A 6-year Slide to the Brink of Oblivion

Hello, My name is Jim Ring and I want to express my concern over the drug epidemic worldwide. I feel a sense of responsibility in all this. Let me explain.

I was 16 years old in 1968 and going to an upper-class high school in an upper-class neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Sitting in math class the fellow in front of me asked if I wanted to buy some LSD. After the positive press on LSD from Time magazine earlier that year, I said ok.

I took it and felt euphoric and full of energy. At that point, I decided “What is so bad about this?”

Of course, I immediately gave my brother some, starting the chain of contagion of drug taking.

My girlfriend and I then tried pot and again, felt good and could see nothing wrong with it.

I went along for the next year trying more and more drugs, particularly amphetamine, which I loved.

I had always been taking it in pills until one afternoon in fall 1969. It was after school and I was walking home with a friend. I told him I’d been taking lots of speed and had a really bad headache. He took a syringe out of his backpack and injected me with pure Methamphetamine he was getting from his Dad’s safe at a Federal Drug research lab.

This was immediate salvation, I thought, and the start of a 6-year slide to the brink of Oblivion.

More stories to come, but for now, find out what amphetamines really are and do to you.

Best, Jimmy

PS: The fellow who gave me the drug is long since dead.