Instead of giving a long list of drugs, it is easier to say what I didn't do. Cocaine was one of them that I never did as it was expensive and very hard to get. PCP because I never really found myself in any type of setting I felt I would enjoy it or feel comfortable in. Heroine and Crystal Meth were out of the question as I knew the effects of their use.

At a prior scout meeting, we saw a film of intravenous drug users with their sad lives and attitudes were tracked. Including their emergency room visits. with their ODs and having tubes put through their nose and their arm sliced up to find one good vein. While Heroine was out, opium was fair game, but it was a very occasional high. Its effects did add, a certain, cheeriness to things, but I considered it very overrated. As for everything else; pretty much fair game, but I did try to be smart about it.

Pills were wonderful and had such a variety of effects, but most that would be sold to us were counterfeit. Things like yellow jackets and black beauties, were over the counter stimulants, anti histamines or sleep aids. I remembered my mother's nursing book stash; with being sequestered in my room for poor grades and having read the dictionary and encyclopedias many times over, I devoted my studies to pharmacology.

Another great resource was a community organization that had the ability to identify drugs and offer advice. I found out what the street talk about them was, dosages and side effects, plus symptoms of overdose. I had a feeling that Mom sensed my use, as the, "Physician's Desk Reference," sort of a Bible for pills, showed up at the house.

I lucked out, when I found my father counting his diet pills. Instead of filching them, I got my own gel capsules and took his apart to skim about a third of a dosage which I combined. I considered a good dose to get high about 1 ½ times the recommended dosage. More would have its effect and the community organization let it be known that they were very strong and addictive, with constant abuse resulting in kidney and liver damage, so I backed off.

The first few days of 9th grade yielded a new substance. I inquired to the guy sitting next to me in art about LSD. He said that he had four hits of red dragon and I immediately purchased and gobbled them, with him exclaiming, "Hey, you shouldn't do that. You can't OD on LSD, but they cut it with strychnine and if you become a tripper like I think you are, you'll die of rat poisoning."

I relished the experience, but thought that LSD was quite overstated, as it didn't seem strong to me at all, though it did last about twelve hours. One of Tim's friends said that type wasn't anything and sold me a hit of White Windowpane. I said that the blotter doesn't have anything printed on it and he laughed. With just one hit of that, I was off and running for two days. I remember the Social Studies teacher yelling at the class, and with a silent mental command; I made her disappear until she stopped yelling. I was amazed to see the letters on the chalk board appear behind her as she vanished. It reminded me just how powerful memory can be.

This getting high, was actually a point of diminishing returns and slowly I realized the impact it had on me. First, I started to burn out a little around Thanksgiving, getting through about five class periods high and then having a little twenty minute headache. By Christmas, I was only staying high for four periods and had a headache for a whole period. Around Easter Vacation the high was only for a couple of periods and at least half a day burning out. Nights didn't bother me, as I was kept in my room and could rest any effects off.

There was another thing changing, our behaviors. In September, Timmy was still going to Scouts fairly constantly, but that changed to infrequently around November. I know I didn't help things much, as I talked him into letting me try driving his car in the church's parking lot. Tim was always a good hearted, but gullible person and I talked him into putting me into the driver's seat. I figured it would be the funniest thing in the world to drive up to scouts and say, "Hey guys, I drove us here."

Instead, I pushed down the accelerator petal and was shooting like a missile towards them and avoiding a catastrophe, I turned the steering wheel and froze. We were now headed at a big tree, with a bush and a cement porch to our right. I pretty much figured that we were dead, but Tim grabbed the steering wheel and sent us through the bush. Tim had me switch places, with no idea what to say.

The Assistant Pastor came out and demanded to know what happened. Tim couldn't think of anything and said, "I don't know, all of a sudden the car speeded up and I thought it best to keep it pointed straight. The Pastor suspiciously looked inside the car and started laughing. The floor had 8-Track tapes strewn about from the commotion. "Well I always called what you listen to as Devil music. One of those tapes, slid around on the floor until your accelerator petal got stuck."

Hell, both Timmy and I were happy with that. We offered to replace the bush, but the Pastor was grateful that we weren't hurt and his house wasn't damaged. By this time the adult Scout leaders were walking over, but the Pastor waved them off and said that everything was fine, explaining what he thought happened.

It was becoming apparent to me that Timmy was in the process of leaving scouts. It wasn't because of the car incident, though it didn't help; it was because many of Tim's scouting friends had already left, he was a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster who was more or less just hanging around. Also his job as a dishwasher, the fact that he was discovering girls, and desiring to party on, changed his priorities into leaving.

I drew my line at partying with Friday nights, as I still much preferred going to the Scout meetings. My fellow freak friends respected that, and if anyone gave me crap about it, those friends stood up for me.

The strange thing was they appreciated that sense of adventure I got from Scouts. Another troop member, John started to occasionally hang with us and believe me, he was a trip. He just wouldn't keep his mouth shut, as he boasted about his Marijuana crop of two plants. They weren't six foot high like he said, but two feet instead and they were stripped by the weekend, with the spoils being split. We were all ears and told him that we'll keep an eye out for who did it and let him know.

He also got hold of this new super weed that really fucked you up. The first one to try was Richard, he took one puff and said, "What the fuck! What the hell is this shit!" Boydie checked it out and it turned out to be hay with Marijuana seeds in it. We deemed it as, "Super seedy," before he got thrown across the stream, by Richard and made to leave.

A new pursuit became fireworks and our desire to make them was incredible. While we fancied ourselves as pyrotechnicians, we were mostly turning out smoke bombs. Then we started to succeed with gunpowder and moved on to flash powder. But really, the firecrackers and occasional M-80's were much better.

John's mom bought him anything that he wanted, so we considered it a risk to be in his bedroom with all of the loaded guns that he kept around. He had a remote controlled model airplane that he wanted to drop bombs with, but needed help. I spent two hours telling him how to design a nose fuse, but he couldn't grasp it. Another one of my friends from scouts, spent about the same amount of time to develop a tail fuse with the same results.

His idea was a CO2 cartridge with a percussion cap stuck on it, but he wanted us to test it out. He came up with a BS excuse on why he couldn't come along. We went to the cliffs of the park and dropped it; the percussion cap ignited with a pop, but we believed that the powder snuffed the spark out. With our second attempt, we lost the percussion cap because the cylinder didn't hit square.

My Scouting friend and I; still wanted to test it out so we headed downstream. We ran into his school's cast party around Suicide Hill and we said that we had a stick of dynamite hanging around. Of course they didn't believe us. A short distance away, we set the CO2 cylinder on a cement base and pulled apart a couple of fire crackers, using the fuse for the cylinder and the powder was put in a folded piece of paper. That would still be too fast, so we set up a match as well. My famous last words were, "If we don't have the physics figured out on this right, we'll blow our heads off."

We lit it and ran away, after a short period, my friend said, "It's not working," and started to run back. Just as I grabbed him, it exploded with a bang and a shock wave. Scared ourselves, we ran into the crowd who disbanded all over the park with the people that we told, seeking out the damage.

In spring, Tim and I set out on bikes so that we could pick up a gross of M-80's. We paid our money and on our way home there was a police officer staring at us. Tim wanted to run, so I had to keep him calm and demand that he don't do that as it would make more trouble for us. The police officer ended up, putting his glass on the top of his head and his hand on his chin, letting us know that he knew. We figured that we were caught, but he didn't follow us after the light changed. It turned out that the back of the bag had several rips in it and the fuses were sticking out like crazy.

In short order, Double Rock Park was renamed by many of its surrounding neighbors as Double Rock Proving Grounds. If there was any way that we could maximize the sound of the blast and its concussion, we did. We even put them into bottles and fired them off in a hollow tree trunk that acted like a cannon.

Ironically, it was the unintentional mistakes that created the best blasts. I wanted to make a thirty foot shower of sparks, so contained the powder from a particular type of firework. I could wait for the clock to ring in the New Year, so I asked mom if I could light a homemade firecracker off, saving her from a complex explanation. She grudgingly gave me permission, laughing while she added, "Don't blow yourself up."

Will I lit my baby off! In addition of rattling the windows of every house for two hundred feet, and cracking one of ours; it blew a six inch hole in the frozen ground and put shrapnel in the neighbor's house. When I went back inside, I was informed that I had just been retired from the fireworks business by Mom.

Ironically, we made sure that we were always straight as we knew the dangers of what we lit off. We would then party and go over and over our pyrotechnical accomplishments.

As far as mom was concerned, it only took one time to give her my perpetual respect. I wanted to go somewhere with Tim and she said, "No."

I stuck my finger in her face and said, "Let me tell you something, you fucking bi-." She had a wet diaper in her hand and she swung it like a baseball bat. With a painful white flash, I hit the ground.

Mom stood over me and said, "You're going to have one hell of a shiner, and you're going to tell everybody the truth on how you got it." I never messed with her again and she commanded my deepest of respects. God knows that she had her suspicions, but quietly tried to steer me in better directions, yet somehow understood that I have to find may own way and learn to make my decisions.

After that single incident, my mother had God's respect out of me, but Dad was a different story. He was always suspicious. Occasionally walking up to me and asking, "What are you on?" I looked at him like he was crazy. The funny thing was, just after I started smoking pot, I picked up a book to read for our family vacation called, "Teen Challenge," by the Reverend David Wilkerson.

It was about how he decided to challenge the bad teens of New York City and his establishment of the Teen Challenge program for youth offenders. Despite my activities, I thought it was neat that someone thought enough about troubled teens. Despite my activities, I didn't consider myself troubled in the slightest. I had a good family, good friends and everything was fun.



During this period, I also decided to prove myself as God's gift to women and get laid. I thought about my promise to Jean, but what was entering my mind was, "God damn it! I know I promised her, but I gave her every chance in the world and she won't even have me over!" I was frustrated and tired of putting off what I should be experiencing.

I basically verbally assaulted every woman, between 13 and 30 with a cacophony of lines that always worked in the movies, misstated come ons, explicit demands and purulent suggestions. I shocked women, got angry responses and shoot downs. Sure got laughed at a lot as well. One time, I realized my mistake when a guy turned around with a fist in his hand, but when he had to look down, he quietly started laughing.

The woman said, "For what you said, my husband's going to beat you up!"

He started to laugh out and told me, "Hey, if you think you can handle her, you can have your way with her." The response that the wife had over what he said definitely illustrated his point, and I considered him the better man.

I knew a girl from church that she made out for getting high. This was something I saw happen on a religious retreat. Figuring that she partied, I kept in touch and tried to do something with her, but she was always being punished.

She finally had a break with this, so she could go to my pool and that she wanted to get high. I thought the speed was best. That was easy for me to produce, but when we picked her up, she slipped her younger sister in the car as well.

While I had visions of swimming with her and making out, she made it clear that she didn't want me around. "I am only here to have fun with my sister and don't really care for you to hang around with me at all."

We were supposed to watch a movie, but she quietly asked me to leave. Upset, I gobbled her pill too and went high diving, until my father got me and chewed me out for not watching the movie with her. I was so grateful when Dad finally dropped her back home. In addition to feeling well used, I felt like a first class ass.

The problem was, our family only had one air conditioner and I slept on my parent's floor. Doing nothing but tossing and turning, I left. Dad accused me of being on speed, but I simply stated, "Look! I'll be honest, I wanted to make out with her, but she only came so she could escape her punishments. She didn't want me to hang around her. I'm upset about being used, even though I got what I deserved."

Being a freak seemed to be a great way to get myself laid, as everyone knew that freak girls were loose and would fuck at a drop of a hat. This turned out not to be the case, and if I acted like an asshole or horny jerk, I was treated like that. My friends were constantly telling me to keep it cool and to stop embarrassing them.

In short order, I ended up just enjoying my time, by hanging around with them as there were qualities about the freak girls, I had never seen in other women. They were very forgiving and most were friendly to me, after I calmed down and stopped trying to talk them into sex. I got to loving them for their straight forwardness and friendliness, just enjoying and having a good time with them and hanging around together.

It was strange that when I was offered to be set up with a woman that did have sex, or if one occasionally offered, I would decline. It wasn't fear; as my throbbing hormones negated any fear that I had, but the fact that I now considered that making love, should have some meaning to it. I told myself while I wasn't waiting for Jean, it would be nice if love making was something special. I really didn't think about her much because I don't think that she would be very happy about my life at that time.