novella said:
Times were so different then. I went to a private school, wore a little plaid uniform, took AP math, was at the top of my class . . . but it still didn't stop me from doing acid and quaaludes every weekend. It was so pervasive, it's really hard to describe. I'm truly horrified at the thought of how much danger I put myself in. Alice didn't seem so different from a lot of people I knew, she just pushed the envelope a little.
(My little plaid uniform was green. What color was yours???)
Those were truly scary times because the whole situation was unprecedented. Grownups didn't recognize drug use, nor did they know how to deal with it. Kids were convinced that warnings against drugs were just a ploy. I mean, look at Reefer Madness. Who could believe anything after watching that?
I was one of the few (read "only") people in my circle who didn't do drugs, and that was because my first boyfriend died of an overdose. Four other kids at my school had died of overdoses within the previous six months. I was still reeling from the death of my boyfriend when I was in a car with a group of people who found a friend unconscious and convulsing in a park from heroin. So they packed him in the car and drove him to the fire station where they left him on the front lawn (they were afraid of being arrested if they stepped forward). I can still remember the grunts and the convulsions during the drive to the fire station. He died a few hours later. He was 16.
Needless to say I was a) suffering from a serious case of post traumatic stress syndrome and b) terrified of drugs. I'd have freak out panic attacks if I was around anyone who did them...and everyone did them.
Other highlights from that era include: My mother going to the morgue to identify a body they thought was mine. Holding the belt for junkies when they shot up (they tried to teach me how to insert the needle, but I wasn't any good at it). Having a plate piled high with powdered mescaline in front of me, and a box of capsules, and tapping the capsules into the mescaline to fill them up for a drug dealer (everyone else licked their fingers, while I carefully washed my hands afterward, and hoped it didn't leach through the skin). Getting raided, and hiding under a bed while the drug dealer and his cohorts hid the drugs in the gutter outside the window, and told their very untrue stories to the police.
It went on and on and on. Horrible times, really. I would never go back.
And during this period, I read Go Ask Alice and made a mental note to myself while I was watching the movie: "This is just exactly the way it is." I can't find the movie anywhere, but would be interested in seeing it again from a different perspective.
So, my son is totally straight. We started the lectures when he was three: don't do drugs. And he doesn't. He's always the designated driver, and has never come home even smelling of booze.
