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Physical Symptoms

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Antigen:
rjfro22, about the 'epidemic'. I don't know where you were hanging out or what you were up to. I do know there are some bad neighborhoods and some extremely self destructive people. That's always been true. But I also know that, in those heady early daze of The Seed, the perception of an epidemic of morbid addiction was way, way overblown!

Just about the most outrageous thing my older brothers ever did was to steal a car from a neighbor while they were out, take it joy riding around town and then return it to the driveway w/o getting caught.

Me? I was only 5 or 6 years old. I spent my entire childhood after that point living under the dark cloud of The Seed. Other kids teased me, I could't react because I was supposed to be better than all those druggiekids. Some parents who my mother had tried to recruit wouldn't allow their kids to play w/ me. That hurt! Among those were the son and daughter of the BSO officer accross the street and they had been my very best friends up till I was around 9, when my sister went in and my mom tried to convince the parents that the older sister was s druggieinneedoftreatment by virtue of here (occasional) association w/ my sister. But I couldn't let it show because .... well, I think you know why.

In the rare case that someone was kind enough to try and be my friend despite all that, my mother would interrogate me over every little thing; a phone call, an unaccounted for hour... anything! Always w/ the underlying implication that I might be turning into a druggie any minute! This continued even after she transfered me to a small Christian high school.

That hysterical perception of a dangerous epidemic of drugs destroyed my life as a kid.

Now, cut to the present. Where are all the damned bodies? I know a lot of kids and young adults were smoking pot and trying out other drugs in those days. It was all the rage. Shouldn't they all be deadinsaneorinjail now? Where are all the junkies? So few people die from illegal drugs that the DOJ doesn't even bother to keep track, so they can't have all died. There were a damned lot of them!

No, the fact is that the cop's kids and just about everyone else I grew up "with" just grew up, married or not and went on to lead productive lives. Everyone I know who's now dead, a convict or problematically drug involved went through The Program.


Every man has a property in his own person.
This nobody has any right to but himself.
The labor of his body and the work of his
 hands are properly his.


--John Locke
--- End quote ---

TRUCKER:
Some people needed more help then what the seed had to offer.Further more,some people didnt need any help at all,it was everbody else that was wrong.The ones that needed more help jump of bridges or sit behind bars doin time and the ones that say it was everbody else fault now have mental anguish for the help they didnt need.Whats up! Will have more later got to go.


                  TRUCKER

cleveland:
Just wanted to add on to Trucker's and the other poster's comment that the seed wasn't equipped to deal with more extensive problems. Unfortunately, Art distrusted anyone but himself and staff he controlled so even when there were situations that needed additional help, it wasn't there. I bet that caused a lot of people pain. I know for myself, I could have used some real counseling on some issues I had to deal with.

I think the seed was effective at taking a person out of their present situation and maybe shocking them into making a change. That seems to have worked for both of these people.

I think that might have worked for me too, if:

a. I had had a serious drug problem (I didn't)
b. I'd been encouraged to leave and start living my own productive life
c. I'd been taught how to deal with the world as it actually is instead of dividing everything up into Seedlings (us, all good) and Druggies (everyone else, all bad) and nothing in between.

But obviously, even with flaws, it did work for some of you and I am glad that it did, although if it was worth it for some of the other people Greg talks of who were harmed, and the Drug War in general that Ginger discusses, that's the bigger debate today, I think.

Hey, my mom's a drunk today and if there were a seed to stick her in...you know, it would be tempting...I'm sort of kidding here...

_________________
Wally Gator[ This Message was edited by: cleveland on 2004-09-24 12:00 ]

rjfro22:
Antigen,
              You were too young at the time, to really have experienced  it in the same way. Do you remember the Dania jetties or Grenalds park and every concert in south florida.
they were huge drug fests of dealing and thousands of teen mixing every king of drug you can think off, and let's not forget all the rock stars of that 1970 to 1973 that over -dosed. Kids were overdosing in school.
Every where you went in those days there were drugs. Peer pressure was at it's worst.
the hippie culture by this time had become main tream, right after Woodstock and Easy Rider. The influence in film and music  was a big factor, and most of our parents really did'nt have a clue. Your mother over reacted out of the fear of what she was hearing. They really did not understand. I remember ft lauderdale beach back then, it was unbelievable, freaks every where. You could get any thing you wanted  every where. Does anyone remember how it was?  I was there it was crazy . fact

Antigen:
Yeah, I remember the legend. Remember Pirates' World? Or under the Pompano pier? Granted, I wasn't old enough to go out to all those places back then. However, all of my older brothers and all of their friends were and did. I knew them long term. I know what became of them. Generally speaking, Seedlings moved out of town and those not "fortunate" enough to recieve the blessing of Art's help stayed close w/ their families and continue to live and operate businesses or work jobs to this day.

There was a short lived fad in excessive drug use. I'm sure someone has overdosed at school at one time or another, but it certainly wasn't a widespread problem. The one story I remember about a rock concert was that a 13yo girl was trampled to death when the crowd rushed the stage.

But if there had been hundreds and thousands of genuine teenaged addicts in need of addiction treatment, then why did Art go after casual pot smokers and work so hard at convincing the parents, cops and everyone else that pot was a gateway to heroin addiction?

The obvious answer (Occam's Razor) is that there wasn't that much of a market for addiction treatment.

If you were actually addicted and in need of help, I'm sorry to hear it and glad you beat it. But you must know that most of those kids who got into the Summer of Love fad didn't let it take over their lives. There was no epidemic. Not even a pandemic. If there had been, then why was The Seed packed w/ kids who were not addicts and why all the hard work to get them to confess to being addicts when they clearly were not?

You say my mom overreacted. I won't argue against that, she certainly did. The only one of the 6 of us to escape The Seed was my older sister who was already in college. And she remains the only one of us w/ a 4 year degree.

But it's not asif my mother somehow got it into her head, all on her own, that druggies were everywhere and all of her kids and everyone in the neighborhood needed The Seed. Art pounded that drum continually and the Group and Staff reenforced it relentlessly.



Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.  
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

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