My drug history:

When I was maybe four or five years old and living in Southern California, the summers could get pretty warm. When a friend of my father's would drop over of a Sunday afternoon for a chat with Dad, and bring a six-pack of beer with him, I'd beg for some. Actually, I liked the taste of beer, and sitting around with my Dad and his friend drinking beer made me feel very grown up.

They'd pour me about three ounces into a juice glass, and after I'd consumed it, they'd be somewhat amused at me sitting there with the hiccups. Fun times!

Although the coffee houses I sang in were not (as some people thought) hotbeds of revolution and drugs, I did know some singers who were into pot, and a few into psychedelics, LSD, "magic mushrooms," and such.

I already smoked (tobacco—although I quit some thirty-five years ago), drank unhealthy amounts of coffee (the Universal Solvent for good conversation and Saving the World), and often finished off the evening with a couple of schooners of beer at the Blue Moon Tavern near the University of Washington.

A bunch of Seattle folk singers, including myself, went south to the 1964 Berkeley Folk Festival (performing were Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, Almeda Riddle, Sam Hinton, Alice Stuart, and I forget who all else. Charles Seeger (patriarch of the Seeger family) and Archie Green were there, conducting workshops in folk song collecting, history, and such.

There were often private parties after the evening concerts, and some of the Seattle singers got together in someone's private home. We sang a lot, and as the evening (night) progressed, the joints started getting passed around. I had heard a lot of glorious stuff about pot from some of these people, and they were urging me to give it a try. Up until now, I had always resisted. But this time, I tried it.

There were a number of things I noticed about—and during—this experience.

I was fumbling a lot on the guitar and forgetting words to songs I'd sung hundreds of times—as was everyone else there. Yet—they were all raving about how, "Wow, I've never played better!"

NOT!

And when the party broke up, I found I didn't particularly like the space-time dilations that the stuff had left me with. Not easy to walk down a flight of stairs using a pair of thirty-foot forearm crutches! There were a number of things like that that I found unsettling.

The following day, I felt foggy-headed for the morning workshops. Didn't like that! Nor did I like the fact, despite thoroughly brushing my teeth, that my mouth tasted like I had been chewing dirty socks all night long.

On subsequent occasions back in Seattle, these same folk assumed I had joined the Secret League of Pot-Heads, and were surprised when I passed up the joint when it was passed around. I told them when asked that, frankly, I didn't like it. They urged me to try it some more, that it really gets good when you get used to it! Maybe so, but, I figured I already had enough bad habits, so—no thanks.

I thought quite a bit about the misjudgment of their own musical abilities when they were high on pot, and it occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons they had little ambition to sing anywhere beside the one coffee house where they tended to hang out (whereas non-dopers such as Bob Nelson, Nancy Quensé, Stan James, and myself were doing concerts and occasional television in addition to coffee house singing) was that they could create their own Carnegie Hall inside their own heads by taking a few tokes on a joint.

Some years later, I was working at Boeing (Production Illustration Department) alongside one of these same singers—who, after smoking a lot of pot, had gone on to try LSD.

Every now and then, I would glance at him sitting at his drawing table and he was just staring vacantly into space. He did this frequently enough so I was afraid his supervisor would notice he wasn't working, but sitting there "wool-gathering," and get himself canned. So I'd call, "Jim? Are you okay?" Maybe I'd have to call him a couple of times, then he would respond with a start, as if he had just awakened from a trance.

"Oh, God!" he'd moan, "I 'spaced out' again!"

We talked about it. He'd taken a lot of LSD, and since then, even though he was no longer taking it, he said that he often had "flashbacks."

It was really kind of buggering up his life!

Nah! I'll stick to an occasional glass of wine with meals on a special occasion or a beer on a hot summer afternoon. Heck, I've got an almost full bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream sitting in the refrigerator that someone gave me some time ago, and although I like the stuff, I keep forgetting it's there.

I like to keep my head on straight.

I get my "highs" on music, thank you.

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There was a furious pounding on the door and a loud voice shouted, "Open up! This is the police!!"

Two pot-heads were sitting in the apartment, stoned out of their minds, and were suddenly galvanized into action by fear of getting busted.

Where to hide the stash!?? They couldn't hide the smell of pot in the room, but unless the police had tangible evidence, they couldn't make a case.

So one of the guys pulled open the little door on the cuckoo clock and pegged the joints into the clock, Then the other staggered to the door and unlocked it, letting the police in.

The police practically tore the room apart, looking everywhere, but although the room reeked of pot smoke, they weren't able to find any tangible evidence, like an actual joint. Finally, frustrated and angry, they shrugged their shoulders and started to head for the door as the two pot-heads sat there, still stoned, but smiling smugly.

Then, the little door on the cuckoo clock slowly creaked open. The little bird leaned, bleary-eyed, against the door jamb and said, "Hey, man . . . what time is it?"

Busted!!

Don Firth