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I grew up in the 60's to 70's, in Kansas City MO's version of the hippie district. Wetsport neighborhood. I saw daily, and nightly, the effects of recreational drug use by some of our neighbors, hear about it from my oldest sister who was in HS, etc. It convinced me that drug use was not the road I was interested in going down.
I decided ..by age 9..that I would never drink, smoke tobacco, or use illegal drugs. And I have stuck with it. That culture is just not attractive to me in the least.
That has run through my head as well, but since the OP has set the parameters of the discussion I didn't make any comments about it.
One thing that was very clear during the 60's and 70's (at least in my slice of NYC life and my neighborhood) was that heroin was not part of the increasingly widespread "drug scene." Heroin was already a huge cultural no-no before Hippiedom was founded, and it remained that way. Anyone - and there was almost no one - who was whispered to have tried or be trying heroin became social dead meat pronto. These people very quickly got shoved to the sideline of social groups. Heroin users were considered a whole different scene, and they were poison.
I too saw the shift to the sudden burst in the availability of coke and its derivatives in the Eighties.
(Just quickly - the reasons have their roots in the political policy vis-a-vis marijuana, which big time drug dealers quickly realized was a huge blessing in disguise. Enter cheap cocaine. Easier and safer to import in large quantities, and far more profitable than MJ even when sold relatively cheaply. Think: if you have to charge $120 retail for 1 ounce of grass, why not sell one GRAM of coke for $95 instead of the former $120. There are 28 grams in an ounce! So, drop inconvenient MJ, blame the success of the government drug program, and start pushing easy to import, fabulously profitable cocaine. )
But the impact of cocaine on those people who were willing to switch - or who were introduced to it as their first drug instead of MJ, could be devastating , and I knew a few people who suffered huge dents in their financial and physical lives because of cocaine.
However, in my range of experience there was hardly any use of coke in the Sixties or early Seventies. I presume because of the enormous cost of it at that time and the unwillingness of many small retail dealers to get involved with a hard drug. By the mid-70's I was working in a geeky, but also conservatively toned environment. However, one of the associate directors was a real Mr. Cool, and he socialized in the crowd around an old established female jazz singer, and he was patronizing the more expensive of the trendy discos, like Olivier Coquelin's Hippopotamus which was a jet set euro-disco. "Mr. Cool" and that set could afford coke back then, but certainly not anyone in a crowd I hung out with. But...it was "in the air," so to speak as a kind of glamour drug status symbol.
Seems to me that these that insisted on doing their own thing, were not doing their own thing, but fallowing the crowd to willing destruction.
No wonder there are so many liberals.
You would have thought that a younger generation would have seen the failed lifestyle's of their liberal parents, and refuse to go that way.
America is doomed.
I weep for you . and for your future.
I did not. I was on my own at the time, working and attending college as I could, trying to escape from a wretched childhood and build a decent life for myself. I felt as though I needed my wits about me at all times and couldn't afford the fuzzy mind and zoning out involved with drugs, or alcohol for that matter. I also couldn't afford it.
Seems to me that these that insisted on doing their own thing, were not doing their own thing, but fallowing the crowd to willing destruction.
No wonder there are so many liberals. You would have thought that a younger generation would have seen the failed lifestyle's of their liberal parents, and refuse to go that way.
America is doomed.
I weep for you . and for your future.
The OP's time slot is the 60's and 70's, I'm curious as to what "failed lifestyle of their liberal parents" you imagine the younger people in this era might have been emulating.
The population we are talking about spanned the ages from late teens to well into their thirties. Their parents would have been beginning their families in the Forties and Thirties. Even someone who was only age 20 in 1979 would have been born as early as 1959. I certainly did not experience WW II and the early post-war era as a time marked by widespread liberal social values in families, and I have never even read that they were.
I didn't do drugs. I saw what they did to others back in the 60's-70's. I saw a classmate of mine have a LSD flashback right in the middle of a classroom screaming that spiders were crawling all over her. I knew that a lot of drugs were adulterated with other things, and I thought it crazy to even tempt fate. I couldn't imagine doing things with no idea of how drugs would effect me. Some people were using Cocaine all the time, and I'd be that one person that had an adverse reaction to it/ or die the first time I tried anything... Recreational use of Marijuana was a big thing- and I couldn't stand the smell of it at concerts. I tried one puff one time, and hated it. Liquor was a bad enough thing for me back then. I gave it up before I got too dependent on it. I wasn't Christian then- but I just knew it was a wrong thing to do. And no- it didn't make me a goody two-shoes, but all my friends were like me. I just ran with a different crowd and knew who to stay away from. So much pressure to be liked and be like everyone else. Sigh- what a waste of time. Bad enough that I don't eat right all the time.
Seems to me that these that insisted on doing their own thing, were not doing their own thing, but fallowing the crowd to willing destruction.
No wonder there are so many liberals.
You would have thought that a younger generation would have seen the failed lifestyle's of their liberal parents, and refuse to go that way.
America is doomed.
I weep for you . and for your future.
How does this have to do with liberals, or our futures? I cut this out 25+ years ago; the OP was asking what we did in the '70s. I was a teenager. I've enjoyed what turned out to be my future due to my efforts and education beyond high school.
Fast-forward: Here I am, quite lucid, doing perfectly well, working and contributing to the economic growth of this country. In my case, at least, this doesn't have anything to do with political affiliation. My parents were born in the '10s and '20s: they were social and fiscal conservatives who raised me comfortably in a Christian (since that seems to matter) home with high values and morals.
I made my own decisions about drugs and didn't follow a crowd; I believe I have an inherent, genetic predeliction to lean toward mood-altering substances for escapism. I'd still love to bliss out for a few hours every day on heroin (which I never tried but had enough morphine in hospital as a youth to know I'd be a goner if I did). Heroin use was and is unreasonable and impossible to me because it's illegal and dangerously, immediately addictive.
The OP's time slot is the 60's and 70's, I'm curious as to what "failed lifestyle of their liberal parents" you imagine the younger people in this era might have been emulating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobiashen
How does this have to do with liberals, or our futures?
To borrow a quote from Animal House "Forget it, he's rolling."
From what I've read here....almost everyone "experimented"; a term I find professional women in their 50s+ frequently use when addressing the issue. The girls I knew who were known "party girls" now claim to have experimented. If what they did was mere experimentation I was a full blown heroin addict. I've never seen heroin.
How many politicians in their 60s are known to have partied when younger? If a liberal democrat - Clintons, Obama and others unnamed - claim not to even smoked weed they are lying. I don't trust any politician over the age of 50 who claims not to have smoked weed. Bush partied and I am sure Jeb did as well.
Coke wasn't as prevalent in the 70s as most would believe; it hit like a tsunami in the 80s. Heroin, it was a rarity. PCP was big in the mid 70s and was the worst drug I have seen affect people.
People who suggest pot is stronger today never smoked Columbia's finest during the 70's. It was far removed from the ditch weed from Mexico,
The truly destructive drugs - evidenced today - are tobacco and alcohol. If/when you see people with green oxygen bottles or those portable oxygen concentrators you can bet heavy odds they were once 2 pack a day 60s-70s smokers and started early in their teens. I know many people who smoked cigs and drank heavy all their lives and though not all are on a breathing apparatus yet I won't be surprised when they are. People's appearance morph when using those two substances, it beats up women and their elusive appearance.
The number one drug of choice which sidelines more Americans than any other is sugar. Rotting teeth, obesity, blood pressure, diabetes, amputations and more go with this benign substance. Mix in tobacco and alcohol and it's really ugly.
More people are suffering from modern malnutrition than ever suffered from drug experiences in the 60s-70s.
From what I've read here....almost everyone "experimented"; a term I find professional women in their 50s+ frequently use when addressing the issue. The girls I knew who were known "party girls" now claim to have experimented. If what they did was mere experimentation I was a full blown heroin addict. I've never seen heroin.
How many politicians in their 60s are known to have partied when younger? If a liberal democrat - Clintons, Obama and others unnamed - claim not to even smoked weed they are lying. I don't trust any politician over the age of 50 who claims not to have smoked weed. Bush partied and I am sure Jeb did as well.
Coke wasn't as prevalent in the 70s as most would believe; it hit like a tsunami in the 80s. Heroin, it was a rarity. PCP was big in the mid 70s and was the worst drug I have seen affect people.
People who suggest pot is stronger today never smoked Columbia's finest during the 70's. It was far removed from the ditch weed from Mexico,
The truly destructive drugs - evidenced today - are tobacco and alcohol. If/when you see people with green oxygen bottles or those portable oxygen concentrators you can bet heavy odds they were once 2 pack a day 60s-70s smokers and started early in their teens. I know many people who smoked cigs and drank heavy all their lives and though not all are on a breathing apparatus yet I won't be surprised when they are. People's appearance morph when using those two substances, it beats up women and their elusive appearance.
The number one drug of choice which sidelines more Americans than any other is sugar. Rotting teeth, obesity, blood pressure, diabetes, amputations and more go with this benign substance. Mix in tobacco and alcohol and it's really ugly.
More people are suffering from modern malnutrition than ever suffered from drug experiences in the 60s-70s.
Yes, the experimental use of marijuana a few times back in the 60s is NOTHING compared with the alcoholism and heroin use today. Also anyone who thinks they are superior because they smoke tobacco and never tired marijuana is mixed up. By now everyone knows tobacco causes lung cancer so why do people still smoke???? Trying marijuana a few times amounts to nothing in comparison.
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