Booze, Barflies, Weed, and Seizures - Memories of a Freak Magnet.
I never had any personal experience with hard drugs, but nonetheless they have influenced my life. I remember a day when my mother left my estranged father and I on a line to see a movie. When she left to park the car, Pop abruptly took me off the line with him and we wandered around the neighborhood going randomly from store to store. As we walked along the street, I would hear him stifling a chuckle (or a sob?). When my mother caught up with us, horrified at the thought that my father may have kidnapped me, she never left me alone with him again. When I told mom about my father’s inexplicable chuckling, my Mom said bluntly, “I think your father has a drug problem.” I had already been in classes at intermediate school where the cops told all the horror stories about drug abuse. Through that lens, I saw my father as some kind of ghost, if not an outright monster. I didn’t just feel he was no longer a part of the family. I felt he was no longer o...