I Never Had It Made (25 page)

Rachel and I had been trying to think of ways to show our appreciation to the Daytop staff. One day, on a holiday late in May, we invited all the members of the Daytop family, perhaps about fifty of them, to a picnic on the grounds surrounding our house in Stamford. They arrived about ten in the morning. Seldom have I seen a more organized group. They had a kitchen crew which went to work and prepared some great salads. They had brought along chickens, watermelons, and other fruits to add to the food we were providing. They had work squads assigned to take care of every detail. Some of those who didn't have an assignment for the moment were out on the grounds playing ball.

We were delighted seeing Jackie's pride in his friends and sensing how much our warmth toward them and their warmth toward us meant to him. He was like a mother hen, supervising the whole affair—the preparation of the food, the games, the cleaning up they did at the end of the day. About four-thirty in the afternoon, they were ready to return to Daytop, and all of them came to Rachel and me saying what a fabulous time they had had, some of them declaring it was the greatest day of their lives. As that line of kids dwindled down, our son Jackie was the last. There was a proud look on his face that put a lump in my throat because I remembered. . . .

When Jackie had left home to go into the service, we drove him to the train and I suppose I had the thoughts any father has watching his son leave for service. I was proud of him and I was concerned because I knew quite well there was a chance he might never come back. I was worried because I knew that telling him good-bye was rough for Rachel. As he was about to leave us, Rachel reached out and took him in her arms in a loving hug. Impulsively, I wanted to do the same thing. But just as I raised my arms to embrace him, his hand shot up and stopped me, and he took my hand in his in a firm handclasp. In our unspoken language, I knew that the love was there but what he was telling me was that men don't embrace. And I understood. That had been several years ago. . . .

Now on the lawn of our home, on the evening of the picnic, our confused and lost kid who had gone off to war, who had experienced as much life in a few short and turbulent years as many never do in a lifetime, that same kid had now become a young man, growing in self-esteem, growing in confidence, learning about life, and learning about the massive power of love. He stood in front of us, the last on that line of thankful guests, and reached out and grabbed Rachel and hugged her to him. His gratitude and appreciation were a tremendous sight. I stuck out my hand to shake his hand, remembering the day of his departure for the service. He brushed my hand aside, pulled me to him, and embraced me in a tight hug.

That single moment paid for every bit of sacrifice, every bit of anguish, I had ever undergone.

I had my son back.

Immediately, after that picnic, began a new era of closeness for the family. Jackie was open in talking with us. He could talk about the shadows of the past because he had faced them and was walking away from them and because he knew who he was.

We had learned that we had done the right thing in closing ranks as a family. This is what families must do when crisis strikes. Forget about the whispers and stares of neighbors. I especially appeal to black parents because there is a special paranoia in the black communities when it comes to drugs. Most of the kids at Daytop with Jackie were white. Not because Daytop practices any kind of racial discrimination. But black kids are harder to reach because, in general, they grow bitter younger.

There is another phase of addiction that hits blacks the hardest. That is the addiction which either begins or accelerates while our GI's are in service. Blacks who volunteer are in proportion higher than their percentage of the population. This seems to mean that more of them proportionately are falling victims to addiction. Jackie appeared to testify before the United States Senate Sub-Committee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. The date of his testimony was October 30, 1970. Here is Jackie's statement:

 

STATEMENT BY JACK ROBINSON, JR.

I joined the United States Army for three years in March, 1964. My first duty station was at Fort Riley, Kansas. I was only seventeen years old, and because of my age I couldn't get into a lot of the military clubs or entertainment establishments the other fellows went into.

I really didn't like the types of recreation that were provided by the Army. I found myself very much alone and bored in my off-duty hours. So during these hours I found myself searching for something that would give my time and my life some kind of interest, some kind of meaning. In my searching for these things, I met other people who were pretty much in the same bag that I was in. They were also pretty much lost and looking for something. So we turned to the use of alcohol. We drank quite a bit and began to use drugs occasionally. I guess the only reason we only used them on occasion was because there weren't really that many drugs out in Kansas at that time, or at least that I knew of, so we didn't have that much contact with them.

When we did have contact with them we used them. It was mainly marijuana and a few different types of pills.

I had smoked marijuana infrequently before going into the Army and during the time just prior to that I didn't smoke at all. It was in the Army that I got most heavily into drug use, where it became an everyday thing with me.

I got to use marijuana and opium as well as various different types of pills which I got from the medics as often as not.

In Vietnam we landed at a place called Camranh Bay, and there was no military action for the first couple of months. This is when we started smoking pot kind of slowly. We didn't really jump into it. We smoked like twice a week in the beginning. And then after a while our use picked up, and as our use picked up there were a lot more people that started using. A lot of people that had never smoked any pot or marijuana when we were in the States started to smoke it then. I guess this was because it was more prevalent over there. There was more marijuana growing wild, and in any village you could get as much as you wanted to. So besides the added tension and added fears that people have to deal with I think the fact that it was so readily available was another reason that started people using so heavily.

I was in the infantry the entire time I was in Vietnam. I was wounded in action and I saw quite a few different combat missions. Drugs were used on these missions.

At first when I got over there the drugs were much more powerful than those I had been used to in the United States. I thought at first that I wouldn't use them when I started pulling guard duty or when I was on combat missions. But as I got used to the more potent high that was created by these drugs I started taking them with me everywhere I went and after a while smoked marijuana or the opium-dipped marijuana regularly. Anyway, it didn't matter to me if I was on guard duty or going out on combat duty mission. And with me it kind of intensified all the feelings that I had. I was fairly aggressive when it came to fighting anyway.

I think that the use of marijuana made me want to get into it more. I found myself wanting something to happen, hoping the fighting would start. And I was always looking around, very anxious, very tense. It seemed from what I saw of it, everybody was using drugs.

It did basically the same thing to them. And when I say the same thing I mean that it intensified their feelings. If they had a lot of fears about the combat action, they became really paranoid, and when they heard a gunshot it really scared them. You would see them dive behind bushes or fall to the ground really quickly. They were truly scared. I think it is because of the fact that your feelings are so much intensified and your fears are so great that you react differently to different situations than you would ordinarily. I don't think you can have someone out in the field who is smoking marijuana and expect rational actions from them at all times because their view of the world when they are high is not that orderly or that structured. A lot of things don't really make sense to you. You could find yourself out in the middle of a field and you have been smoking pot and all of a sudden you ask yourself a question like “What am I doing here?” It hits you. Like what am I really doing here? And this can go beyond just a moral conviction about not fighting. This can go to your head. “You know you can get killed doing this sort of thing” or “I don't want to do it.” While other people just got carried away with it, I never did anything really crazy while I was using drugs. But I have ridden through villages with a .38 of my own and I put my arm over the side and just pointed it at different people and pretended in my mind that I was just shooting them down. I would have been smoking a lot of marijuana and I think that had I been agitated at the time or something happened which scared me it would have been a very easy thing to shoot instead of just pretending.

I think that everybody acts differently when they are really high, when they have smoked marijuana, and most GI's did after a while. Many smoked while sitting up at night alone pulling guard duty. This is mostly the heavier smokers I'm speaking about now. Just before going out on a patrol or to set up an ambush they might smoke some.

And I know personally now, that it was a very dangerous thing to do. In difficult situations, say at night, if anyone moved near me I might have taken a shot at him.

We had a number of accidental deaths while I was over there and it wouldn't surprise me if some of those “accidental” deaths were possibly caused by some GI's being scared under combat conditions because of marijuana.

When I said the heavy marijuana users, I said that because it was mostly the heavy users that smoked marijuana when we were out on missions. The guys who smoke it only occasionally generally wouldn't smoke it when we were out on a mission. When I said “heavy user” I meant somebody who used it like every day, pretty much all day, as I did. And I would say about 25 percent of my outfit fell into this category. And then, perhaps, from 50 to 75 percent of my outfit smoked pot irregularly.

Why was there so much drug use?

I think it had to do with the extraordinary amount of fear, the harsh realities, they had to deal with. They weren't accustomed to the pressure and sought some relief. Facing reality is easier when you are high. Reality is altered, made more comfortable by drugs, and I think this is basically what causes the drug abuse.

That is particularly true about the idle, bored GI's not in combat. You don't want to just lie around and think about what you are involved in. It would be much more comfortable to lie around and just be high and not have to deal with the fact that the next hour or the next day you are going to be going back out and facing the people who are hostile and want to kill you.

I think another big thing was the apathy that smoking marijuana created. Once we got into marijuana we weren't really interested in the war thing; you know, it just didn't seem relevant to what we wanted to do. You know the thing of serving your country, and any other reason that somebody might have there, kind of went right out of the window because our whole thing was we wanted to be high. There was no purpose to too much of anything else that wasn't directly related to us getting high.

After I arrived in Vietnam I used drugs constantly for the remaining two years of my tour of duty, including pills and opium as I became familiar with them. I think the environment came into play, had something to do with it. I know now that I have to take the responsibility for my own actions because there were guys around me who didn't use drugs, but I think that the environment played a big part in it.

The military code on drugs was never really enforced. I was in the stockade for going AWOL after I came back from Vietnam, and there was one member of the Army CID that knew I was using drugs. I think he learned this from people in town somehow or possibly from one of his investigations. But as far as the officers or any of the people in my units are concerned, they didn't know, and nothing ever happened to me because of drug use. I was never treated for any drug use, obviously, because they didn't know, and I was never punished for it. The Army isn't a very personal place, it isn't a very sensitive place, and most of the people who are in charge of the Army don't seem to me to be very sensitive people. They seem indifferent to a lot of the personal problems that a person has. They really weren't concerned with anything except your doing your function as a soldier, and as long as you did that they really didn't care about anything else that might be going on with you.

I was court-martialed only once for going AWOL, but it had nothing to do with drugs. When I returned to Colorado from Vietnam I brought some marijuana back with me. At the time we weren't really being searched very thoroughly so I brought back enough to last me a couple of months. I had eighty opium-treated marijuana cigarettes. I even had a bag with a broken zipper that nobody bothered to open. I tried to open it. The zipper was broken. They told me, that's all right, go ahead through. I had the cigarettes right on me in cigarette packs which were packed over there.

Quite a few of my friends smuggled drugs into the United States but none got caught. I knew one man who brought back $10,000 worth of opium to New York City.

In Colorado I started getting involved with a lot of the camp followers. These are people that are prostitutes, gamblers, thieves, drug users, and pushers that kind of follow Army towns. In Colorado I mostly used marijuana and pills and cough syrup on an everyday basis. I left Colorado and came to New York City where I started using cocaine, heroin, occasionally LSD, the amphetamines—I was using all types of drugs at this point. After a few months back in New York and Connecticut I went back to Colorado where I was using heroin, cocaine, and drinking a lot of cough syrup, and smoking marijuana—just heavily involved in all types of drugs. I was into about every type of crime that you could get into, in order to support my habit at this point.