Quaaludes

Let's see, describe the effects of Quaaludes? circa 1971-1972, kids were handing them out at junior high school "assemblies" i.e. required-attendance meetings of the whole school. I was too chicken to try them for a few years, until I had already done many other things first. But most everyone I knew was eating ludes, doing coke, even before smoking reefer and dropping acid, i.e. still in junior high school.

I finally decided to try them and see what everyone was doing so much of, especially since they had two "a's" in their name, so I bought 3 quaaludes for $5 around 1974. Sat down with a friend at 8 PM, ate one, did some bongs. Hmm, no effect from the ludes, better pop another. More bongs, still nothing happening? eat the third one. Hmm.

And then suddenly it's 10 AM the next morning. I've been sleeping/zombified/motionless in the chair in my friend's room for almost 12 hours, with no memory of any of it.

I stand up, groggy, stagger around, stagger out through the streets to my parents' house. gee, loads of fun. Gangs of fun, as we would say.

Kind of a lot like being drunk but a little less sloppy, somehow, since no liquid, pissing, burping, stomach upset, etc. is involved. Supposedly comes on in just 10 minutes, although it took me longer and that's why I ate too many.

The story back then was that nurses in the local hospital went apeshit over having sex on quaaludes, according to guys who worked there. (and the nurses had access to the supply closets) (and of course there was the immortal Bicentennial Crime a couple of years later in '76, when we liberated a number of 5-foot nitrous oxide tanks from aforementioned hospital's unused emergency room tank corral....)

Various women confirmed that ludes made them hornier than anything in the whole world. For a guy, ludes will just knock you out, so this tells you something about the differing attitudes (male vs. female) towards sex... :-) A popular theory among jr. high and high school budding psychopharmacological researchers was that they didn't really make girls literally "horny" i.e. physically aroused. Instead, the jr. high school & high school girls really just wanted an excuse to let go, and to get zonked so they don't have to pay attention, so the guy could do whatever he wants to her and she could disclaim responsibility afterwards by blaming it on the ludes.

There were several well-known "funny doctors" that everyone got their ludes from -- apparently (I never tried this) you just went and said, oh I have a headache, or I have real bad PMS, and he wrote you a script for ludes, no other questions asked. Presumably the funny doctors all got busted by the mid-1970's.

Oh, another thing was that people were really ecstatic about the combination of quaaludes and cocaine, one takes you down and the other takes you up, somehow the combination was awesome. Yawn.

I recall going with someone, to give someone else a ride, to go and "find their car" because they had done too much ludes and coke and had forgotten where they drove it to and where they left it. gee, what fun. Not.

Oh yeah, one time again in 1977 or so in college, a girl I knew got some ludes from her philosophy professor (I don't know if he was already making it with her, or just dreaming of it :-), and she made me do one with some whippets, just before I got to go and meet Buckminster Fuller. Now, that was cute.

Then quaaludes were outlawed, etc. etc. etc.