BRIDGE FROM NO PLACE

[Music] [Music] when peggy and i moved into this house we thought it was just a normal house where people were using some acid some grass maybe some speed we found out there was a lot of shooting up going on some people were using heroin to the point that we couldn't trust each other anymore the work wasn't getting done we began to lie to each other so peggy and i took a stand against hard narcotics we called a house meeting the house members agreed that we wouldn't have any more heroin or methadrine in the house yet some people found these two drugs just too groovy to give up and it sort of destroyed the whole house now we build it up again up again up again now we build it up again my fair lady [Music] [Music] now we build it up again up again a communal is destroyed by heroin but to most of us a more important and meaningful institution is also being destroyed with alarming frequency the american home narcotics and their relatives amphetamines and barbiturates rip apart the fabric of family life at every social and economic level the tragic aftermath fills hospitals prisons and rehabilitation centers across the country the entire question of drug use is vastly complex the drugs themselves are many and varied the precise information available to us when it does exist is often cloaked in myth and controversy drug users do not fit within any comfortable grouping they are young as well as old they are disadvantaged but often affluent i i do the hard narcotics for escape i do the uh i do the more interesting drugs are psychedelic drugs for learning it wasn't enough for me to smoke i needed something else the drug scene in vietnam is really a strange scene um it's hard to describe like drugs are very prevalent they're all over the place you can get um marijuana can you go out and pick it i was um a very nervous uptight lost little girl and after i turned on i may not have found the answer to everything but at least you know it didn't seem of such immediate danger to me heroin is is a painkiller it kills all pain it kills mental physical anguish it kills anxiety it kills boredom it it produces pleasure just based on the drug itself and nothing else got to the point where everything i did uh everything i made i poured into the habit the problem is i'm in a drug culture at one time it was considered unusual for anyone under the age of 16 to be experimenting with drugs but now it is not uncommon to see it among six graders and in one well-to-do school on the west coast the drug experiment is numbered among 70 of the student population a house destroyed a house that can be rebuilt the man who stands at the center of the rebuilding operation and who shoulders much of the nation's concern over drug abuse is dr stanley f euless the aim of the national program is to rehabilitate the estimated 100 000 narcotic addicts and the estimated half million persons in the united states who regularly abuse non-narcotic drugs because drug abuse and drug dependence is apparently the result of physical psychological social and other factors the research supported by the national institute of mental health or carried out directly by the national institute of mental health must range from basic studies on the mechanisms of drug action on the addicting qualities of new drugs and how they act in the body to studies of social patterns of drug abuse as well as studies of new methods of treatment and rehabilitation deep in the heart of kentucky's bluegrass country is the town first and foremost associated with the treatment of narcotic addicts since the first prisoner patient was admitted in 1935 the federal hospital at lexington and its companion at fort worth texas have borne the brunt of caring for these little understood and often feared and much maligned american dope addicts for decades these hospitals themselves have been maligned and misunderstood they have often been cited as prime examples of how hopeless it is to treat much less cure an addict it is well to remember that when opened these institutions were only a first step in society's enlightened policy towards the drug addict while steel bars and grill windows are necessary to enforce the punitive side of our judgment national conscience for the first time suggested research treatment rehabilitation since 1967 many changes have taken place the bars and the grills are being removed taking emphasis off the custodial aspects a hospital now called the clinical research center and administered by the national institute of mental health has intensified its research into many approaches to rehabilitation one technique basic to many treatment methods is encouraging addicts to help addicts by working together playing together and just being together within the same complex at lexington as another center this one engaged in addiction research its mission is to investigate the nature of the drugs themselves our understanding of the scientific working of drugs their physical effects on people what changes they cause in the body are questions to which we have few precise answers have another one sure yeah why not that's free yeah you come with patients from the clinical research center volunteer for a variety of tests involving the actual intake of drugs to the outsider these tests may appear meaningless and from a conservative point of view immoral however they bring us closer to a clearer understanding of the chemical relationship between body and whether the agent is marijuana a marijuana cigarette a synthetic drug or one of the opiates highly sophisticated equipment measures the concentration of drug molecules within the body this enables the researcher to compare what he sees in human behavior with what the instrument reveals the drug is doing to the body's organs tissues and chemistry through experiments such as the the addiction center has racked up an impressive record and unmasking supposedly non-addicting pharmaceuticals the center demonstrated the addictive nature of the barbiturate certain tranquilize and even perform pioneering work in the understanding of alcoholism while lexington's outpost in the wilderness of drug research was amassing information on the addict and on the drug little else little else in the country was being done during the 40s and the 50s more and more people fell victim not only to heroin but to a host of synthetics while long used as a means of temporary escape from the ghetto marijuana in 1963 became one of the symbols of a youth in revolution our criminal statutes became harsher penalties stiffer there was virtually no difference in the eyes of the law between selling a deck of heroin on a street corner or selling marijuana in a college dorm but in the 1960s there were also signs of progress in both the understanding of the addict's problem and in the law our narcotics laws have created a web which the addicts need for money leads to crimes crimes which reinforces the punitive enforcement of the narcotics law and thus drives the addict deeper and deeper into secretiveness and fear california started a civil commitment program the first state to do so even though high fences and barbed wire were constant reminders that inmates were still prisoners the accent was not on punishment rather treatment aside from early federal programs at lexington and fort worth it was the first time the public institution was used to treat addicts instead of just confining them new york 1962 the metcalfe boca act allowed many of the state's addicts to elect hospital treatment instead of prison sentence the 1960 saw enactment of the first major federal law designed to realistically appraise the addict's problem and restore him to his community the narcotic addict rehabilitation act of 1966 allows the defendant in certain criminal cases to elect treatment instead of punishment including an extensive program of aftercare under the supervision of the surgeon general synanom first established in santa monica is perhaps the most publicized of the self-help private approaches rehabilitated addicts like don parker have carried on with the synonym philosophy in other cities from california to new york to chicago each establishing his own therapeutic community a residential therapeutic community if i may explain it for a moment is a 24-hour day living working situation in which people go through all kinds of emotional changes uh drug addiction of course is not a physical problem it's an emotional problem and that's what we approach in these communities the addict is first taken off drugs either cold turkey or by gradual medicated withdrawal he then starts the long humbling process of living shoulder to shoulder with other addicts people who have made it people who have little sympathy with members who refuse to be honest with themselves why don't you be honest with him you boil and you can't even talk calmly you'll explode every time you talk you're all emotional and you think that you're boiling inside you've been boiling your whole life and you're sitting and say other people you got a cop out are you afraid of him these are the residents of new york's daytop village a private therapeutic community supported by federal state and municipal funds [Music] graduates of daytop master far more than their past craving for drugs they learn a new lifestyle centered around helping others bettering their communities when he returns to the street the daytop graduate will be a force for action in his old neighborhood even if it's only rallying people to clean up their block some of daytop's byproducts are surprising and they're exciting this is the stage of an off-broadway theater where daytop residents tell their story behind the footlights to capacity audiences and to critical acclaim [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] rehabilitation during 1960 saw a decade of experimentation trial and error approaches that sought and sometimes found cures through group therapy through computers and through the test tube in chicago a young father of two children hopelessly addicted to heroin forced to steal support his habit opens a door to possible hope this is the methadone maintenance approach still in the experimental stage methadone a synthetic opiate is administered in fruit juice as a substitute for heroin and at the same time satisfied the junkies need for drugs and like heroin methadone is also addictive but spares the user the harmful effects the program's chief sponsor is dr vincent dole at new york's rockefeller university so that we estimate conservatively i think that every patient that we treat saves the community forty thousand dollars a year in goods that are not stolen in neighborhoods that are not spoiled in families that are not abandoned methadone maintenance as many other treatments and approaches has its critics uh there's no way that in my opinion that a person who is drugged and a personal methodon is drugged can really take a look at himself most methadone proponents considered irrelevant whether a patient ever comes off the drug the important point they make is that addicts are rapidly returning to society and are able to cope with responsibility the cost and inexpensive clinically administered glass of orange juice on the way to work another chemical approach to keeping an addict off hard drugs is cyclaserzine cyclazosine is a narcotic antagonist blocking the effects of heroin as it tries to act upon the central nervous system there are other approaches neighborhood centers like exeter's house in new york's teeming slums concentrate help during the period when it's needed most during aftercare as another valid treatment approaches ex-addicts who have begun to remake their lives work closely with the residents helping them through each day rising on time reporting to work relearning the simple day-to-day lifestyle the rest of us take so much for granted in time many of them will be eased back into their communities stronger perhaps for their experience aftercare is one of the most important phases of restoring a former addict to a useful life the counselors know the patient they know his daily routine and they are wary of pitfalls you may have an argument with your wife you might go to work in the morning and all of a sudden uh where you used to handle 25 cottons a day the boss gives you 30 cartons and this is another excuse see this is an excuse to go like i gotta handle 30 cottons so i'm gonna go out and shoot dope you know uh you can be free from drugs for five six seven months and all of a sudden you want to reward yourself you know like wow i've been clean now for six months you know i'm doing great you know i'm making money i got money in the bank my wife loves me my kids love me let me lie and get high you know and this happens so these are the things you have to be aware but the point that i want to bring out is that if you do use don't be afraid to come by you know and tell us because that's what we're there for treatment programs are important but even more importance is prevention ten years ago drug use among the young was concentrated in the ghetto we thought at that time that eliminating the slums would eliminate that aspect of the drug problem well the answer is not so simple drug abuse including heroin and a wide range of synthetics has sprung up among the children of upper middle class families as well here affluence is a lifestyle and the pressures and anxieties of the ghetto are unknown but perhaps there are anxieties in the suburbs anxieties of a different nature it's like a fortress to protect this all-white community of 40 000 people who live in one of three models of housing of total cultural starvation it's not a fortress it's like a prison of of uptight shallow people and the only and the only and the only food for their brain that they get is television and booze and adultery and the only and everyone has money there's no identity in money you can only say i have more money or less money and that's no identity that's just quantity the only thing you can do with money is buy mass-produced products and everyone has mass-produced products uh detroit makes five million cars all the same one the tragedy is that youth in rejecting our values too often uses more than rhetoric to express dissatisfaction with driving north on larabee at an excessive rate of speed of 60 miles an hour i pulled his car over and asked him to produce his driver's license and he had nothing immediately arrested him and searched him and on his person i found a bag of white powder that has since been analyzed by the crime laboratory mrs problems we hear what your lawyer just said yes i did and do you still know that anonymous plea of village this court is going to send you from three to seven years of state penitentiary yes sir another hippie convicted on the narcotic charge why should we be concerned why because in a few years those under 25 will make up one half of our population marijuana among college kids is only one drug and one population group but it serves to illustrate that our interest as a nation has been more than somewhat hypocritical it seems as though the college kids the middle class kids in this country suddenly discovered marijuana in the mid 60s the early 60s and uh up until that time marijuana was used almost exclusively by negroes puerto ricans and jazz musicians and you know who gave a damn about them so that we could have all kinds of repressive laws and nobody would bother with these people or even look at the laws but all at once mrs murphy's kid from the suburbs who was attending a prominent university gets busted for marijuana and i can tell you from personal experience i've had medical students law students kids going to scientific institutions on national science grants i've had all kinds of people who have been arrested for marijuana violations and when this happens suddenly our society starts to become aware of a problem so-called the entire question of drug use is vastly complex cutting across the boundaries of the law medicine and society's attitudes the source of the problem is a simple flower a hearty plant beautiful in their natural habitat as they are dangerous often lethal when abused by man in his environment after 60 centuries of abuse society's attitude is only now beginning to change beginning to bring enlightenment to our understanding of drugs and why people use them you're beginning also to realize the fact that there is no single bridge that will return the addict to society there are many drug takers and each takes his journey to nowhere for numerous and complex reasons [Music] bringing them back home will require many bridges many different approaches each designed to reach one segment of the drug-dependent society where the solutions are found in a maintenance approach a therapeutic community a narcotic antagonist one thing is certain we we must continue to build bridges back into society as many british as possible let's call them bridges from no place [Music] you