From: "Gizmo" Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past - Part 52 (A Day At The Draft Board) Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 8:56 PM Okay, here's a story I forgot about as I was writing the original adventures. Enjoy... ________________________________________________ THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 52) A Day At The Draft Board Copyright Gizmo 2002 Depending on how you want to count time, in August 1964 our country ratcheted up it's involvement and got into a war in Vietnam. I didn't care. Not yet anyway. Because even though the USA instituted a draft, by the summer of 1968 I had a college deferment that put my draft number on the shelf. But thanks to smack I was forced to drop out of college and within a few months I got a notice in the mail telling me that I was now eligible to be inducted into the Armed Forces. Thank you very much. Even back then news circulated quickly enough to tell almost anyone not living in a cave that Vietnam was real, the risk was significant and the cause lame. Much has been written about Vietnam and my heart goes out to anyone (I knew several in my own neighborhood) who was maimed, killed or just plain FUBAR. That's (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) for all you computer and psychology buffs out there. So on a given day in late 1969 I was told my LOTTO NUMBER came in. 'C'mon down Gizmo. Uncle Sam needs you, and we have some very friendly guys down at the draft board that would like to see ya.' It was still about six weeks away and I started thinking. "Should I go?" The more I thought about, the more I talked with friends of mine, the more I was convinced it was a bad idea. My reasoning went mainly along the lines of stuff like this: With the exception of necessity or bad luck, I was not into this level of violence. I didn't buy the so called communist threat to the so called free world. Even back then my spin detector was set pretty high. I did think that were this a major war, such as World War Two I would have probably enlisted. Guys like Hitler & Tojo were more than just a threat to the "free world," they had already taken a huge chunk of it. That was a whole different level. Anyway I did not want to go to Nam, in spite of the stories about all the great dope over there. But how? I certainly considered the psychiatric angle, but I heard that was pretty hard to pull off. I thought of becoming a conscientious objector. But here too, from everything I heard, that angle was even less likely to succeed. Finally I heard you could beat the draft if you were seriously strung out on drugs. That got me thinking cause I was already strung out on dope at the time. I just figured that the day of the medical exam I would be extra prepared. That day came soon enough, and the day before I was to appear I called my Harlem connection and got me a couple of Half Loads. The dope was top shelf all the way. At home that night I started shooting as much as I could stand without killing myself. I punched additional needle marks into my already black and blue forearms and pits to really highlight the depth of my addiction. I smoked plenty of pot, dropped a couple of Seconals and spent the rest of the night totally narced out. At 5 A.M. the next morning I made sure I looked as fucked up as humanly possible, i.e., I did not shower, shave or anything of that ilk. Again I shot as much stuff as I could. Another three or four bags. Much as I wanted to, I knew I could not really bring any dope with me to the induction center. Leaving exactly five bags home for when I figured I would need them later I left the house and headed to the train station with one extra bag in my pocket to sniff just before I went in. The induction center was at the exact opposite end of the subway line I was taking. About forty miles. While writing this I tried to look up the location on the internet but for some damn reason I could not find it. Anyway, to get there I had to take the number 2 train down into the South The Bronx, through Manhattan and finally all the fuckin way to opposite end of Brooklyn. A train ride that took at least 2 hours. Sniffing that last bag of dope in the station bathroom I got ready for the shit. As I got closer to the entrance of the draft board a few blocks from the station I started noticing all the other folks who were heading the same way. And in we all go. A fucking ugly ass building. It looked like it may have been built around the turn of the last century. Poor heating, wood floors, wood panel walls, dim lights and a few memorial plaques near the gated front desk. At a window behind which were a few 'Uncle Sam Wants You' posters, the Sergeant asks "Your letter please?" I hand over the letter I received in the mail. "Are you Gizmo he asks etc.? "Yes I am" I said. "Okay, go take a seat on the bench and wait until you are called," the man said. And off I go into nodsville and try to forget where the fuck I am. I come out of my nod every now and than and ask myself, "how the fuck did I get into this movie?" Finally I'm called in to an office and told to take a seat. This part of the interview is mainly questions and forms. They ask if I've ever considered suicide, murder, armed robbery etc. I figured I would not answer any of these questions in anything but the most typical way. Who knows, if they think I'm capable of suicide or murder that might just qualify me on the spot. They want to know if I'm married, if I have kids, if I this, that and the other. Finally they get around to the drug and alcohol questions. I tell them yes, I'm a heroin addict and how much I use and for how often. They want to know if I'm addicted. They want to know if I inject etc. They also want to know if I have any other health problems. Once I finish the interview I'm escorted back outside and told to sit down again. A half hour later I'm called into another room and told to strip. A doctor looks me over and listens to my heart, lungs etc. They ask for a urine sample, they draw blood and give me a TB test. A few more pokes, prods and pricks and again I'm told to sit outside and wait. Five, maybe ten minutes go by and I notice I'm not nodding anymore. At first I find this odd. I've only been here a total of about 4 hours. It's around 12 noon now and I did enough dope to keep me really high or at least straight until midnite or later. So I'm having a hard time believing that all this great dope I shot in the morning and the night before could possibly be wearing off. You just don't build resistance to Heroin that quickly. But it is! I'm getting more and more uncomfortable and I'm starting to wonder when the fuck I'm gonna get out of here. Another half hour goes by and now I'm downright sick. I'm fucking actually starting withdrawal symptoms. Something tells me this can't be right, but there it is. "Fuck," I say to myself. "What the fuck is going on here? When the fuck are they gonna finish with me?" Finally someone calls me into an office. It's the doctor. He's got forms, lots of forms in front of him on the desk. "So" he asks, "You're pretty strung out aren't you?" By this time I'm shivering, sweating, sneezing and my flesh has Goosebumps all over. "Let me see your arms" he asks? And I hear him mutter under his breath, "railroad." It took me awhile to realize what he meant by that. It was my tracks. Railroad tracks up and down my arms. "Okay Gizmo, sorry to tell you but we can't accept you into service." You'll be classified as 4F. It took almost as long to finish and get sent home as it did to get started. As sick as I am I can't wait. But I didn't get to finish until about 5 in the afternoon.. On the long crowded train ride home I keep thinking what got me so damn sick. My memory is a bit vague but at time I was being checked out medically I can remember that they did more than just listen, probe and take urine and blood. No, they gave me something too. They said it was a TB test or something. What was that? I was too sick to think clearly. I just kept thinking of my five killer bags of dope that I had stashed at the house if I ever got there. I didn't get off the train until about 8 P.M. It was dark and cold out. There was snow on the ground and I'm about as dope sick as I've ever been. Finally I get home and after a quick hello to my folks and a roll of my eyes to indicate the hellacious day I had I head straight for my stash and in the bathroom I knock out all the dope sickness with one huge full and satisfying shot of smack. As the warmth begins to flow into my body I start to calm down and I'm even more perplexed at how such good dope could possibly have worn off so quickly. My answer would not come for several months. It took awhile to find out. Normally you forget about the times that dope wears off and you get sick. You just go and cop again. But this was so quick and so profound I just had to ask people I knew. Finally the answer came. The induction center was not about to be fooled by someone telling them they were a junky when all they were trying to do was beat the draft. They needed to see evidence in the form of needle marks, etc. And even that was not enough. There were enough folks who actually did puncture their arms a few times and tried to fake it. Nope their 'proof ' as it were would come in the form of observing you after giving you a shot of Naline, now days replaced with Naloxone. The effect is the same. Within a few minutes after receiving a dose of Naline a person can be brought back from a narcotic overdose. If you're addicted to a narcotic you end up going through withdrawal. If you never had any addiction problems, the amount they gave you would be transparent and they would know you were faking it. I guess it took as long as thirty minutes to fully throw me into full withdrawal because I had so much dope in my system. So that's what was going on. And I got lucky. I heard of other cases where a person was strung out on dope and they simply kept them there until they were clean! No shit. I remember the letter from the draft board saying that although you would likely only be there for the day, it was possible under certain conditions that you could be there overnight. I guess as more and more folks tried to pull the "I'm a dopers move" the government said, "sure no problem, c'mon down and we'll give you a free cure before shipping your ass over to basic training." Gizmo