Eleven and smoking drugs seems unreal to me now being 45 years old. Seems like something from a movie, not something that happens in real life with real kids. But that was me.

The same summer I started smoking dope, I started drinking. Again, hanging out with older kids when I could and mooching beer and wine from them. I found out very quickly that alcohol made me feel a lot differently than smoking weed did, and I liked it a lot more. It was the opposite of paranoia – it was confidence. A couple of drinks and that lead ball in my stomach didn’t just fade: It vanished!

The first time I was drunk, or at least buzzing pretty hard, I had been fishing at the ‘train tunnel’ down the railway tracks from my aunt and uncle’s house. The tunnel was actually a large culvert that allowed the brook to pass under the railway tracks and I fished there quite often since there was always trout in the brook there and it was just a couple minutes walk from my uncle’s house where we often stayed while on vacation. It has started to get dark but I didn’t want to leave, though I knew I was not supposed to stay here after dark. One more cast… one more cast.

A group of teens showed up carrying beer and bottles of wine and settled into a clearing by the brook. I knew them all, having smoked dope with some of them already, and stopped fishing. “Want a beer Barry?” Of course I did. And some wine. And then it was full dark and I was buzzing nicely and having a great time. I felt cool hanging out with these guys and they thought it was amusing seeing this little kid drinking with them. I felt amazing! The first sip of wine sent a pleasant heat through my entire body. I didn’t drink very much, but the effect was huge – I had just found the answer. Peace came in a bottle!

Then came the sound of my father calling my name. I grabbed my fishing rod and scrambled up the bank to the tracks. The voice was still some distance away and I wanted to get to him before he got closer. If he made it all the way to the brook it would not be a good scene.

“I’m here!” I yelled, walking towards his voice, down the tracks, feeling slightly dizzy from the alcohol and afraid of dealing with my father, but a lot less afraid than I would normally be. Under the fear I had a little touch of not giving a damn.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asked as I approached him.
“Fishing.” I replied, thinking it sounded like a lame response.
“In the dark?” he asked. “Come on, get the hell home. You know damn well you are to be home before dark!“

So off we went, walking in the dark. I waited, thinking he would know, would smell the beer, the smell of which I was convinced hung around me like a mist. But we got back to my uncle’s house without incident, and I went into the living room and laid on the floor in front of the TV, holding my breath whenever someone walked by. No one noticed. I got away with it.

When I got back to Wabush later that summer I couldn’t wait to brag to my friends about the summer I’d had: The drugs and drinking mainly. I began smoking hash is school and drinking when I could, though not as often as I would have liked. Hash was easily accessible, while it was harder to get liquor, so my drug use grew more rapidly, although I preferred alcohol. By the following summer when I was twelve I was smoking hash whenever I could get it. Of course it was expensive for a twelve year old, and I was also smoking cigarettes full time, so it took money to feed my habits. That is what stores were for. Walk in with an empty gym bag, walk out with a full one.

My drinking progressed slowly but it progressed. I would sometimes steal rum from my father’s bottle and drink it on the bus, straight, on the way to school in the morning. When I was straight I felt out of place no matter where I was. I thought I was different than everyone else in the world. I was paranoid, extremely self conscious  and generally afraid most of the time. I hated school and didn’t much like being around people at all because of the inferiority I felt. Once I had a drink or two in me though, I felt perfect! I was no longer afraid, insecure, or paranoid and thought that I could take on the world. The problem was, once I had one drink in me, all I wanted was more and more. There was not often a chance to get hammered, but when the chance was there I took it.

Soon my life was a very busy one; By the time I was thirteen stealing, selling and finding drugs took up a lot of time. I stole cigarettes and money from my parents and shoplifting became an almost daily occurrence. I became a good thief – never actually getting caught although there were some times when I had to run.

One time a store manager stopped me and asked to see inside my gym bag. I had walked through the store to see if anyone would watch me, and knew he was following me, so walked out the other end. He quickly caught up with me and when I refused to let him look inside my bag he was going to call the police. I passed him the bag, getting angrier by the second – under the fold down bottom of the bag was a pair of wire cutters. I thought he would find them, and then call the police. He looked though the bag which contained a towel and swim trunks, but didn’t lift the bottom flap up. Didn’t find the pliers.

“Ok you can go.” he said, and walked back into the store.

I followed him into the store, turned off into the electronics section, cut the chain off of a portable television with the wire cutters and walked out the front door of the store with the TV in my bag. That would get me a few grams of hash!

First Arrest: Drunk and Stupid

I sat on the couch looking up at the police officer in front of me, repeatedly telling him that I had stolen the beer I had been drinking from the Wabush Hotel.  It wasn’t true of course but I did steal an awful lot of beer and wine from there later on. Just not this time. I was not about to get someone in trouble for buying beer for a minor.

I was at the neighbor’s house because my parents weren’t home. In my drunken haze I was hoping that they would not come home for a long, long time.

Two of my friends and I had bought two dozen beer – eight beer each. We ended up in the basement of Mike’s house drinking our beer. Mike and Rick each drank three or four of their beer, wanting to save the rest for the next day. I thought they were crazy. I was determined to drink all eight of mine, deciding they were nuts for not wanting to do the same. Mike’s mom came home so I ended up chugging the last two or three of my beer while she was upstairs. Then we left, me wanting to get out before I was drunk.

I ended up at the recreation center. “You know you can’t come in here when you’re like this Barry,” the manager told me. It likely wasn’t the first time he had seen me wasted. So I ended up staggering around in the parking lot, very drunk, when the cop came. I tried to resist when he put me into the car, but in I went. His plan was to take me home, but my parents were gone so he took me to our friends house next door to wait for them.

“I stole it I told you!” I said grinning. “I stole it!”

I was thirteen at the time.

 
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