Drug Experiences

If you think about it, everyone has a drug history. We answer all the questions when visiting our health care providers. Prescriptions, over the counter, street. The questions cover it all.

Whether we’ve used, abused, or not, we’ve all been affected. Mix in drinking with drugs and it’s a deadly combination. Research finds that addiction touches everyone’s life in one way or another, so my story might be considered quite ordinary.

I met my future husband in the 1960s while in college. He’d just returned from Vietnam and was going to school on the GI Bill. One night, at a friend’s house party, the noise and chatter faded to silence until we were the only two people left in the downstairs living room. We wondered where everyone had gone.

Well, they were upstairs doing drugs. Experimenting with pot, most likely. It was the sixties after all. I asked him what we should do. I was unsure of this new and exciting thing, but he was adamant. We weren’t doing that! We left.

On the way home, he told a long and involved story of his bad experiences with drugs while serving in Vietnam. He hadn’t used himself but watched what he described as an ugly scene as fellow soldiers over indulged and acted badly.

From then on, we avoided the ever-growing drug scene that was beginning to envelop our daily life. But this was, after all, Wisconsin and drinking was still included in our social life. He and I would stay together for the duration of college, live together, marry and divorce.

Toward the end of those nearly twenty years, I experienced the most chaotic time of my life. Things had slowly devolved due to his excessive drinking (a different drug?), night-time flashbacks, an obsession with guns, paranoia, and angry explosions. I had no idea what was going on and am now embarrassed at what I slowly adjusted to.  

Then in the early 1980s, a year or so after our divorce, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was identified and accepted into the DSM-III. I’d signed up for a workshop at a nearby veteran’s hospital. This wasn’t due to a specific interest but to satisfy my needed continuing education requirements. It turned out to be a day that changed my perspective forever.

After a bombardment of emotional video interviews with veterans, lectures by professionals and question and answer sessions, I left feeling strangely exhausted and tense. Perhaps it was the quiet of the car engine and the peace of the drive home on country roads that triggered me.  

As I began thinking about what I’d seen and heard, I started shaking and feeling anxious. I even had to pull the car over to the side of the road until it passed.  For a moment, just for a moment, I wondered, if I’d known what it was, perhaps I could have helped him. I quickly realized the futility of that but from then on was relieved just being able to name what I’d experienced.

Since then, things have changed. PTSD has been expanded to include many other issues beyond veteran’s readjustment. The opioid epidemic has contributed to a wider acceptance of the dynamics of addiction. Comorbidity is alive and well and universally more understood and addressed.   

Looking back on my past sorrow and trouble, I appreciate one thing. Due to my husband’s early insistence, I’ve never tried or used any type of drug. Small consolation but gratitude, nonetheless.  

Tiptoeing into the World of Self-Publishing

My long-time dream of publishing a book with my by-line on the cover was finally coming true. For authors, like me, with no name recognition and limited technology skills, self-publishing was the best option.  

Turns out it’s no easy feat. Not only would it be costly, but I’d have to take an active part in producing this literary masterpiece. I now know there’s a predominance of “self” in the self-publishing experience and I must do my part.

My search for an independent publisher began with a google search and advice from writing friends who had also self-published. I picked one, submitted my manuscript, answered all the preliminary questions, and then waited until their selection committee gave me the go ahead.

Here’s what an independent publisher would do for me. They would proofread the manuscript, do formatting and layout, design a cover and complete all the technical work so it could be sold on Amazon. I’m paying for these services of course.

Since the publisher I chose was local, I went to their office to sign papers and make a down payment. I got to meet some of the staff and it was good to put faces and names together. Within a week, I had four emails that introduced me to the project manager, an assigned editor, an art director, and a graphic designer. I now had a team.

And this also gave me assignments. I filled out the information form which included writing the summary that would be used to promote the book on Amazon. I also filled out the intake form, answering questions about layout, design, typography, and format. Final decisions, I knew, would be made later.

I sent pictures I wanted included and my written captions. Perhaps the pictures would be inserted into the text; but if they were placed all together on a page, captions would be necessary. Finally, I filled out the tax form needed for royalties. Wow! I’ll be earning royalties! I guess that means I’m really an author.

Next step turned out to be a doozy. The editor proofread and edited the manuscript and sent it to me for corrections. So, my twenty-something editor must have assumed I, this septuagenarian author, knew how to navigate Outlook, the cloud, and the automatic editing programs so common to todays’ writers.  Well, I didn’t.

I didn’t even know Outlook was the cloud. First mistake. I didn’t download the manuscript to Outlook. Second mistake. Twice I accepted or rejected the edits and answered the questions but none of it was saved because I hadn’t completed some first elementary steps.

I was frustrated. So, I reverted to the old way. After a few frantic emails, it took a live conversation with a real person, my editor, to figure this out. How could I know I had to download the manuscript to Outlook, then click the share button, then send it to the editor’s email. Only then could she see the changes and my answers to her questions. Technology is so great. When it works!   

Finally, after more feeble attempts, I’ve looked over and approved the completed manuscript and the revised captions. But I now know, this is just the beginning.  The graphic designer is working on the cover. And the editor is sending the manuscript to that cloud universe in the sky to begin work on the layout. Then comes typography and who knows what else.

This is all very exciting. Since I know little to nothing of the process, I’m already anticipating the mistakes I’ll make and the new and exciting things I’ll learn about the publishing process. The biggest consolation is that a book will be the final result and that makes it all worthwhile.   

Teen Crime Syndicate Cracked

We thought we were so smart. My friend Cathy and I decided to play hooky. That’s what it was called way back in 1962. We just wanted a day off from the pressures of high school. Just a day of doing nothing.

That morning, I’d left for school as usual but instead went to Cathy’s house where her parents had already gone to work. I called the school masquerading as her mother; she did the same for me.   

We giggled once that was done and our nervousness became relief, then joy. After that, we began seriously deciding how to spend our precious time. Cathy had planned ahead, borrowing her boyfriend’s car. So our options were unlimited.

After watching “The Price is Right” and “As the World Turns” while lounging around with a Coke, we set out on a road trip. Actually, all we wanted to do was cruise the gut. I have no idea where that phrase came from; it meant driving up and down the three-mile-long main drag (another timeless term) of my small hometown of Fond du Lac. 

It included riding through the parking lots of the two local ice cream and hamburger drive-ins situated on each end of Main Street. First, we cruised the Beer Hut (the first car-hop hamburger drive-in in Wisconsin and the first to serve beer in the whole US); and then Gilles. That sounds so silly now. Who did we think we’d see since everyone was in school. Where they belonged.

After our lovely and somewhat lazy day, I was sure to get home from “school” at the usual time to avoid raising suspicions. Mom was busy getting supper ready and called out from the kitchen, asking how my day had been. I gave her my usual okay, same as always, nothing new answer. But once I walked into the kitchen, I noticed an unusual grin on her face. Then she put the hammer down.  

She seemed to be having a heck of a good time filling me in on the details of my failed foray into crime. The story was short but not so sweet. On one of our trips down Main Street, cruising the gut, I’d been spotted by a city policeman. So much for the value of living in a small town.

He called my father who was also a policeman, on the Wisconsin State Patrol. Dad called Mom who called the school. We didn’t know it, but we were busted before noon.

I don’t remember if my mom called Cathy’s parents or if the school took care of that. I also don’t recall how the school punished us; but I do know my policeman dad delivered one of his Oscar-winning lectures and then grounded me.

Nothing new. I was accustomed to having many rules and few freedoms. My dad ran a tight ship, as they say. It was just another added burden I endured going through high school with a cop car in my driveway.

That fiasco was the beginning and end of my life of crime. I’d finish high school and work a year, still living at home. Under a slightly more relaxed form of house arrest. I then went to college where I finally had my adolescence. In fact, I had so much fun, making up for lost time, I was put on academic probation after my first year.   Another brush with the law, on a different level.

But lessons learned from Dad’s strictness helped me get back on track. I got my degree, completed graduate school and developed a robust work ethic. To this day, I’m perhaps overly conscious of rules and my organizational skills regulate much of my life. But that’s much better than doing time at Taycheedah.

Only to Me

Two-inch-thick baby photo album
Quilt made by my aunts
High school yearbook

Scrapbook of college reunion
Wedding pictures
Favorite books

Papers, certificates from my career
Nine years of writings on my blog
Collection of my publications

Sorting, keeping, disposing
What to do with
what’s valuable only to me