In January of 1971 I developed a close friendship with a troubled young man who was determined to become an acid head. I decided to join him . Between January of 1971 and October of 1972 I believe I took something over 400 acid trips. There are a book’s worth of adventures and misadventures that happened during that year and a half, but suffice it to say that I lived on LSD and indulged in every other drug I could find. I became hooked on methamphetamine as well. At the end of the summer of 1972 I made a decision to hitch-hike to California in an effort to “find myself” (the thing we all were supposed to be doing in this era). This whole escapade became a comedy of errors that is actually quite humorous. Suffice it to say that I ended up in Miami, Florida, not California, and the person I had expected to meet there wasn’t anywhere around. It was unbearably hot and humid: I was most unhappy, could not find work, was dirty and sweaty and hungry, and deathly afraid of trying to hitch back out of Florida because I was a “northern-damyankee-drug-usin-long-haired-pinko-hippie” in the deep south in 1972, and I would have had to travel through either Georgia (where I’d had a bad scare going to Florida), or Mississippi (which if anything was scarier than Georgia). I had nightmares of fat tobacco-chewing Duke’s of Hazard sheriffs with dark glasses and big guns and Dobermans, and of chain gangs in black and gray stripes, and other similarly unnerving things. I got so desperate that I ended up cutting my hair and joining the Army to get out of Florida. Thus I found myself in boot camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on November 3, 1972. Quite honestly, I felt like I had done something worthwhile for the first time in a long time. I stopped doing drugs; and I did very well in basic training. I actually enjoyed most of the three months of that winter: It was like a tough summer camp. I got into decent physical shape. I excelled as well in my advanced training and completed it with a promotion to PFC. From Fort Knox I headed for Germany (some 6000+ miles east of California).
Interestingly, when I got to Germany I fell in with a young fellow who was a Christian. As I waited for my permanent duty assignment I spent a goodly bit of time with him, and before I moved on to Nuremberg I remember praying with him to ask the Lord Jesus Christ into my life. After this, I even searched out the Christian coffeehouse at Montieth Kasserne, in Furth-Dambach where I was stationed, and I began to hang out with the believers I met there, some of whom were in my platoon as well.
However, I still had not really sold out to the Lord, and the lure of Nuremburg’s sensual pleasures soon overwhelmed the weakness of my faith. It was not too long thereafter that I began to distance myself from my Christian friends and to spend my free time in the underground culture of the city. In a very little while I was back to the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll (well..actually sex, drugs and folk-music) lifestyle. I began to live with my German friends whenever I was off-duty. I had a German girlfriend. In Europe, at that time at least, hashish was common and cheap, and speed could be bought like sugar on the streets. (I still suffer migraine headaches in part due to the damage I did to my sinuses snorting raw amphetamine.) I lived a double life: I was still a very good soldier during the day, but I was a stoned and lascivious profligate at night and on the weekends. I also was suspect in the eyes of my company commander, who was certain I was using drugs, but my platoon sergeant and my platoon warrant officer protected me from discovery because my work for them was well worth the lie. I commanded my Christian barracks mates to not talk to me about Jesus.
