Paradise Life Daily Journal 4 2003

Another series of coincidences occurred when I returned from Mauritius Island in 1978 and again when I was a resident of the colonial Halfway House in York Pennsylvania. Can you imagine leaving the high life in Zimbabwe and ending up in rural Pennsylvania? I probably stayed clean because I never wanted to end up in York Pennsylvania again. The highlight of a Friday or Saturday night would be to drive up and down the Queen, (Main), street or King (Broad), street at a crawl. One street goes one way and the other looping around causing bumper-to-bumper traffic at people gawking at each other.

When I was a senior at Sandy Spring Friends School, I was involved in a drug culture. I had purchased something like a thousand bi-phetamine time releases. I would spend hours separating the little brown pellets from the white ones obsessively. I sold the pills for 10 cents apiece not making any profit. I sold weed the same way a dollar a gram. I was like a robin hood, giving people a product at cost. When this one dealer was cutting cocaine with baby formula I jumped up and down lecturing him on the immortality of it all. I sold this one girl from school about ten bi-phetamine pills. These were similar to black beauties but with the time-release component, the little brown balls. Anyway, this girl who drove to school in a Citroen, we had this in common because my dad had three CitroenÕs. Anyway this girl gives the pills to her mother and her mother gets addicted. The girl freaks out and threatens to turn me in for her mother becoming addicted. I was shocked that someone could turn on you for his or her own dilemma. We are talking one dollar worth of speed. I however became addicted and didnÕt eat or sleep for two weeks. Everyday at school people would tell me. You look terrible whatÕs wrong.

During this period I ended up in a psychiatric hospital and never made it to graduation. I am not too sure what happened but I was in a lot of trouble and became insane. I was a day student at the school. During my lunch break I would drive to my Dealers, Peter Stone, in Rockville Maryland. In those days Rockville was known as the Dust Capital of the world. My PCP experience is another story. At lunch I would drive to PeterÕs and Party. I turned him on to my cocaine connection, the same dude I got the time-release bi-phetamines from. But I was a terrible businessman and never made any money or profit from my deals. I was basically given every thing away at cost and if I was the middleman, I was just there for the party.

I would go to PeterÕs from school, I would drink beer, get my weed at one dollar a gram, what ever quantity so I would buy two or three dollars worth. He had these amyl Nitrate ampoules crushed in a champagne bottle that I would take hits from and get the rush. I also got the psilocybin at 10 dollars a gram, a luxurious item because that wasnÕt cheap. So I would party every day at his house.

One day I took this semi-girlfriend to his house. Her name was Tierney McBarron from my school. She was there one time. But as I said, I donÕt have a great recollection as to what happened. Peter gives me a couple of ounces of cocaine to hold because he canÕt stop using and maybe he thinks I can sell it at school. Who knows? This was during the time that I hadnÕt slept for a week. I show up at school. I have spring fever and tell everyone hanging in the woods that the school year is over. I offer cocaine to anyone who wants some. I use so much that I end up giving John McAlister about three ozÕs. I told McAlister that I couldnÕt stop using and he should hold on to the coke for me. I take off all my clothes and run around the woods with no clothes on. After school. I go back to PeterÕs house in Rockville. I never got home. My parents missed me and called numbers found on a sheet in my room. I had a list of all my drug contacts meticulously recorded from the speed I had been taking.

My parents found TierneyÕs phone number and called her. I suspect everyone was worried about me and Tierney had been to PeterÕs house one time during a lunch break that I brought her. I ended up in an ambulance that night from PeterÕs house.

I flipped out because they, Peter and the now deceased David Lesh were cutting the cocaine. I thought this to be unethical. They were using the scale that I stole from the school my first day at the school I walked into the science lab and lifted the scale. David Lesh died from a cocaine overdose thanksgiving 1978 at my parentÕs house. Another story to be told. David was shooting the cocaine in to his veins and I believe he gave me a shot and I donÕt remember anything after that. I have a vague recollection about a police officer living above PeterÕs apartment and my paranoia about that. Peter also had some shotguns he showed me in case anyone got ideas about robbing him.

My parents and Tierney arrived with an ambulance, or called an ambulance. I have never asked my parents their version, as I am embarrassed to this day about the incident. A quick note when I returned to the United States after spending a year and a half partying on the Island of Mauritius to my parents house two years later, I discover Peter Stone living with Tierney in the basement of our next door neighbors house. Peter was friends with my next door neighbor which is how I met him in the first place but how Peter hooked up with Tierney is bizarre as the only connection was from my maniac hospitalization from when she showed my parents where my dealers house was.

I did run into Tierney around Dupont circle on a Sunday, she was getting help for an alcohol addiction in 1983, and she said that peter Stone married a model and got divorced and then moved in with a successful architect in Boston. Peter was a Computer genius who studied Russian at Georgetown University. When David Lesh overdoses dead in my parentÕs house, Peter was there with another drug addict named Harris Ball. This will be a whole story in itself later. I ran into Harris Ball at the Adams Morgan Day celebration. Harris had a child with a woman and she tested positive for Cocaine and they were ordered in to treatment. However Harris didnÕt respond to the Treatment. Harris is a house painter and a vegetarian.

The last I heard and witnessed is that Tierney is a mess these days and is addicted to Valium and Alcohol because she asked me for help about 8 years ago. SheÕs married to the Washington Post illustrator Steve McCracken. She didnÕt follow Ðup on my recommendations.

Back to why I mentioned John McAlister. I was in this halfway house in York, Pennsylvania called the Colonial house. About a week into it, a new client comes in. He is a drug addict and he had just spent a year in Tibet as a Buddhist monk with his head shaved. Well it appears that he got into some trouble with drugs and caught a charge of some kind. He looks at me and says well the last time I saw you about seven years ago, you told me watch out because I canÕt stop using this cocaine, you better hold on to it for me and IÕll get it back from you later. I had given McAlister the 3 or 4 ozÕs of cocaine before I disappeared off in to the woods of my high school Sandy Spring friends. I had completely forgotten the incident because I was in a drug induced blackout and ended up in the psychiatric hospitals of Suburban hospital and then a few days later my first stay at Johns Hopkins. I was diagnosed a as Manic Depressive and with psychotic symptoms because I was put on numerous medications including Thorozine, lithium and even Haladol. I was hallucinating and couldnÕt distinguish between reality and dreams. I thought my German doctor was Peter Stone and I was on a mission. As my parents were taking me for an evaluation to Johns Hopkins hospital, I kicked out the windshield of my fatherÕs Audi and ran away from the beltway ended back up at my parentÕs house.

I drank about a fifth of Vodka and missed with the psychiatric medications that I had been on in a week, it made me go in to a comatose state. I was found in vomit in my bedroom and the medics and ambulance had no trouble transporting me to Johns Hopkins that night. I do recall my father chasing me around the yard earlier in the day. It was a mess. I stayed in Johns Hopkins, Phipps ward for about three months when I escaped three days before my fatherÕs posting as Ambassador to the paradise island country of Mauritius. Another story for later