From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past Part 7 (The "Adventure" Begins) Date: 1996/09/20 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Dateline 1963. My dad got me a part time summer job working around the corner from his shop in Westchester County. The job was working in a drug store. BINGO! I was still a real newbie at the time. I had only smoked a little pot and tried uppers once or twice. But in a sense, I was already hooked. I loved the pot and smoked it as much as I could. Also, I was completely facinated with drugs. I can actually remember my facination going back a few years earlier than this, when they covered addiction problems in my grammer school. I think they showed us a short movie that showed dope, coke etc. Even then, I was enthralled by the whole thing. I knew one day I would have to try it. So just before I got this job in the drugstore, I started reading whatever available literature there was on drugs. I went to the library and looked the stuff up in the Britanica and such. So by the time I got this job, I knew what to look for. It wasn't long after I was working there, that I started keeping an eye peeled for the right stuff. This was an old pharmacy. It was established as a business in 1898. I remember also going downstairs to the storeroom and looking through the old prescription files that the store was required to keep on record. These prescription files went back to the turn of the last century. I was amazed, (didn't know it at the time) that almost every other prescription that was written was for an opiate. There it was in the doctors handwritting. "Heroin, 25 tablets, take one every four hours for headache!" Morphine, 30 tablets, etc." Well, where were these drugs? Since I started working there I noticed the narcotics cabinet, but I assumed that it would be too easy to get nailed trying to take anything from it. But I started to get dexedrine and methadrine hydrochloride. They were fun. I also "found" plenty of nembutal, secobarbitol, amytol, Ciba's etc. Meanwhile, I always noticed this large cardboard box that was sitting way up on top of the prescription counters. I kept looking at that box, wondering what could be in there. Finally one day, the drugist goes out for lunch, and leaves me to watch the store. Alone at last. Immediately I climb up on top the counter and pull this huge box down and start looking. Surprise surprise. Inside the box are a shitload of narcotics that they just didn't prescribe much anymore. Two sealed one ounce jars of Morphine Sulphate, hypodermic cubes!. Cocaine Hydrochloride, in a syringe like glass vile that the label read, hypodermic tablets!. Well, these babies came home with me. What a revelation. These bottles where probably several years old when I found them. They had lost none of their potency. Cool stuff. I gave away most of the morphine, but snorted a considerable amount of it. Again, I knew that I was going to be in trouble. It wasn't long before I bought my first bag of street dope. The Cocaine was probably the purest stuff I ever had. If any of you have ever had pharmaceautical cocaine, you'll know what I mean. Clean stuff. The drug store gig came to an end, after finding a quarter pound bottle of Cocaine Hydrochloride in the narcotics cabinet. I took the jar down to the basement, emptied the contents out and took the ounce or so of crystaline powder home with me. I intended to come back on Monday and get rid of the bottle. But when I came in on Monday, I went to look where I stashed the bottle and couldn't find it. I looked everywhere. Gone. Found? For sure. Now what? That afternoon, the drugist tells me he won't be needing me anymore. I guess since he knew my dad, he did not want to create a scene, so I was quitely let go, now that the summer was over. A lucky break? The Giz Coda: About a two years ago I was visiting that area of the country and I stopped in that same drug store with my girlfriend. The same owner was still there. He didn't recogize me at first, but I recognized him. I couldn't resist. I introduced myself, and the glean of recognition came to his eyes. Sure he remembered. He remembered my dad, the shop etc. He remembered me too. He nicely alluded to my "problem" back then by saying, "hey, I raised five kids of my own. I know the score!"