal consistency and avoiding things that pull the reader out of the flow. Don't write like someone padding word count.

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Remember that researching an issue or experience you don't have experience with doesn't just mean "reading up" on it. A time-honoured research approach is to find people with the experience you're lacking, and interview them.

Is there a family member who might have experience with alcohol or marijuana (two of the most common intoxicants)? Or, if not, is there a trusted member of your family or community who could arrange for you to meet someone with this experience (and, preferably, accompany you)?

When interviewing the person, it's important to have prepared some questions in advance, and to have considered how the interviewee might be similar to - and different from - the character you're writing about. Don't be afraid to ask naïve questions; in fact, you have a special advantage in being able to do so, that an older and more experienced person lacks!

If your character is having their first exposure to intoxication, make sure you ask the interviewee about their first experience, since this will be very different from the experience of a regular user getting intoxicated.

Regarding your example, as you've guessed, it's not very realistic. Light intoxication with alcohol usually makes the person more confident, garrulous and adventurous. Greater intoxication leads to a "warm buzz", but also impaired judgement (revealing confidences, or misunderstanding things), increased emotionality (more prone to crying or anger), diminished coordination and motor skills (slurring of words, knocking a glass over, unable to walk a straight line) and sleepiness or unconsciousness.

An inexperienced drinker won't need to drink very much at all - say, two glasses of wine - to feel intoxicated, and this can be followed by nausea and vomiting (perhaps accompanied by the visual colours and whirling sensation you describe), whereas for an experienced drinker, two glasses of wine won't have any observable effect.

Each kind of drug has a different psychotropic (mind-altering) effect, so my description of the above would not necessarily apply to marijuana or other intoxicants.

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