[Agency: Client: Raven's Hollow LTD. Product: Title: "Flowers of Darkness and A Moveable Scene" 

Code: Length: Date: 1/31/84 Movielab Video Inc. N.Y.] 

[Screen dark]

[Music playing]

[Narrator:] There are oases of comfort throughout the world.

However, the earth offers few pleasures for most of its inhabitants.

For at least ten thousand years of grubbing a living off the planet, 

man has found life for the most part to be cruel.

Disenchantment abounds, fatigue, hunger, and cold.

However nature, almost as an afterthought, softened her terms.

She sprinkled the harsh earth with a variety of plants.

Each offering momentary escape.

A passport from reality.

Their protective effects have been known since the time of the ancients.

[The Distant Drummer]

[Flowers of Darkness]

In virtually any of the hot countries of the world, where the soil is fertile 

and farmers still employ the oldest methods of cultivation, 

flourishes a planet scientifically known as papaver somniferum.

More commonly known as the opium poppy.

Its pods contain a milky fluid that for centuries provided the raw material for one of the 

most demoralizing and dissipating vices in the world.

Known as far back as four thousand B.C., use of opium historically centered on the Mediterranean.

Eventually Arab and Persian traders introduced the mystic wonders of the poppy 

to all the communities with whom they bargained.

By the sixteenth century India was cultivating it.

In the seventeenth century China discovered the euphoric delights that came from smoking it.

Opium dens, set back in sinister alleys, burst throughout the Far East.

Even though millions of Chinese were thrust into moral physical degradation, 

the use of opium was actually romanticized in literature.

by Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, all brilliant writers 

and each an opium taker.

Its use had become such a problem in China that the emperor issued edict after edict 

forbidding its import.

In spite of this, in the eighteen-hundreds, British and American sea captains bought shiploads 

of opium at the great auctions in Calcutta and traded them illicitly at Chinese seaports.

Then the emperor cracked down.

In 1838, in one haul he confiscated six million dollars worth of opium 

from the British ships at Canton.

England retaliated with a naval squadron and the notorious Opium Wars were on.

Although she would be censured in the eyes of the world, the war enabled Britain to 

force a treaty giving her the greatest port in the Far East, Hong Kong,

as well as unrestricted opium trade for her enterprising sea-captains.

Then, in the nineteenth century, a German refinement.

Through a relatively simple chemical process, raw opium was transformed into morphine base.

In 1898, another refinement from Germany.

From morphine base came the derivative, heroin.

It took at least sixty centuries to bring poppies' euphoric effect from the cradle of civilization

all the way to the opium pipes in Canton.

But within only a few decades, modern science was able to funnel the poppy's impact 

straight into the central nervous system.

In one cool blast.

Today thousands of prisons and hospitals allover the world are crowded with patients who've

experimented with the poppy's final derivative.

And, who have become addicted to it.

Its astronomical profits on the street corners of the Ginza in Tokyo, to Piccadilly Circus in London,

and the Great White Way in New York have made it the world's number one illicit commodity.

A deck of heroin sold on a metropolitan sidewalk is the final transaction in a long series

of closely guarded clandestine operations.

Charles Siragusa, former Deputy Commissioner of Narcotics, has firsthand knowledge of all of them.

[Mr. Siragusa:] The illicit narcotic traffic, the route of it, is not quite as complex as it would appear.

Turkey still remains as the principle source of the raw material, which is opium.

The opium is then processed into morphine base, sometimes in Turkey, 

other times in Syria and Beirut in Lebanon.

Uh the French now have control of the Lebanese market, they've been associated with them in the,

all sorts of illicit, international rackets for many years.

The Lebanese will sell the morphine base to the French.

And French Corsicans who have had traditional ties with them for many, many years 

arrange for the smuggling of the morphine base into France.

Marseille is the capital of the Corsican underground through all of France.

[Narrator:] Once in Marseille, chemists take over,

converting morphine base into heroin.

This is the most difficult phase of the entire industry.

Skilled chemists are not easy to find.

A Turkish farmer sells ten kilos of raw opium, or about 22 pounds

for three hundred and fifty dollars on the black market.

Through conversion, it is reduced to one kilo of heroin.

Now worth three thousand five hundred dollars.

[Mr. Siragusa:] Now they've got to sell the heroin.The ones with the customers in the United States,

uh, the Mafia 'hoods, mostly in New York City, Chicago, and the west coast.

[Narrator:] Heroin in its relatively pure form enters the United States in a variety of ways.

The port of New York is by far the most common route and is the main target 

for narcotic dealer investigators working hand in hand with customs inspectors.

An estimated two tons of pure heroin is annually smuggled into the states.

And it's considered a good year when the inspectors manage to intercept a hundred pounds of it.

Smuggling is a fine art and the Corsicans are considered to be the finest practitioners 

in the world.

Today the automobile is a favorite hiding place.

And there is hardly a part of the chassis or body that has not, at one time or another,

offered concealment for big heroin shipments.

The second major port of entry into the United States is the Mexican border.

This is the main entrance for illicit marijuana shipments.

But a good supply of heroin slips through as well.

[Vernon Hann:] We are in our vault in which all the marijuana and heroin which is seized is stored 

until the criminal case against the defendant is terminated by federal court action.

This contraband is concealed in most ingenious ways in vehicles and on persons.

In fact you can name a place that you feel contraband could be concealed  

and I can cite you an instance where we have found it there.

Some months ago we encountered a young fellow entering the United States from Mexico, 

eating an ice cream cone.

A search revealed that he had an ounce of heroin concealed in the ice cream cone.

In this area we also have a number of yachts, some five thousand private yachts 

based in this area, 

all of which have the facility or capability of going to Mexican waters.

This poses quite a threat as do the increasing number of private aircraft 

crossing the international boundaries.

[Narrator:] Once the heroin reaches its American distributor, it is blended with milk sugar.

And is cut at least one more time by the peddler himself.

The heroin strength is now only five percent.

Normal for the retail market.

Each packet or deck will sell for five dollars.

Thus the original twenty two pounds of raw opium sold by a Turkish farmer 

for three hundred and fifty dollars, is eventually worth on the sidewalks of Manhattan, 

over four hundred and ten thousand dollars.

And in a panic, half a million.

[Music]

This is the focal point of hard drug addiction in the United States.

The urban ghettos house nearly three-fourths of the hardcore addicts.

With New York’s teeming slums far out in front.

[Car driver:] The traffic starts in Manhattan.

Uh, readily attainable in Manhattan, especially in the Harlem area up around Lexington Avenue,

from about 97th to about 135th Street, 116th Street,

running east to west completely.

125th Street and so many other spots, uh, it would probably take me all day to name them all.

[Narrator:] America's known heroin population over sixty thousand, collectively shoots 

nearly two tons of opiates a year.

More than half live within the tenement shadows of Harlem and the Bronx.

[Vernon Hann:] When I first came to east Harlem, 1948, 

it was primarily a large Italian and Puerto Rican community.

For our part, as far as the young kids, the adolescents, were concerned,

it was constant warfare.

Uhh there were many, many gangs.

And it might be said that gangs were the main problem in east Harlem then.

There was much bloodshed and the ironic thing is that the only thing that united

Italians and Puerto Ricans together uhh were, was the use of drugs.

[Narrator:] For the ghetto dweller, heroin is a desperate bid for freedom,

an escape from the despair of the tenement prison.

[Recovering addict:] After getting married, sort of uh couldn't meet up with the responsibilities 

that I had taken on.

And sort of felt the need to escape from these.

My first marriage, I've been married twice,has only lasted about four years.

We're continuously using drugs.

I had two children.

Right after my first marriage broke up, I was uhimmediately married again.

In fact my first marriage broke up through meeting this other woman.

I went along for about eight months not using drugs.

And uh finally I'd come back to getting the feelings of you know, trying to escape again,  

and I started using drugs eight months after my second marriage.

[Vernon Hann:] I feel that the main problem in the city at this time is uh, environment.

I would say that the good majority of the people that go on to heroin  

go on as a result of their environment.

The people they know, their friends, the ready availability to obtain it, and so forth.

[Recovering addict 2:] I started to use it. I started to sniff it just to be part of the group.

I started to use it while I was in school.

And uh, one day I woke up and I was addicted.

You know, I woke up and I was very sick.

And I didn't know what was bringing it about.

But I did find out that as soon as I took some heroin through my nose, I got well.

I felt normal.

[Vernon Hann:] And once a fellow is on heroin, it may be years before he realizes  

or wants to admit to himself that he is indeed a junkie.

And that he is in need of help.

[Recovering addict 3:] Uh a fellow can start on narcotics I would say uhh, at any age really, 

of course, and within a matter of three to six months, starting out at about four 

or six dollars a day he can work his way up to a hundred dollar a day habit.

[Recovering addict 2:] I was using about over a hundred dollars a day.

Everything I would get would go through my arms.

[Narrator:] The Harrison Act of 1914, strengthened by a series of Treasury Department regulations.

is the basic law restricting production and distribution of narcotics.

Although the law does not refer to the addict himself, the implicit premise 

is that addiction is willful indulgence,

meriting punishment.

[Narrator 2:] I feel that uh, the people living in a metropolitan area are arrested more frequently 

and exposed to arrest and the possibility of being jailed much more than the people 

in suburban areas, for the simple reason that a good majority of them, the majority of them 

come from poverty homes...uh, they don't have in most cases money for proper legal aid.

Although the city will provide them with some.

[Police Officer:] What are you doing with that needle right there?

[Narrator:] Possession alone is sufficient evidence for conviction.

Users anticipating raids frequently conceal their day's supply in a toy balloon, 

keeping it in their mouth.

If apprehended they swallow the evidence knowing that they can retrieve it later.

[Police officer:] You're under arrest for unlawful possession of needles 

and unlawful possession of heroin.

[Narrator:] Following World War Two, hard drug use, particularly among young people, 

was on the upswing.

Public reaction surged, 

resulting in more stringent controls, stiffer penalties.

The 1956 Narcotics Control Act spelled out the most severe and inflexible set of laws 

ever put on the federal books.

Penalties for possession were only slightly less than those for selling.

Probation was possible only on a first-offense possession charge.

The sentence was two to ten years.

Second and third offenses and selling in any quantity, even soft drugs such as marijuana, 

brought terms up to forty years.

With no chance for probation or parole.

Selling heroin to a minor could bring a possible death penalty.

At the same time the law was taking a harsher look at the addict.

Popular opinion began to swing back in his favor.

Recognizing that he was not just a criminal, buta sick person.

A pathetic, tortured human being in need of help.

The Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act of 1966 set forth a new national policy for treatment of addicts.

At the core of the policy is he premise that addiction is an illness that should be treated, 

not a criminal act in itself.

For the first time federal law permitted addicts to apply for treatment instead of being prosecuted.

At the federal narcotics hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, bars that had restrained addicts 

for thirty-three years were removed.

Dramatic proof of society's new attitude towards the wretched victims of the opium poppy.

It became a major drug abuse research center 

administered by the National Institute of Mental Health.

[Mr. Kieffer:] One of the distinctive contributions of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act of 1966 

is the fact that it authorizes us to provide up to as much as three years of aftercare, 

supervised by professionals in the community in which the major emphasis is put on helping 

the addict to correct whatever inadequacies may have contributed to his addiction in the first place,

in order to maximize the likelihood of his adjustment when he returns home.

[Narrator:] Throughout the 1960s, many new treatment programs had been launched 

in and out of government.

Perhaps the most publicized is Synanon, 

a private organization founded and managed by ex-addicts.

[Jack Hurst:] Best thing for people is people.

And Synanon provides the environment to bring together people from all walks of life.

We now have a thousand people in residence, well, four thousand people belong to our Synanon Clubs

so they don't live here.

People from all walks of life.

newsmen, housewives, bricklayers, doctors, lawyers, and all peoples get together 

within the Synanon environment and talk, communicate to one another.

[Narrator:] Some programs take their philosophy right to the center of the action.

In the ghettos where drug abuse is rampant.

Exodus House.

Here, ex-addicts who have begun to remake their lives work closely with narcotic patients.

Right in the community where the drugs are pushed and used.

Daytop Village is typical of the halfway house concept.

Where the addict is slowly eased back into society.

One step at a time.

In community extension projects like Span, 

the addict meets with citizens on the outside.

He holds frank discussions with them on a group basis.

When he returns to his community he is more than just a law-abiding taxpayer, he is a civic leader, 

a doer, an activist.

The drug problem in all its complex facets is a challenge to everyone.

We are all potential drug takers.

If not heroin, then tranquilizers, stimulants, sleeping pills, and alcohol.

Even if we live in the country’s finest communities, our children at this moment may be experimenting 

with marijuana, hallucinogenics, amphetamines.

Tight laws and stiff penalties are not the answer.

A former narcotics commissioner admitted that the mass flow of hard drugs into the United States 

could not be stopped, even by the collective enforcement of the customs inspectors, 

all the Treasury agents, the FBI, and the combined strength of all the armed forces.

There are, essentially, two ways to reduce the problem.

First, by attacking it on the user's end.

Continued research and public enlightenment will increase our understanding of the addict  

and his compulsion to escape through drugs.

Secondly, beyond attacking the problem on the user's end we must, in a concert of nations,  

attack it on the other end: 

the source.

The plant itself, whether a poppy, Indian hemp, or the coco leaf, 

is grown out of economic necessity by farmers who are native to a land that offers little.

The ever-existent black market prize tempts the registered growers to overproduce.

To conceal a part of their legitimate harvest and place it on the worldwide illicit markets.

Studies sponsored by the United Nations have shown that in each country,

there is a practical and profitable alternative to the narcotic harvest.

In the region of Baalbek, Lebanon, where ninety percent of the land was once planted 

with cannabis or marijuana, now grow commercial crops that benefit rather than destroy.

Nature's strange gifts, which Thomas De Quincey called the abyss of divine enjoyment,  

have been with us for sixty centuries.

But only in the last sixty years have we released the truly lethal derivatives.

While many of the world's unfortunates have historically used narcotics to momentarily escape 

from their daily miseries, there is another, more recent, drug phenomenon flourishing.

Ironically, among the most protected, 

most educated, and most affluent of today's societies.

This is the straight society.

The orderly, well managed, well-disciplined world of the establishment.

It is made possible by the Protestant ethic.

Work is noble, 

worldy achievement the sign of God's favor.

But not everyone embraces these hallmarks of success.

In each city across the land there exists another culture whose philosophy and way of life 

rejects the fierce competition and its material rewards.

And in so doing, refutes the order and discipline of the establishment.

The hippies, perhaps more than any other social phenomenon, 

brought the drug issue to the surface.

For most of them are children of middle- and upper- class families.

[Music]

Thousands of snapshots on police station walls remain the only link between many of America's 

most affluent families and the children who embody their expectations.

Nearly everyone in the hippie community smokes marijuana.

Whether they call it pot, grass, hemp, joint, gage, or maryjane, the marijuana is the 

basic background for the shared drug experience.

The experience is shared to such an extent that roach pipes are always in demand. 

A roach is a discarded marijuana butt.

And it requires some form of holder for the last few drags.

The new generation, whether they are runaways or rebels in residence, use marijuana  

as a symbol of discontent with the basic values of the establishment.

For some, there exist a social imperative beyond flaunting society's rules.

For these adventurers, the mind-expanding drugs open a window on a whole new frontier.

[Speaker:] I want to see that beautiful energy.

An energy of light.

An energy of love.

It’s the energy that’s in every living entity.

It’s an energy that we can't know about before we're born.

An energy that’s going to happen to us when we die.

But we know about the energy before us.

Man and women and child and animal.

Do not kill animals.

Do not kill a fly.

And if we dump all that energy, we will love life so much that we'll never die.

Because you'll be so sure that you're part of God.

And part of that life energy.

That universal poetry of sun.

[Narrator:] With LSD the user believes he is discovering inner truth.

That he is making a pilgrimage to his soul.

That he has achieved unity with the universe.

Under the psychedelic influence of hallucinatory drugs, the user often feels

that he is experiencing the supreme private joy of spontaneous creation.

Both in music and in the visual arts.

Both are brought together by the discoteque, the unique blend of art nouveau and acid rock.

[Guitar-heavy music playing]

The use of LSD, particularly on the college campus, and even in hippie circles,  

is on the downswing.

Recent publicity linking the drug with severe psychotic reactions, chromosome breaks,  

and serious birth defects has had a sobering effect.

In the runaway colonies, those who forsake LSD seem to move in one of two directions.

Meditation or methedrine.

First the meditators.

Often ministered to by a guru or swami, 

they band together in communes.

Attempting to live a thorough-like existence.

They are relatively harmless, true flower children.

Soldiers of peace in a gentle revolution.

The second group finds its kicks liquefying ina hot spoon.

Methedrine, perhaps the fastest jolt found so far in the amphetamines, 

can be counted on to provide a six-hour surge of euphoria.

[Music]

But it is accompanied by a psychological dependence from which withdrawal 

can be a serious problem.

[Drug user:] I tried methedrine which I liked, but then became very addicted to.

And then from there was suicide, actual suicide attempts within the last six or seven months.

The real ones.

All the attention I got, I was sent to a psychiatrist who taught me how to play chess at age nine.

I wouldn't talk to him.

And then my parents got quite upset because of the money they were spending, so I tried again.

They took me to a different psychiatrist for a while, and changed schools on me.

And then from there, several more attempts like swallowing aspirin, cutting my wrists 

which doesn't work because blood coagulates and so forth.

I called my parents...I'm addicted to amphetamine sulfate crystals, 

which [?] we shoot as crystals.

You know what that is.

And I called them and I said I was addicted.

I wanted to come home, I'd do anything, you know,

conform to your standards, your rules, so forth.

Go to LSU-NO, you know be a perfectmodel of everything, 

and they said no, you'd upset the family,

and sent me off to Oregon.

I went through five days cold turkey on a Greyhound bus going to Oregon.

[Narrator:] Methedrine, LSD, heroin are the exception with the drug community.

Marijuana is the common denominator.

It’s used universally within the hippie cults, in the ghettos, and the high schools 

of every social and economic level.

[Teacher:] As a rough estimate I would say that at least ten percent of the students uh have used 

and are using uh marijuana.

Now the frequency may vary and it’s pretty difficult to estimate but also probably a very significant 

thing is that acceptance is gaining steadily and the usage is really uh increasing very rapidly.

[Narrator:] But with marijuana comes eventual confrontation with the law.

Even though many authorities consider it less harmful than alcohol, 

its mere possession in the eyes of the federal statutes brings a minimum of two years.

And selling, a maximum of forty.

[Speaker:] If you've got a few seconds

I want to say something about what happened to Barry McGuire.

Barry McGuire wasn't holding any grass, he wasn't doing anything.

He got busted.

Anyway.

And he's on his way down to Malibu jail now.

And his wife is trying to get him out and they're not holding any threads.

[Hippie:] They've been known to plant things on ya like uh, if you're in a place like [?]

they'll plant something in your pocket if they want you.

And they don't even have to find something.

it gets to the lab it’s full of grass.

[Narrator:] Norm and his friends.

This time New Orleans is the pad, but the complaint against the establishment remains the same.

Why should the adults put us down?

They have their own kind of drugs.

Coffee, cigarettes, and a host of synthetic crutches that range from sleeping pills  

and tranquilizers to benzedrine.

But mainly, booze.

[Muffled voice:] Nationally really, the marijuana laws nationally, it’s just a thing that the 

alcohol companies to keep their thing going because who would drink if they had grass?

[Jazz music playing]

[Biker:] I feel that marijuana is a beautiful drug because it's much safer than alcohol.

LSD, heroin, smack, speed are no good because they will wreck a person's physical composition.

That we do not allow.

We started this club as a thing because a lot of our, our members are tired of a lot of society's rules.

We like to be ourselves.

We like to go out, get high, ride bikes, and do what we want to do.

Of course we were these cutaways...it’s a, it’s a symbol of unconformity.

[Narrator:] San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York.

Each city has its own legion of disenchanted youth.

Each casting its dissenting vote against the establishment.

The ballots may be written on marijuana, methedrine, or motorcycles,

but in each case they are putting us down.

And the vote is an international one.

Britain, traditionally, is the very seat of the establishment.

It is ironic that after nine centuries of greatness, this conservative kingdom, in their maturity,

should give birth to the hippie.

[Hippie:] Uh it’s really hard to live like a beatnik.

Sometimes uh you've got to sleep in the filth on the street because you've got no place to go.

No place to sleep, no money.

Uh, I first started taking drugs in Great Britain.

Uh this [?] it became popular among the yes,the world, yes.

Just because uh it first started the different rock groups like the Beatles, the Stones,

the Yardbirds, the Kinks.

[Narrator:] A phenomenon throughout Europe, the Middle East, and many parts of Asia 

is the constant migration of young people.

An international beatnik set permanently drifting.

In Rome, the gathering spot is the Spanish Steps.

For the enterprising migrant with surplus drugs in his rucksack,  

there are ample business opportunities.

[Traveler:] I know how to earn money out of it.

If I bring you hash from Istanbul or from Beirut or from Morocco in Northern Africa.

Which is very cheap to get it there.

You can get a whole kilo sometimes with five, six, not more than ten dollars.

And you can sell it.

Here in Italy, it's very expensive.

[Narrator:] Like the Spanish Steps, Yener's in Istanbul is another beatnik Capistrano.

It is a clearinghouse for international drug mules.

A congregating point for the Who's Who among teenage wayfarers, 

and even serves as an effective post office.

Nearly all of the world's ancient and exotic cities have certain hotels and restaurants 

not listed in the travel guides.

But nevertheless engaging in a thriving business.

[Carrier:] It’s a very interesting little scene here in Istanbul 

and it’s becoming very, very sort of well-known.

Not sweepingly well-known.

But known in a great number of places all over the world in Europe and in America.

There's a hotel where a lot of people live around here, this hotel that I mentioned before.

And the name of the hotel is on the lips of peoplethat are getting off boats in Europe from America.

People have come to this town, to Istanbul, and asked where such and such a hotel is.

I've heard it from people in America, and it's interesting to me that such a small little place 

in such a little back street has become so, so well-known.

[Narrator:] These gathering places are virtually the United Nations in miniature.

Young travelers come from Australia, London, Stockholm, and recently, 

in ever-increasing numbers from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Oregon.

They pass in an endless progression through the cities of the Holy Land.

They huddle for comfort in caves on the island of Crete.

Why do they wander?

For some, undoubtedly it is the adventure of youth... 

a healthy restlessness.

A chance to participate in this once in a lifetime odyssey and sample the fires of spring.

[1960s music playing]

For many others, it is a pilgrimage to the mystic repositories of wisdom and truth.

These intellectual and spiritual objectives, or what often passes for them, 

become readily apparent when you're in the Himalayas at forty-five hundred feet, 

particularly when the company is good, 

and the roach pipes are lit.

Now time and space become distorted and the wellsprings of energy rush forth.

[Pilgrim:] This is probably the [?] people coming for pilgrimages for centuries 

from all parts of the world.

I believe they deposit a great deal of their energy here.

Which remain here.

They find this energy simply by meeting so many beautiful people.

[Narrator:] If their aim is searching, is a thinly guised excuse to evade responsibility, 

then in effect they have not escaped at all.

For even at the threshold of Shangri-La, they become the focal point of world concern.

And ironically, concern from that part of the world they have least use for.

The straight society.

[Rev. Harvey:] Many of them claim they have found some kind of new feelings.

New insights.

A new religious experience.

But I would like to point out that these, and I have known between twelve hundred 

and fifteen hundred addicts in the last ten years of my life.

That I have not found one of them who can claim that they have taken a new position on, on values, 

or been able to, if you will, move out into the world and find a more comfortable existence, 

have changed things, have made a life more meaningful for somebody else.

I find more and more a selfish existence.

More and more self-centered and less and less concerned about the problems of the world 

and more and more concerned aboutthe escape from the problems of the world.

[Narrator:] But even the straight society often makes hasty judgements, 

which instead of strengthening communication between parents and their young, 

actually drives a wedge in deeper.

[Dr. Ungerleider:] It’s important that we not equate something like long hair, which many of us 

don't like because we can't tell the boys from the girls, 

but to equate long hair with the danger of taking a drug like LSD is really a tragedy.

And the youngster, when we equate the two is liable to turn out and stop listening to us 

and then go on and really take these other drugs.

[Ambulance siren sounds]

[Music]

[Dr. Gershon:] Over the last several years, cases of drug abuse and addiction and random use 

of drugs have given rise to progressivelyincreasing numbers of admissions 

to psychiatric hospitals like this one here, Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital.

There have been large numbers of mixed types of drugs taken by populations including,  

for the first time in the last few years, young people, middle-class young people, 

that have given rise to admissions to the psychiatric hospital 

with acute psychiatric manifestations.

[Recovering addict:] Eh, see there's speed freaks and then there's meth heads.

It’s a difference.

Most of the people I know are not speed freaks, they're meth heads.

You can make an airhead, by givin' a guy opium, givin' a guy too much, I almost come close to being an airhead.

When I was young, years ago we had a set down here, ten of us.

I think I'm about the only one's got any sanity left.

[Narrator:] The harsh reality of the narcotics ward does not offer the easy comraderie of Istanbul.

Or the spiritual rewards of Kathmandu.

But Bellevue, as well as hundreds of other psychiatric hospitals, 

offers a road back to responsibility.

But some cannot be reached.

At least not with the methods and the answers in current use.

Drug-takers are bound in ever increasing numbers.

And not always in the conspicuous hippie community.

[Father:] I know that a lot of people think thatjunkies, addicts wander around the world  

dressed as hippies with beads and flowers in their hair, but it isn't true of all of them.

Peter was very much a boy who liked to wear nice clothes, was always clean...

[Narrator:] Perhaps the most painful experience for a parent is having a son or a daughter 

who outwardly conforms but who still conductsthe pilgrimage.

Who still seeks the high.

And through his very secrecy, avoids detection.

And at the same time, possible help.

[Father:] He was always dependable about being home on time at night,

Eleven, eleven-thirty.

He wasn't late, but during all this period we later found he was on drugs.

After the first two years uh when he had been picked up in possession of drugs,  

uh it became obvious that his future was very indefinite.

We were advised by doctors and psychiatrists and probation people that he was heading  

towards an eventual death.

And shortly after his twentieth birthday he died of an overdose of heroin.

[Dr. Gershon:] Man has always searched for instant happiness in a pill.

The search is going on as more and more potent psychedelics are developed.

The search goes on with many kinds of substances.

Our youngsters out here are drinking diluted Murine eyewash.

They're smoking crushed aspirin.

They're drinking Ban deodorant.

They're injecting Accent meat tenderizer.

Always in search of the magic high.

A magic experience.

I think what we as adults have to do is to invite the youngsters to join our adult word 

and make it a better place.

We have to admit we haven't done such a perfect job, but to show them

that the answer is not to drop out by dulling their consciousness or changing their awareness.

But to help, become activists and help us create a better world.

[Narrator:] Perhaps there is a straight society.

A universal establishment that many of our youth reject.

But they will not create a better society by freaking out in Kathmandu or turning on in Los Angeles.

They must face up to what they are running away from.

Work constructively to bring about a change if change is needed.

And we, as the straight society, must reach out and help with honesty, compassion, 

and a sincere desire to understand.

Not only them, but ourselves as well.

For we represent what they are reacting against.

[An Airlie Production]

[Executive Producer, Murdock Head M.D.]

[Narrator, Paul Newman]

[Producer, Frank Kavanaugh]

[Director of Photography, Charles E. Francis]

[Director, William Templeton; Writer, Don Peterson]

[Photography, Charles Strathman; Edited ByJames E. Carpenter]

[Music And Effects By E. Robert Velazco; Sound Recording by Clifton Settler, William Wilder]

[Special Consultant, Alfred M. Freedman M.D.]

[Produced By George Washington University,The Department of Medical And Public Affairs]

[In Cooperation With The National Institute of Mental Health]

[And The District of Columbia Medical Society And The American Academy of General Practice]