Drugs, Alcohol

Drugs, Alcohol

By the time I reached MHS in the fall of 1970, we were already drinking beer on the weekends. 14, 15 years old, one of us would stand outside a liquor store with a puppy dog face and wait for a dad to walk in, hand him the 10 bucks we had all scraped together, and get him to buy us a cheap case of Rheingold or Pabst.

Pot was everywhere, and a bag, an “Oh-Zee”, an ounce of Mexican went for about 10 bucks, and was just a mild stimulant compared to what Marijuana is now. You would walk into the high school in the morning, and pass through a fog of kids toking up in the parking lot or out in back of the school out by the bleachers. You worked some shitty job at the mall or mowing lawns for 2-3 bucks an hour, then went to an Allman Bros or Grateful Dead concert at the Nassau Colliseum or Madison Square Garden in the city for eight bucks a ticket. It wasn’t that expensive. General Admission meant that you cut school, and stood in line all day to get in, smoking and drinking, so that by the time the doors opened, you had already passed out once or twice. You’d finally go in, the place would go dark, and joints would be moving up and down the rows. You wouldn’t know where they came from, and you wouldn’t care.

Parties were at any house where the parents were gone for the weekend. We could only have sex with our girlfriends in our cars, so any parentless house meant that you could get an hour in some kid’s sister’s or brother’s bedroom. Don’t mess it up. You’d walk in the party, and the drinking would be in the house, mostly beer, but some kids would be drinking vodka or tequila. The pot smoking would be out in the back yard. Sometimes there would be windowpane or blotter acid around, and you would walk in a dark room with spacey music and kids laying on couches motionless, and you knew that’s what was going on.

Sometimes, some kid would show up with pills, white, blue, brown, long or short, and tell you and your friends it was speed, or thc, or whatever else, and you would all just take it cause fuck it. It was fun. Sometimes the pill would take you places you didn’t want to go, but most of the rest of the time it was a pleasant night drifting through the scattered lights and shifting sounds.

I am not proud of any of this, and I probably could have done better if I had not been involved in any of it, but all of these things were around everywhere when I was in high school, and it was the way we all lived.

Now we are all over 60 and have all lived fairly successful lives, meaning that we have gotten to the other side, raised kids, had mostly good paying jobs with wives and family, and gotten good things out of life. Somehow, most of us have seen it through in one piece. Surprising, seeing where we came from, but a lesson learned that growing older sometimes has a way of working itself out all on its own.

I don’t know. That’s my memories of it all. It was a different world back then.