The media says heroin is making a comeback. In front of me on my computer screen is yet another article about it.
I think back to Tucson in the sixties. Palo Verde High School had what we teachers called a heroin ring.
Timothy Leary was out in California telling our students the wonders of LSD. He wanted them to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Most of our high school students had gotten scared when a University of Arizona student took an LSD “trip” and imagined himself Jesus Christ. He could do anything. He walked down the center stripe of the freeway to Phoenix. He could stop the traffic. The traffic didn’t stop. The high school students went back to other drugs. They thought heroin was safer.
I think back to lives wasted and changed forever. Several times after a student had been absent for several days, someone would report their decision to drop out and go to Haight-Asbury.
One year the school did a magnificent production of the musical Showboat. The community turned out and the praise for the talented cast was high. The young man who had the lead had an outstanding voice and everyone thought he had a bright future. They said he would go far. He chose heroin instead of going far.
A girl dropped out and moved in with her boyfriend in a drug house close to the university. Her frantic parents plead with her to come home. She told friends that she was enjoying marijuana and LSD. Her father took some friends for support, removed her from the house and took her back to their home at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The angry boyfriend was determined to get her back. He and some friends somehow gained entrance to the base. He went to the door of her home and demanded she come out. His friends waited in the car. The father shot the boy several times with a pistol. He then ran into the yard and started firing at the car killing the driver. He went back into the house and fired more shots into the body of the boyfriend. It was a horrific scene.
The next week my students were sullen and accusingly said, “This is how your generation solves problems. They just kill someone.” The friends of the girl reported that she was angry and distraught. Her father had accidently wounded himself in the fray and was in the base hospital. She refused to see him.
A few weeks later I was talking to some students before class. Some friends of the girl had been to see her. She and her Dad had talked and she was now blaming herself for what had happened. One said, “She thinks that her Dad loves her so much that he just went crazy at the thought of her being on drugs.” They were wondering if she might be right.
Heroin. Ugly word.
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2 responses to “HEROIN”
Yes, it is an ugly word & has ugly results. I’ve seen it thru friend’s families & yes, thru my own. My sister tried it but didn’t like it. My brother tried it & liked it. My brother was an alcoholic from his first drink at the age of 10 from a neighbor’s liquor cabinet. Our house was & is “dry”. At his death at the age of 47, he was using heroin & cocaine to medicate for pain from his liver disease in the form of cirrhosis of the liver. It was a long & painful death chosen by his own hand but I choose to believe that it is a disease that runs thru families in the genes of their ancestors. I’ve seen it too many times in families both close & afar. That same gene has to lay the basis for an addictive personality who is open to any & all addictive substances. I never in my whole life had any desire to try out those illegal substances, although, they were easily available down here on the border. Only the “crazies” used those or even tried them. They never held any attraction for me. Our young generation today are so open to trying all these things to be “cool”. Wonder how many of them are hooked for life as my brother was? Only time will tell. Heroin is a “killer” choice in life!!
That is sad but “well said,” Dottie. We too have a genetic predisposition in our family which has been for alcohol.