I honor all victims of crime, greed, sexual assault, or any predatory act by another.

"I'll die young, but it's like kissing God"
Lenny Bruce, about opium/heroin





The next summer was a good one. I spent the summer kissing God and a Paul Newman lookalike at the drive-in! I met "Paul" the previous winter at an outdoor music festival. He was a senior in high school and I was a junior but we were in different schools. We had fun together and it was especially fun when we had dope. He did look very, very much like Paul Newman but with green eyes and longer hair.
Paul was the youngest of 3 children. His father had been in the Navy.



Philanthropist, actor Paul Newman

During that year I had enough of a steady habit that I needed to take more initiative to come up with money for drugs. I started stealing and forging checks to maintain. I was expelled from my high school for stealing money from someone's purse during PE. I would spend part of my last year of high school attending the one Paul had gone to. I am sad and sorry to say that I stole money, jewelry, and checks from my parents, too.

As mentioned, the summer was spent shooting dope, going to the beach, going to the drive-in, and shooting more dope in the car before hopping into the back seat. It was your typical summer with the heroin added. The times with drugs were just fine but life without turned into an unhappy detour with a sniffle and a sun that was way too bright for comfort. Opiates give a soft veil to see life through and without that gentle buffer it was harsh and intense.

Paul and I drifted apart once school started in the autumn of that year. Again, I was on my own to feed my steady habit. I needed to fix each morning before school. I met other junkies along the way and, with one or the other, would pool resources to get through the days until someone else came along with a better connection or more money. I would give a ride in my car or let them use my needle ("fit") in exchange for a shot.

I hung around with one guy who smuggled dope into the country. That was a sure thing until, I guess, I got too demanding and he cut me off. At that point, my dad helped me to get into a hospital detoxification program. I had entered junior high with A's and B's, but I dropped out of high school with D's, "Incompletes", and a habit of about $50.00 per day (back then - 1970).



By this time in my life, the sweet coating around that bitter pill had worn off. There was no routine, security, or continuity in anything for me. My care and concern seldom wandered in the direction of someone else. Symptoms of depression crept in, too, if I had no heroin. There was nothing to look forward to and no reason to have hope.

From my experiences and/or scientific research finally making it's way into the mainstream, I see that in most addicts there is some kind of neuro-chemical imbalance. Substance P, opiate receptors, and other things have a bearing on how we "feel" or how our brains perceive events and emotions. The heroin then changes the addicts actual brain function. There is also a spiritual bankruptcy that goes with alcoholism and addiction. I am not sure if it was there inside of me earlier or if it was just something that was obvious toward the later serious level of addiction and the withdrawals. If no heroin was around, a Hershey bar would quiet a little voice inside for a little while. The chocolate receptor is apparently very close to the opiate receptor, if not the same thing.

I want to say again that doing drugs is a very dumb thing. Although you don't mean to, you will get used to the feeling and end up addicted. Once an addict, you will do every single thing you swore you'd never do if you were to become addicted. Actually, you'll do more. It is because you turn into a completely different person. The happy, carefree child who could even bear some pain will become an inwardly-desperate, guarded person, totally lacking in concern for anyone else. Pain is unbearable but there will be a whole lot of it. The feeling of "completeness" that comes when the drug is first tried will be more difficult, then impossible, to find again. I am still amazed that I discovered that blissful state once again only when I stopped taking drugs. Being drug-free, prayer, and meditation have come to satisfy my constant search, but not before wasting about a decade of my life and losing many cherished friendships. During that time, there was no growth. It was like I had stopped maturing and feeling. I had to learn to deal with some things all over again.

Unless you really like to suffer, don't do drugs. m

In April 1969, I met Clark. He was tall, blonde, and handsome. He was a year older than I was and he went to a continuation high school. We met one morning before school and made a date to meet that afternoon.

We got into the back of his camper truck and each did a shot of heroin. He asked if I wanted to go for a walk along a path between the pine trees and the lake. It was foggy, too, so it was very "soft and romantic". We walked along holding hands and at one point we kissed. That was one very beautiful afternoon, and romantic, and I'll always remember it that way. The added attraction of perfection courtesy of heroin sealed the experience as one of my lifetime favorites.

That July on the night of the moonlanding, we got into a fight in his apartment and I remember that he slapped me for something. The TV was turned on to the historic event but we were only paying scarce attention. He slapped me a few times during that summer and one time it was more of a slug. I slugged him right back, my sharp ring scratching his face. He tried to make me feel guilty for it, but inside I felt damned good for returning the favor, at last. During that summer I also took an overdose of barbiturates in his apartment because I was sick of the way he treated me - giving me less dope than he got, or making me wait. Heroin addicts make horrible partners. I just slept off the barbiturates until the next morning when I learned that he was sitting by watching me all night long, thinking about how much he loved me, and having his friends come in to admire the messed up "sleeping beauty" of an addict in his bed. That was too bizarre, even for me.

By that September, he was pulling some risky illegal stunts to get money for dope. He was busted for trying to break into a car in a parking lot. A wallet was left on the seat and it was very tempting. It was a set up. I just sat in the car we drove that day while he tried to get the wallet. The undercover cop told me how smart I was to stay in the car. If I had set foot outside the car, I would have been busted, too. The detective drove me home to my parents' house. I knew it wasn't "smart"; it was just dumb luck. I don't think it was luck but just plain good sense that kept me from joining Clark when he asked me to elope to Las Vegas. He came knocking at my window one night, sandwiches and juice in his truck for the trip, because he couldn't live without me. He ended up doing time for the break-in and the last I heard he joined the army.



Eight years later, I had a call from one of my best friends. Darlene was staying in the penthouse of a hotel nearby with her boyfriend. He was a cocaine dealer. I agreed to go visit her although I was not comfortable with the way cocaine changed peoples' personalities to such a point of unpredictability and aggression.

I arrived around 7:00 p.m. The guy looked sleazy and I noticed a gun lying on a coffee table. Darlene asked me to come into the bathroom with her while she shot up some coke. I was offered but I never liked stimulants and opted out. I watched while Darlene took several shots and we talked about what had been going on in our lives.

The night quickly turned into a hellish scene. Darlene started to hallucinate. She thought police were walking around on the roof outside the bathroom window. Hallucinations and paranoia are the ever-present signs of someone not in control because of their cocaine abuse. Combine that with an addict's self-centered need to maintain their good relations with the drug supplier, and this is what you get.

Darlene flushed a quarter of a baggie of cocaine down the toilet in her drugged paranoia. Then she passed out. The boyfriend, his friend, and I were there to make sure Darlene regained consciousness. When she was asked by her boyfriend why the empty baggie was floating in the toilet, Darlene blamed the whole thing on me! I was shocked and at that point afraid for my safety. Darlene and I did some quick talking while we walked to the door. The boyfriend was now standing there with the gun in hand. I got home as the sun was beginning to rise to a beautiful new day. Before they left town, the deranged duo managed to rip off one of my friends at gunpoint for a police scanner he owned.

I consider it my good fortune that I never saw any of these people again.



A woman in a relationship with an addict is looking at a violent life. I have seen it happen over and over again. With the exception of plain marijuana use, someone using drugs will get violent. Heroin does not make someone violent but it goes along with the addict's lifestyle and maybe it is because of the anger the person feels at his powerlessness over the drug.

Cocaine and speed cause paranoia and violent aggression. I have seen it, too, time after time. If you add alcohol to the drugs, you have a psycho on your hands. Every few years I hear of a woman being murdered by her husband or partner who was on coke or speed and outraged at her for wanting to never see him again or get a divorce. From choking, to drowning, to knives, and baseball bats, those drugs release a monster. In a sickening dark world, that is the darkest place by far. It is so much better to not get involved or be involved with a partner who does those drugs.

If you know of someone in a relationship with a drug-user who is violent as I described above, you might have a tough choice to make. The person needs to get away from the user. It is a treacherous road to travel with a goal of getting away from an addict. It gets more dangerous, possibly, before it gets safer, if it ever does. A friend helped me years ago, God bless her soul, despite being pushed around while getting my things out of the house I shared with yet another psycho heroin addict boyfriend. If I were getting away from a speed or coke user, I'd go to a different state or country, change my name, and sever all ties to the old town. Police or sheriffs have to be involved. They will be the only ones able to exert influence or control. And this is why they hate family disturbance calls so much. Very, very dangerous.

It's not just men who get violent either. I saw a woman on cocaine actually rip a pay phone off the wall of a holding cell in a jail. Not just the cord; the entire machine. It's something about that adrenalin or the chemicals in stimulants. These things are truly a curse on our lives when in the hands of an abuser.