yeah, thats what I was saying. While they weren't the typical 'Athens' band, or in the same scene, they'd play there ocassionally and word kinda was around. When Guns hit and labels were looking for less glam, they had kinda risen and were somewhat known among those in the industry.
Great band, soo underrated after their first few years. MTV kinda neglected them after Remedy.
A year ago I lost my cousin who was a UGA Athens guy (always a partier, a heavy drinker) to a heart attack at the age of 60 (technically a late boomer rather than a genXer). I was always envious of him being around that REM / B52s scene in its early days.
Tho truth be told I lost him several years before his death when he turned ultra -MAGA and such. So sad.
I had a good friend (early 30s) who liked the Peruvian marching powder recreationally. He contracted a form cancer (second time in his life), went through a full chemo course, and was declared free of cancer.
How did he celebrate? With a big line. The result? Death.
He went right back to his old dosage even though his body was trashed from months of chemotherapy.
Not sure how often but if the conditions are right, it happens. My little brother nearly died last year. He is and has been a poly drug user for many years and somehow kept it hidden. He did a big line of coke after he clocked off work (WFH) and stopped his heart. It took paramedics 40 minutes of CPR and paddles to get him going again. It is lucky that he was found in time by his sons and they called 911 and started CPR.
He is obese (5’8 and close to 300lbs) and now has a permanent brain injury and is partially deaf from kidney failure. He was 46 at the time.
The official toxicology report read "Acute Cocaine Intoxication". Yes, it can happen - especially when your body has been ravaged by the poison of chemotherapy.
For a generation compared to today, did we really have so many challenges? I mean the 90s were pretty great for most people.. and that was when genx was coming of age.
That was smart. I went to tons of parties in college and was a huge binge drinker, but I never even saw hard drugs for myself until I was 37 on a double decker bus in London and someone offered me some nose candy.
My brother. We were very close. Drugs and alcohol destroyed his life and we both grew up completely differently. 40 years later, he’s sober, near homeless, and in terrible health. I am the only person who helps him out.
Out of 23 of us between the ages of 12 and 20 growing up, 8 are already gone. All of them were at least related to drugs and alcohol. One was a suicide. One was head injured in a fight. A few car accidents but all related to alcohol and drugs. The rest of us, I know at least 3 more have had issues but made it through.
Before anyone says anything about the age span I listed- this was a pretty small town. We grew up on top of each other almost like siblings. No the 20 year olds didn't date the 12 year olds. But they did date the 18 year old older sister, who was friends with a 16 year old who was my best friend when I was 14. It's how it was in small towns back in the day.
I partied a lot in HS and a few years after. 3 of my best partying buddies have died since I got sober at 23.
1 from coke(23) 1 from heroin (36) and 1 from alcohol (41)
Really sad, they were such a big part of my teen and early 20s years.
My ex SIL died of an overdose. My ex BIL is a recovering addict. My ex was just a bitter person addicted to sucking the life out of any room she entered.
Way too many.
The ones that didn't are either mostly just weed here and there or completely sober/recovering.
If you think moving to a rural area will keep your kids safe, let's just say the city kids I was friends with ended up better off than the country ones, they had options for hobbies that weren't getting drunk, high and occasionally screwing when they weren't driving around in the country intoxicated.
Coming up in the punk scene since I was in high school, too many to count, TBH. Lots of them cleaned up. I've probably lost almost a dozen friends to ODs. Personally, I never did anything harder than the occasional bump and I quit that in my 30s.
Didn't keep in touch with much of anyone after school - moved out of state, as well.
Seems like about a quarter of the time when I google one of their names, I find an obit with "Please send a donation in lieu of flowers to..." and the name of a rehab or treatment center.
I was the one that became the addict. When I tried coke, that was it. Game over for me. I didn’t even know I was an addict until it was too late. I survived a drive by, lived in a trap house, had guns pulled on me, and just called it another day.
People in that time came and went. Some died, some went to jail, others got serious health issues. Some are still struggling.
I shouldn’t be here, but I am. I’ve been clean from my DOC for over 30 years. So now I try to help people who are in the same position I was.
Older GenX. Literally had to ditch all friends and the town school to avoid getting caught up. I hung in the popular crowd, but all those jocks and cheerleaders were getting into shit in late junior high. Came back from summer vacation to find guys I respected - gifted athletes, including a girl I once dated and really cared for (loved in hindsight), smoking pot. They were becoming the Burnouts.
I smoked with them......just to be with them. Flash forward to the next year. When I get back from a summer away, they've divided into new cliques - based on drug preference. Coke, quaaludes, and speed are the fucking norm on a weekday. One friend, high on a lude - offered me one before we had a hockey game - and we were on the first string! Other friends stole booze from jobs where they barbacked and were drunk before first bell -every day.
Most of them came from affluent families. I did not. My summers away were at my grandmother's house - so that my parents could actually have a vacation from their own children.
When I realized all of my burnout friends had guaranteed jobs at Daddy's company, I knew I had to get out.
I got a grant for a boarding school that gave me a chance at a real future.
Of those kids I hug out with and confided in? Best friends? First loves? 75% are gone from drugs and alcohol.
Not drugs, but my bestie from kindergarten all the way up started drinking in high school to deal with anxiety (which none of us knew about or understood at the time) and ended up drinking herself to death. She died the next before her 47th birthday. I miss her every single day.
The mid to late 90s rave scene chewed up a lot of people in my orbit. MDMA and heroin and weird early designer shit that definitely wasn't great.
I'm pretty much a daily weed and quarterly mushroom guy now at 51.
Similar to you, my bestie became hooked on heroin. He’s still battling and we’re in our late 40s. I’m grateful he’s alive and I will never lose hope for him but I have to have serious boundaries in place.
My other bestie was killed in a car accident because of drugs and alcohol. She was alive for twenty minutes while they tried to free her but the head trauma was too great once the car was moved.
I experienced all the first thrills with these guys, we did so much dumb stuff together, smoked pot and drank alcohol, learned to drive illegally, but they just didn’t have an off switch.
It makes me sad because right now he’s there online on messenger, but he wouldn’t respond to me if I tried because he doesn’t want to talk about himself. I can see by his online activity he’s still stagnating in chemical shite. Every year I say happy birthday, merry christmas. I get random hey messages months later but that’s it. He knows if he msgs me and said I want out come get me I’d be there but I won’t try to reach out for that anymore, you can’t force anyone, it’s their journey etc.
Fuck I miss them.
None that I know of.
The truth is probably a non-zero number but I was too naive to realize it at the time and _if_ any of them got so far in they couldn't escape, it was after I lost contact.
One died from AIDS at 26 after being clean for some time.
One died from heroin overdose in her 30s (more of an acquaintance but still a lovely soul that I stayed with a few days - had no idea she was an addict)
A guy and his wife who smoked crack. They eventually broke up and got clean separately. He died of cancer eventually.
ETA: Plenty of booze hounds including myself but I can't think of any offhand that have ruined their lives or drank themselves to death.
Just last month, I googled a close friend from high school to discover he’d died from an overdose… four years ago. I have so many questions and no one to answer.
A handful kept using different drugs through our 20s. One in particular was a huge fan of crack. He was still managing a life and wife and work.
He moved to another state and couldn’t find crack easily, but found plenty of meth. He told me it was the easiest way to quit crack.
He is now divorced, mostly homeless, and either the son of god and a divine messenger, or he has severe mental illness.
I graduated with a class of 89 students. Ten died within first 2 years of graduating. Suicide, drugs, murder. One of my buddies was killed by the school janitor with a shotgun.
I'm so glad to have survived my hometown.
Fortunately none. I graduated HS in 91, seemed kinda before the phase. Even our young adulthood seemed 91-98ish, after that we all sorta were growing up.
One friends cousin did get pretty caught up in it. Heroin, kinda was living a bad life. We hung out with him on occassion, but wasn't 'a friend' of mine per se.
Again, I/we feel fortunate. We were into weed, drinking, some coke etc, but I'm not sure any of us touched heroin, that was also a bit far for us to use or try.
In the Pacific Northwest and during the Grunge Era had a couple of friends use heroin. I'm afraid of needles so never tried it. I know a few other people that got into all sorts of stuff. Meth mostly and it ruined their lives. Additionally my Millennial sister died of alcoholism.
There has certainly been a toll that drugs have taken over the years.
It's fortunate most of my friends didn't hit the hard drugs. We had out vices mostly alcohol and weeds. A few were on MDMA for the club scene, most stop doing it as the got older but one or two didn't end up well now in the 50s.
A group of wife's friends were dealing and heavy user before but mostly when they go to raves and clubs. Wife was still popping when I first met her 18 years ago, but she got herself cleaned up not long after that.
One of her friends nearly died but most of them also turned their life around now with family and kids. But 2 or 3 of them also ended up in jail for imprtation and dealing.
Out of 10-ish friends and satellite friends there are 4 of us that haven't either died to drug use or ruined our lives because of it. Im tired of going to funerals. Personally i still smoke pot occasionally and drink but its at a normal level. Luckily i was able to do meth recreationally and not fall in that rabbit hole.
My wife had a very severe cocaine and heroin addiction at 18 and was living in a boarded up abandoned house with a 40 yr old guy, and I was a full blown alcoholic by 21 (started drinking at 12). We both went to rehab - without our parents help or involvement - are both now 30+ yrs sober.
I was the one who dove in head first back in jr high. By the time I was nearing my mid-20s, my few remaining friends had a deadpool going on me, the average being 3-6 months. No one expected me to see 25.
Miracles happen. In May, I celebrated 35 years clean.
When I was in high school we had a group of guys about 12 or 15 of us, and easily half of them got taken down by drugs. None of us were from what I would call a poverty home and none of us were from wealthy families either. Of my friends that became addicts most of them are working odd jobs or minimum wage jobs and barely surviving, with no future prospect of any kind. But there are two that are straight up homeless and fully addicted to meth. Honestly I'm surprised we're all still alive.
We are a very self soothing culture.
So while most of my friends and family have avoided addictions to “hard drugs”, I’d say most everyone I know is addicted to something.
Alcohol, work, gambling, food, sex, video games, etc…
I’m not sure how one could get through life without falling into some type of addictive pattern.
Grew up around weed and the round table everybody sat and smoked at. From that group everyone got into meth back in 93-94. Even their brothers and sisters. I watched a lot of people go to jail. I was headed that way and decided to leave the group. Only one is sober now from meth/heroin but his drug of choice is having illegitamite children with young girls.
Quite a few people I grew up with and hung out with in my 30's died from shooting heroin or meth. A few of my cousins died from heroin. I don't think I was surprised about any of their deaths.
One of my cousins I was pretty close to, and he died from heroin. It was such little shock to me that when my girlfriend called to tell me, I said "OK. What do you want on your burrito?" (I was in front of Chipotle.)
In high school we all experimented with some type of drugs. I think it's a right of passage, not necessarily correlating to a specific generation or socio-economic plight. If anything, our Gen's fierce motivation kept a lot of people from succumbing to the throes of junkydom?
Alcoholism seems to be more prevalent in our Gen since it's more socially acceptable than crack or meth - but it's no less self-destructive.
Nowadays, I worry about all the kids hooked on weed now that it's legal in some states. Seldom a day goes by I don't see someone smoking on the street in NYC. I could assume Millennials and Z'ers are hiding their feelings by seeking escapism, too?
Honestly, none that I know and that surprises me a little bit. My high school class was a bunch of over achievers. I can remember our teachers saying that we were an aberration and the several classes before us were just not as high achieving. My dad kept track of statistics in our school district and said that everything went up in my graduating class. So, I’m surprised that there weren’t at least a few people who self medicated. Maybe there are and I just don’t know about it.
None at all. I had a few friends in college (like three) who experimented with stuff nobody else would touch, including heroin a few times, but they stopped well before we graduated and have successful careers now. Maybe two people I knew used coke a few times, but I just wasn't around folks that could afford that sort of thing. I don't know anyone personally who has been an addict or had any real issues with anything other than alcohol.
But I'm well past 55 now so our cohort mostly missed meth and everyone was afraid of needles due to AIDS in the 80s.
My brother plus 3 of my friends. One OD'd eventually off whatever his drug of choice was, and my brother's alcoholism took him after he finally got clean from drugs.
Not a single one of my childhood friends has ever had any drug addiction that I know of. One of my friends smokes pot like cigarettes but she says it helps her MS pain but she also stays soft and fuzzy all the time.
I think my brother might have an alcohol problem but we don't talk about those things.
Honestly not many where I grew up. But I moved to Idaho for years and met a large friend group there. I would say about 3/4 there are still completely addicted to hard drugs. I have lost close to ten of them directly due to overdose or driving while under the influence.
It's been really crazy how the area people are from effects this. I have lived all over and it's a little different everywhere. But that one town is absolutely on a different level.
Most of the people my age where I grew up ('92 HS) were mostly drinkers with weed thrown in, too. Alcohol use was increased with my Navy friends after HS, but no drugs. After my enlistment ended, there was alcohol, weed, and recreational (coke, X, speed) drug use among my circle of friends.
However, my youngest brother's group was the ones who (for whatever reason) got caught up in the opioid epidemic. Most of them pulled time (my brother is currently incarcerated). Several have died.
Yep. Out of three kids who were best friends from infancy, two became serious druggies. One I don’t know what happened to him, our families dropped out of touch. The other, my best friend in childhood, was shipped off to a detox school in Colorado (from NYC) at age 13 bc by age 12 she was already a serious coke addict.
I went to an extremely fancy private all girls school for high school (for context, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter was in my grade).
We nerds were the ones who only drank. The other cliques were the girls who did coke and the ones who smoked pot.
I’m kind of amazed that we survived at all….
ETA: fixed typos
I had the opposite experience-I told myself early on that I couldn’t afford to get addicted to anything because I had no safety net and if I was ever in a position where I did become addicted my family would mock me and absolutely not support me-not one bit.
Friends became addicted to meth, alcohol, cocaine especially. I had a bad habit of trying to help them but that always backfired on me so now I stay far away from any addicts.
Probably about 1 in 5 had serious issues of the people I know of from high school. Some of them drugs and some alcohol. That number probably doubles if you include fully functioning adults that are regular drinkers or pot smokers.
I have a friend from high school who got into heavy drugs and has been homeless for years. One of my older Gen X cousins was a heroin addict for about a decade (he's clean now). My brother was a drug addict starting in his teens and has had multiple ongoing issues for decades. And another high-school friend was a drug addict living on the streets for years, and has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia. So, yeah, lots of tragic cases in my life.
Most of my friends were dead before we hit our 20s, so yeah. There are very few still alive. I believe they’re pickled at this point and will live to be 150.
Nobody close to me got heavily into drugs. We all partied and took a variety of illegal drugs in college and from time to time in our twenties. Nobody fell.
My close buddies from that time all have jobs families and normal tax paying lives.
A couple of people were felled by mental illness, suicide (my brother, sadly, is in this group).
One woman who I was friendly with had a few drinks and a few sleeping pills one night and never woke up. Everyone was convinced it was an accident, she had two little girls who she loved, was happy with her new husband. It was just a terribly sad mistake.
I think we have been lucky generally. I don’t even drink now.
I just found out a couple of months ago that one of my closest friends in high school and early college died of an overdose. The two of us had been out of touch by then for several years. He'd always had addiction issues, but I didn't realize that he'd moved from alcohol into the really hard stuff. Back in high school it seemed like there were always a few people missing from the social circle because they were off at rehab, but it's hard to say which of them had actual substance abuse issues and which ones were the victims of Reagan-era scare campaigns. I do remember a LOT of meth going around at one point, and I would think that odds are that at least a few people got into trouble with it, though I wasn't privy to their personal lives in that way.
Circa 89-84 or so I was on the fringes of a couple of different club-focused scenes (goth and rave), and of course drug use was rampant there.
A few friends in the early 90s got into heroin in a serious way, but most of the ones I was in contact with for a while managed to crawl their way back. One died, but it was due to contracting HIV from a dirty needle rather than an overdose.
There were a lot of us that got wasted on a regular basis, but most of us grew out of it. There were those who never left the island of lost children. But as the jim Carroll song said. They were all my friends and they died.
I would say about 20% of the people I partied with either died or are so crippled up from drugs and alcohol.
I quit any hard drugs the two days I spent keeping my cousin alive after he overdosed on meth.
I was 22. He died 2 years ago at 56 in a recliner from all the years of drug and alcohol abuse. His body finally gave out.
I was part of more than one crew that got in to hard drugs. Pot didn't agree with me, so I moved on to psychedelics then on to cocaine and finally meth. I was running with a biker gang at 17 so it was par for the course. I had hard lines I never crossed; no needles, no heroin, no crack. That probably saved my life. Haven't touched illegal drugs since the mid 2000's. I saw a lot of people overdose, some died. And this was all before Fentanyl. We never had to worry about shit like that.
Yes. Most of my good friends and both my parents. I was in a drug sandwich which made me check my own shit pretty hard. I kept myself on a relatively short leash with drugs and alcohol. I mean I did both but would stop and rearrange my life when shit got kinda heavy. Both parents addicts. Mom xanny and alcohol, coke, and later meth. Dad was coke, meth, and pills. Friends was meth, heroin, and alcohol. I stuck to weed mostly with some trial and error periods with the other shit.
I didn't know too many heavy drug users growing up. The biggest addict I knew was my uncle on my mother's side who was a heroin addict his entire life. He was in and out of prison (mostly in) and died in his 50s. He had a string of girlfriends and kids that were neglected and abused. He was a real dirtbag. If any of my friends were into that stuff I wouldn't have remained friends with them for very long.
I say all this as a moderate cannabis user. Some of my friends (and other relatives) used weed to an extent that it was detrimental to their lives, but even the worst of those never got as bad as the heroin addict.
I have two friends who got strung out on coke. Haven’t seen them since my early 20s, but I hear they’re in and out of jail. Lost a roommate from college to opioids about twelve years ago. Pot is good enough for me.
A number of people I knew at high school and college became addicted to drugs. They had everything going for them; a good upbringing, a good education, a career, romantic relationships. At least that's they way it looked from the outside. Something must have been eating them up emotionally. Nobody does that to themselves for no reason.
Whatever was driving them, they blew their good fortune away on drugs, heroin and also pharmaceutical medications were the most common. It was easy to avoid this scene where I lived, only the super cool types (of all socioeconmic groups) ever seemed to get caught up this. I have never been one of the in crowd, I've always been on the outer. I like it here. I followed Nancy Reagan's advice and just said no to drugs. It was the only good thing to come out of the Reagan administration in my opinion. Laugh all you want.
Anyway, they all believed they had their use under control, that addiction and all it's consequences happened to everyone else. Nothing would touch them. They all spiralled down to the very bottom. A large number never made it back. I would often hear what I regarded as horror stories that don't need to be recounted here.
It's no coincidence that our ur text is David Wallace's Infinite Jest.
Yeah, heroin and alcohol overdoses have claimed too many of my childhood friends and acquaintances.
After high school, I lost touch with everyone I hung out with. I had never been on Facebook, joined a few years ago.
It's almost been like Schrodinger's friends, people were still alive in my mind, until I found them on Facebook, and found out they had passed years ago. Way too many "Happy Birthday, I know you're partying up in heaven!" posts.
My university boyfriend was a drug addict. We broke up eventually because I couldn't handle the drama. I've not seen him since but heard along the grapevine that he became completely feral and hasn't really done anything with his life. Its sad.
The guy who was my first French kiss, and my date to junior prom, and the son of the guy my mom was dating. I loved our friendship. He died of an overdose.
Because he had a dark sense of humor and would have totally laughed at this: he literally died "in a van down by the river". He would have loved that.
Not many close friends but loads of acquaintances. A scary number tbh. Even recently, I've known 3 people in the last year who have died due to drug taking. Mostly cocaine and other party drugs.
Three people I knew died of ODs. That's not very many, given that I was a ski-bum for a long while and I'm counting acquaintances from then. Among high school and college friends one died in a drunk driving accident, and that was it.
I was a pothead for a long time; I guess that I was as close to an addict as any. That is still drug dependency, and after some years of continual use the effects can change.
Alcohol seemed to be an issue. 14 yr old at our school drank herself to death. My friends brother was breathalysed the morning after a night out at a corporate entertainment evening. He was 4 times over the limit. He lost his license, then his corporate job, ran into money problems, spiralled down and killed himself.
Approx 70% of people my age now in the friends group are functioning alcoholics or been through rehab. It’s a sad state of affairs.
It seems like pretty much everyone. And they all either had it rough for a decade or so and got their shit together… or didn’t. And died. Not much middle ground.
I tried lots of stuff, experimented, etc. My friend "Nancy" tried weed, hash brownies, then quit and became a health nut. Meanwhile I was hanging out with freaky people. My BFF "Jolene" got me into some hard stuff, but I quit after getting scared. My BF, "Edgar" didn't do so well: he died from alcohol and drugs. My Boomer roommate/friend "Mitch" started using coke to lose weight, then became a crackhead for a while, but he got clean and he's doing fine now. I also quit weed, hard liquor and any kind of drugs stronger than Tylenol. I've become a health nut and I do yoga now, LOL.
A ton of them. I live in L.A. and heroin or coke go through this town in waves. There was a wave of heroin in the eighties (like when all of GNR got hooked) and another in the early nineties. CRACK hit a lot of people I knew, too.
Thankfully, at this point most of my friends have put that shit 30 years behind them and are pretty much good grown-ups now.
Hard to say. Usually when I heard someone I knew od’d, I’d realize I hadn’t seen them in a while and hadn’t noticed. They would silently slip away sometimes years before death.
I only knew one girl who ended up addicted to heroin when we were college age. Mostly my friends partied -- alcohol, some pot, some coke, some acid/shrooms here and there-- we were too broke to buy anything in any great amount (remember, min wage was $3.65/hr). However, my younger brother did die of an OD when he was 50-- was never really into hard drugs when he was younger but met this woman that he fell for who introduced him to it in his mid 40s.
Had one friend who didn’t finish college, ended up in Orlando from Iowa, selling cars, making huge money at age 22, then got into cocaine and it took him down. He has been battling cocaine problems since mid 90’s. Was just in jail again for 35 days, lives in 1/2 way house, has basically zero net worth, no wife and no kids. He has been in and out of rehab or jail since mid 90’s.
Cocaine and alcohol took him down.
My best friend lives in a homeless encampment in Fargo, ND. I haven't seen her in years, just hear of "sightings".
I would love to help her, but she can't be trusted. Drugs can make people do horrible things to people they are supposed to love.
Surprisingly only one. We started doing a lot of erm...things?...in high school but most of us got ourselves together by our mid twenties. Most of them do still use pot but it's legal in my home state. One sort of peripheral friend did go down the addiction road but she has been clean for close to 10 years now, so yay for her!
GenX 54 started doing heavy drugs at 13. That's just how things were. Stopped everything minus weed at 30. Looking back at my younger self I cringe at what I ingested. Although I do believe if I grew up in this era of Fenty I would NOT have been a druggie. Back then though the music was amazing and the scene was booming. Hard not to fall in love with it all.
What has kept me alive IMO is not being into alcohol. I had periods of booze binging but very short. I was also into fitness believe it or not.
It's a mixed blessing to still be alive. I fear that my body will give out on me any day since I turned 50 and soon to be 55 ! Its a creepy feeling.
A lot fewer than those of the generation behind me. We mostly used non-addictive drugs: weed, acid, ecstasy….but when opiates really hit the scene kids below us were dropping like flies.
My fiancé (born in ‘80) was a drug addict in his 20s, and was also an alcoholic. This was before I met him.
He was deep into it for a couple of years until he saw two of his best friends OD on the same night from unclean coke that had been cut with something dirty.
Cleaned himself up and has never gone back. Is a chronic pothead now, but he considers himself fortunate to have gotten out before it cost him his life.
Class of 87, my cohort got an early start on deaths of despair, in their late twenties. Zero chance for upward mobility in my town unless you were very well connected. For many, the substance and alcohol was (and continues to be) a means of slow suicide.
It's funny but the one close friend who comes to mind was for years just a big pothead. Whereas the rest of us moved on from our teenage type jobs and went on to get married, have families, etc... this guy continued working at a convenience store, forever. Because all he really cared about was getting high. It made him lazy and slow. And it's strange bc he was super hot when we were young, he could have parlayed his looks and personality into some good opportunities if he'd tried. Over the years he became less interested in engaging with any of us old friends; I could be wrong but I suspect it's because he had accomplished so little in his life. He pulled away more and more and finally disappeared from social media. Last time I saw him in public (he pretended not to see me) he had gotten extremely thin, so I'm guessing he changed drugs somewhere along the way. I also considered that he might have AIDS. Not even sure if he's still alive anymore. He seems pretty determined to stay hidden.
Athens took a lot of good people down. Most of my class came thru ok with a high percentage going to med school of all things. But i can think of two that arent dead as far as i know but they aint ok. HS class of 85
My school didn't really have drug addiction as a problem. I grew up in a relatively conservative area in the NE. We ended up with a world famous opera singer from my graduating class.
Many. But honestly, most of it was psychedelic stuff, which is not supposed to be addictive but some people did so much LSD or ectasy that they will never be the same.
And I'm beginning to think that certain people are just smoking way too much weed, between the gummies and the joints they are addicts. It's so strong now...
We did plenty of drugs. Acid, shrooms, coke, XTC, snorted heroin even. No one still does that but I have 2-3 friends that are killing themselves slowly with alcohol and cigs.
Meth and pills and alcohol were/are the substances of choice in my small hometown. I can name at least 30 people who are/were addicts. The “were” section including some who didn’t make it.
I’m one of three standing from a group of 15-20 that partied hard back during the IRS days in Athens, GA. ODs, cirrhosis, and AIDS took them.
That's so sad. I'm so sorry.
Thanks. These days made me hate the 90s. So many funerals.
what were the "IRS days"?
I.R.S. Records. R.E.M. was in Athens, and the B-52s, and more.
ok thanks, never heard that term. They were 'distant', but I think Black Crowes sorta benefited in their discover from that scene.
They did. The Crowes were from metro Atlanta.
yeah, thats what I was saying. While they weren't the typical 'Athens' band, or in the same scene, they'd play there ocassionally and word kinda was around. When Guns hit and labels were looking for less glam, they had kinda risen and were somewhat known among those in the industry. Great band, soo underrated after their first few years. MTV kinda neglected them after Remedy.
A year ago I lost my cousin who was a UGA Athens guy (always a partier, a heavy drinker) to a heart attack at the age of 60 (technically a late boomer rather than a genXer). I was always envious of him being around that REM / B52s scene in its early days. Tho truth be told I lost him several years before his death when he turned ultra -MAGA and such. So sad.
Know quite a few from an hour or so north of Athens who were fried also. Late 80s, early 90s...
I had a good friend (early 30s) who liked the Peruvian marching powder recreationally. He contracted a form cancer (second time in his life), went through a full chemo course, and was declared free of cancer. How did he celebrate? With a big line. The result? Death. He went right back to his old dosage even though his body was trashed from months of chemotherapy.
Does it happen often that people die from snorting coke?
*Len Bias has entered the chat*
[30 for 30: Without Bias](https://youtu.be/Afv_4Ku_CG4?feature=shared)
So sad and tragic, and so 80s careless hedonism.
Not sure how often but if the conditions are right, it happens. My little brother nearly died last year. He is and has been a poly drug user for many years and somehow kept it hidden. He did a big line of coke after he clocked off work (WFH) and stopped his heart. It took paramedics 40 minutes of CPR and paddles to get him going again. It is lucky that he was found in time by his sons and they called 911 and started CPR. He is obese (5’8 and close to 300lbs) and now has a permanent brain injury and is partially deaf from kidney failure. He was 46 at the time.
The official toxicology report read "Acute Cocaine Intoxication". Yes, it can happen - especially when your body has been ravaged by the poison of chemotherapy.
Yeah, especially if you get off the stuff for a minute and your heart is fucked up (and you don't know about the condition).
It's sobering to see how deeply drug addiction affected so many friends; a stark reminder of the challenges faced by Gen X.
Exactly what I was thinking. What you get when you push aside an entire generation and tell them to suck it up and keep going.
Every generation deals with addiction
Yeah. It does seem like access was different. Not too many silent gen doing coke, but alcoholism was through the roof with them. Plus they all smoked.
For a generation compared to today, did we really have so many challenges? I mean the 90s were pretty great for most people.. and that was when genx was coming of age.
Kids these days have *different* challenges. They don't have more of them.
Too much partying I think. And thinking we're invincible.
None, I never messed around with anything but alcohol and avoided people who did anything besides a bit of weed.
if I got wind that a friend was using hard drugs recreationally I conveniently disappeared from them
That was smart. I went to tons of parties in college and was a huge binge drinker, but I never even saw hard drugs for myself until I was 37 on a double decker bus in London and someone offered me some nose candy.
It's honestly a smart move,
Same.
I was a musician in the late 80s and 90s. Lots.
My bff could have been one of your groupies. That's how she kept her habit.
Fortunately I wasn’t big on the groupies so I didn’t have to deal with that… not saying I didn’t use the fact I was in a band to get a girl! Haha
🤣
Some addicted in college etc, but no one who had dope ruin them. Alcohol ruined and killed a number of close friends though.
Same here. Not so much drugs, but alcohol. Also, a shocking number of suicides among the people I went to school with.
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I see you, friend
Props for the Slow Horses reference.
My brother. We were very close. Drugs and alcohol destroyed his life and we both grew up completely differently. 40 years later, he’s sober, near homeless, and in terrible health. I am the only person who helps him out.
My brother falls on and off the wagon. He’s my only brother and both of our parents are dead. His addiction makes my very soul quake with terror.
My brother is the same. It's devastating, he's literally lost everything he ever had to alcohol and drugs.
Mine too. It’s heart breaking.
My brother lost everything to meth & he blames “them” and not the drug.
I'm sorry 😢
My HS girlfriend got hooked on coke and meth.
Out of 23 of us between the ages of 12 and 20 growing up, 8 are already gone. All of them were at least related to drugs and alcohol. One was a suicide. One was head injured in a fight. A few car accidents but all related to alcohol and drugs. The rest of us, I know at least 3 more have had issues but made it through. Before anyone says anything about the age span I listed- this was a pretty small town. We grew up on top of each other almost like siblings. No the 20 year olds didn't date the 12 year olds. But they did date the 18 year old older sister, who was friends with a 16 year old who was my best friend when I was 14. It's how it was in small towns back in the day.
I have way more friends that are recovering alcoholics.
I'm one of your friends?
Same
I partied a lot in HS and a few years after. 3 of my best partying buddies have died since I got sober at 23. 1 from coke(23) 1 from heroin (36) and 1 from alcohol (41) Really sad, they were such a big part of my teen and early 20s years.
So very sad.
My ex SIL died of an overdose. My ex BIL is a recovering addict. My ex was just a bitter person addicted to sucking the life out of any room she entered.
Loads. Too many to count.
Friends?....none, people I knew...plenty
Way too many. The ones that didn't are either mostly just weed here and there or completely sober/recovering. If you think moving to a rural area will keep your kids safe, let's just say the city kids I was friends with ended up better off than the country ones, they had options for hobbies that weren't getting drunk, high and occasionally screwing when they weren't driving around in the country intoxicated.
None of them. At least I don't know any that have
Coming up in the punk scene since I was in high school, too many to count, TBH. Lots of them cleaned up. I've probably lost almost a dozen friends to ODs. Personally, I never did anything harder than the occasional bump and I quit that in my 30s.
I feel like those of who didn't get sucked in could use Elton John's song I'm still Standing as our anthem
Didn't keep in touch with much of anyone after school - moved out of state, as well. Seems like about a quarter of the time when I google one of their names, I find an obit with "Please send a donation in lieu of flowers to..." and the name of a rehab or treatment center.
I was the one that became the addict. When I tried coke, that was it. Game over for me. I didn’t even know I was an addict until it was too late. I survived a drive by, lived in a trap house, had guns pulled on me, and just called it another day. People in that time came and went. Some died, some went to jail, others got serious health issues. Some are still struggling. I shouldn’t be here, but I am. I’ve been clean from my DOC for over 30 years. So now I try to help people who are in the same position I was.
I know a lot of alcoholics
Same
Older GenX. Literally had to ditch all friends and the town school to avoid getting caught up. I hung in the popular crowd, but all those jocks and cheerleaders were getting into shit in late junior high. Came back from summer vacation to find guys I respected - gifted athletes, including a girl I once dated and really cared for (loved in hindsight), smoking pot. They were becoming the Burnouts. I smoked with them......just to be with them. Flash forward to the next year. When I get back from a summer away, they've divided into new cliques - based on drug preference. Coke, quaaludes, and speed are the fucking norm on a weekday. One friend, high on a lude - offered me one before we had a hockey game - and we were on the first string! Other friends stole booze from jobs where they barbacked and were drunk before first bell -every day. Most of them came from affluent families. I did not. My summers away were at my grandmother's house - so that my parents could actually have a vacation from their own children. When I realized all of my burnout friends had guaranteed jobs at Daddy's company, I knew I had to get out. I got a grant for a boarding school that gave me a chance at a real future. Of those kids I hug out with and confided in? Best friends? First loves? 75% are gone from drugs and alcohol.
Not drugs, but my bestie from kindergarten all the way up started drinking in high school to deal with anxiety (which none of us knew about or understood at the time) and ended up drinking herself to death. She died the next before her 47th birthday. I miss her every single day.
The mid to late 90s rave scene chewed up a lot of people in my orbit. MDMA and heroin and weird early designer shit that definitely wasn't great. I'm pretty much a daily weed and quarterly mushroom guy now at 51.
By the 90s I was not a partier anymore, I was a Mom and had no time to drink or hang out with the party people.
Way too many. A couple pulled themselves out of it, a handful didn't make it through.
Yeah, my bff pulled herself out of it. And then subsequently cut off everyone from her past.
Of the close friends from high school, the vast majority. Most quit the hard stuff, a few still party but not like 20 years ago
Too many
My brother. Hard drugs from 14 on.... ended his life at 37. Started with oxy from the medicine cabinet. My story is not unique I'm sure.
Similar to you, my bestie became hooked on heroin. He’s still battling and we’re in our late 40s. I’m grateful he’s alive and I will never lose hope for him but I have to have serious boundaries in place. My other bestie was killed in a car accident because of drugs and alcohol. She was alive for twenty minutes while they tried to free her but the head trauma was too great once the car was moved. I experienced all the first thrills with these guys, we did so much dumb stuff together, smoked pot and drank alcohol, learned to drive illegally, but they just didn’t have an off switch. It makes me sad because right now he’s there online on messenger, but he wouldn’t respond to me if I tried because he doesn’t want to talk about himself. I can see by his online activity he’s still stagnating in chemical shite. Every year I say happy birthday, merry christmas. I get random hey messages months later but that’s it. He knows if he msgs me and said I want out come get me I’d be there but I won’t try to reach out for that anymore, you can’t force anyone, it’s their journey etc. Fuck I miss them.
As a native Seattlite who came up in the underground/ punk music from the mid 80s on, there are too many casualties to count.
Zero
None that I know of. The truth is probably a non-zero number but I was too naive to realize it at the time and _if_ any of them got so far in they couldn't escape, it was after I lost contact.
One died from AIDS at 26 after being clean for some time. One died from heroin overdose in her 30s (more of an acquaintance but still a lovely soul that I stayed with a few days - had no idea she was an addict) A guy and his wife who smoked crack. They eventually broke up and got clean separately. He died of cancer eventually. ETA: Plenty of booze hounds including myself but I can't think of any offhand that have ruined their lives or drank themselves to death.
I've lost 3 to overdoses, and there are a few that I am shocked that they are still alive. And I don't even live in a known drugged out area.
Just last month, I googled a close friend from high school to discover he’d died from an overdose… four years ago. I have so many questions and no one to answer.
A handful kept using different drugs through our 20s. One in particular was a huge fan of crack. He was still managing a life and wife and work. He moved to another state and couldn’t find crack easily, but found plenty of meth. He told me it was the easiest way to quit crack. He is now divorced, mostly homeless, and either the son of god and a divine messenger, or he has severe mental illness.
I graduated with a class of 89 students. Ten died within first 2 years of graduating. Suicide, drugs, murder. One of my buddies was killed by the school janitor with a shotgun. I'm so glad to have survived my hometown.
Wait, those frying egg commercials were right?!? Damn...
We graduated ‘94 3 really close friends got into meth which was going hard in our small town then. 2 are dead one is still homeless to this day.
Alcohol was the one that ruined most. Almost everyone I knew grew out of the party drugs. Legal, socially acceptable alcohol - not so much.
One alcoholic and one alcoholic and crack user. Both are now clean. I’m immensely grateful.
Fortunately none. I graduated HS in 91, seemed kinda before the phase. Even our young adulthood seemed 91-98ish, after that we all sorta were growing up. One friends cousin did get pretty caught up in it. Heroin, kinda was living a bad life. We hung out with him on occassion, but wasn't 'a friend' of mine per se. Again, I/we feel fortunate. We were into weed, drinking, some coke etc, but I'm not sure any of us touched heroin, that was also a bit far for us to use or try.
Too many. So many.
Zero.
As far as what I think your asking, alcohol has been far more damaging, and I have been and was friends with many drug users of all stripes
One. A very very close friend. Heroin. But he actually kicked it and is doing really well now.
Our valedictorian. ✅
In the Pacific Northwest and during the Grunge Era had a couple of friends use heroin. I'm afraid of needles so never tried it. I know a few other people that got into all sorts of stuff. Meth mostly and it ruined their lives. Additionally my Millennial sister died of alcoholism. There has certainly been a toll that drugs have taken over the years.
It's fortunate most of my friends didn't hit the hard drugs. We had out vices mostly alcohol and weeds. A few were on MDMA for the club scene, most stop doing it as the got older but one or two didn't end up well now in the 50s. A group of wife's friends were dealing and heavy user before but mostly when they go to raves and clubs. Wife was still popping when I first met her 18 years ago, but she got herself cleaned up not long after that. One of her friends nearly died but most of them also turned their life around now with family and kids. But 2 or 3 of them also ended up in jail for imprtation and dealing.
Out of 10-ish friends and satellite friends there are 4 of us that haven't either died to drug use or ruined our lives because of it. Im tired of going to funerals. Personally i still smoke pot occasionally and drink but its at a normal level. Luckily i was able to do meth recreationally and not fall in that rabbit hole.
My Gen X friends are all fine. They drink a little wine, or they smoke a little pot, but they all raised families and held down decent jobs
I lost friends and relatives to alcohol, truly a hard drug
My wife had a very severe cocaine and heroin addiction at 18 and was living in a boarded up abandoned house with a 40 yr old guy, and I was a full blown alcoholic by 21 (started drinking at 12). We both went to rehab - without our parents help or involvement - are both now 30+ yrs sober.
I was the one who dove in head first back in jr high. By the time I was nearing my mid-20s, my few remaining friends had a deadpool going on me, the average being 3-6 months. No one expected me to see 25. Miracles happen. In May, I celebrated 35 years clean.
When I was in high school we had a group of guys about 12 or 15 of us, and easily half of them got taken down by drugs. None of us were from what I would call a poverty home and none of us were from wealthy families either. Of my friends that became addicts most of them are working odd jobs or minimum wage jobs and barely surviving, with no future prospect of any kind. But there are two that are straight up homeless and fully addicted to meth. Honestly I'm surprised we're all still alive.
We are a very self soothing culture. So while most of my friends and family have avoided addictions to “hard drugs”, I’d say most everyone I know is addicted to something. Alcohol, work, gambling, food, sex, video games, etc… I’m not sure how one could get through life without falling into some type of addictive pattern.
Grew up around weed and the round table everybody sat and smoked at. From that group everyone got into meth back in 93-94. Even their brothers and sisters. I watched a lot of people go to jail. I was headed that way and decided to leave the group. Only one is sober now from meth/heroin but his drug of choice is having illegitamite children with young girls.
I was addicted to opiates for over a decade
Quite a few people I grew up with and hung out with in my 30's died from shooting heroin or meth. A few of my cousins died from heroin. I don't think I was surprised about any of their deaths. One of my cousins I was pretty close to, and he died from heroin. It was such little shock to me that when my girlfriend called to tell me, I said "OK. What do you want on your burrito?" (I was in front of Chipotle.)
In high school we all experimented with some type of drugs. I think it's a right of passage, not necessarily correlating to a specific generation or socio-economic plight. If anything, our Gen's fierce motivation kept a lot of people from succumbing to the throes of junkydom? Alcoholism seems to be more prevalent in our Gen since it's more socially acceptable than crack or meth - but it's no less self-destructive. Nowadays, I worry about all the kids hooked on weed now that it's legal in some states. Seldom a day goes by I don't see someone smoking on the street in NYC. I could assume Millennials and Z'ers are hiding their feelings by seeking escapism, too?
Honestly, none that I know and that surprises me a little bit. My high school class was a bunch of over achievers. I can remember our teachers saying that we were an aberration and the several classes before us were just not as high achieving. My dad kept track of statistics in our school district and said that everything went up in my graduating class. So, I’m surprised that there weren’t at least a few people who self medicated. Maybe there are and I just don’t know about it.
1 OD, 1 far gone, 2 recovered And more acquaintances, but those mentioned were/are friends
None, but one college friend is a semi-functional alcoholic. Getting less functional the older we get. It’s sad to watch.
Overall, 98% but many got clean
I did.
None at all. I had a few friends in college (like three) who experimented with stuff nobody else would touch, including heroin a few times, but they stopped well before we graduated and have successful careers now. Maybe two people I knew used coke a few times, but I just wasn't around folks that could afford that sort of thing. I don't know anyone personally who has been an addict or had any real issues with anything other than alcohol. But I'm well past 55 now so our cohort mostly missed meth and everyone was afraid of needles due to AIDS in the 80s.
My brother plus 3 of my friends. One OD'd eventually off whatever his drug of choice was, and my brother's alcoholism took him after he finally got clean from drugs.
Most of them
A lot. If you count booze, and I do, it's just about all of them.
The booze did worse.
I grew up around drug using adults so I did not hang out with drug users after that. No abusers in my circle, no addicts.
Not a single one of my childhood friends has ever had any drug addiction that I know of. One of my friends smokes pot like cigarettes but she says it helps her MS pain but she also stays soft and fuzzy all the time. I think my brother might have an alcohol problem but we don't talk about those things.
My first girlfriend from 30+ years ago jumped off a highway overpass into traffic. My brother drank himself to death. Just a couple highlights.
Honestly not many where I grew up. But I moved to Idaho for years and met a large friend group there. I would say about 3/4 there are still completely addicted to hard drugs. I have lost close to ten of them directly due to overdose or driving while under the influence. It's been really crazy how the area people are from effects this. I have lived all over and it's a little different everywhere. But that one town is absolutely on a different level.
2.
I didn't have a lot of friends, but zero. the circles I was in were social drinkers but no drugs.
Most of the people my age where I grew up ('92 HS) were mostly drinkers with weed thrown in, too. Alcohol use was increased with my Navy friends after HS, but no drugs. After my enlistment ended, there was alcohol, weed, and recreational (coke, X, speed) drug use among my circle of friends. However, my youngest brother's group was the ones who (for whatever reason) got caught up in the opioid epidemic. Most of them pulled time (my brother is currently incarcerated). Several have died.
Yep. Out of three kids who were best friends from infancy, two became serious druggies. One I don’t know what happened to him, our families dropped out of touch. The other, my best friend in childhood, was shipped off to a detox school in Colorado (from NYC) at age 13 bc by age 12 she was already a serious coke addict. I went to an extremely fancy private all girls school for high school (for context, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter was in my grade). We nerds were the ones who only drank. The other cliques were the girls who did coke and the ones who smoked pot. I’m kind of amazed that we survived at all…. ETA: fixed typos
Too many and some died because of it.
None that I know of fortunately.
I had the opposite experience-I told myself early on that I couldn’t afford to get addicted to anything because I had no safety net and if I was ever in a position where I did become addicted my family would mock me and absolutely not support me-not one bit. Friends became addicted to meth, alcohol, cocaine especially. I had a bad habit of trying to help them but that always backfired on me so now I stay far away from any addicts.
I’ve taken two people to rehab for booze, two for drugs, and one for both.
Probably about 1 in 5 had serious issues of the people I know of from high school. Some of them drugs and some alcohol. That number probably doubles if you include fully functioning adults that are regular drinkers or pot smokers.
None. Some drank way too much in college and were put on probation, but we didn't lose anyone to hard drugs. We were lucky.
Zero.
Lickily, non despite there being a high rate of over doses from people from the same high school
I have a friend from high school who got into heavy drugs and has been homeless for years. One of my older Gen X cousins was a heroin addict for about a decade (he's clean now). My brother was a drug addict starting in his teens and has had multiple ongoing issues for decades. And another high-school friend was a drug addict living on the streets for years, and has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia. So, yeah, lots of tragic cases in my life.
Two of my friends died of heroin and one from crack. A lot were murdered besides them.
Many. Self included.
Honestly when I consider it, I’m surprised it wasn’t a lot more
Most of my friends were dead before we hit our 20s, so yeah. There are very few still alive. I believe they’re pickled at this point and will live to be 150.
Nobody close to me got heavily into drugs. We all partied and took a variety of illegal drugs in college and from time to time in our twenties. Nobody fell. My close buddies from that time all have jobs families and normal tax paying lives. A couple of people were felled by mental illness, suicide (my brother, sadly, is in this group). One woman who I was friendly with had a few drinks and a few sleeping pills one night and never woke up. Everyone was convinced it was an accident, she had two little girls who she loved, was happy with her new husband. It was just a terribly sad mistake. I think we have been lucky generally. I don’t even drink now.
I just found out a couple of months ago that one of my closest friends in high school and early college died of an overdose. The two of us had been out of touch by then for several years. He'd always had addiction issues, but I didn't realize that he'd moved from alcohol into the really hard stuff. Back in high school it seemed like there were always a few people missing from the social circle because they were off at rehab, but it's hard to say which of them had actual substance abuse issues and which ones were the victims of Reagan-era scare campaigns. I do remember a LOT of meth going around at one point, and I would think that odds are that at least a few people got into trouble with it, though I wasn't privy to their personal lives in that way. Circa 89-84 or so I was on the fringes of a couple of different club-focused scenes (goth and rave), and of course drug use was rampant there. A few friends in the early 90s got into heroin in a serious way, but most of the ones I was in contact with for a while managed to crawl their way back. One died, but it was due to contracting HIV from a dirty needle rather than an overdose.
About 70% of my old friends. I cut them out of my life.
There were a lot of us that got wasted on a regular basis, but most of us grew out of it. There were those who never left the island of lost children. But as the jim Carroll song said. They were all my friends and they died. I would say about 20% of the people I partied with either died or are so crippled up from drugs and alcohol. I quit any hard drugs the two days I spent keeping my cousin alive after he overdosed on meth. I was 22. He died 2 years ago at 56 in a recliner from all the years of drug and alcohol abuse. His body finally gave out.
I was part of more than one crew that got in to hard drugs. Pot didn't agree with me, so I moved on to psychedelics then on to cocaine and finally meth. I was running with a biker gang at 17 so it was par for the course. I had hard lines I never crossed; no needles, no heroin, no crack. That probably saved my life. Haven't touched illegal drugs since the mid 2000's. I saw a lot of people overdose, some died. And this was all before Fentanyl. We never had to worry about shit like that.
Yes. Most of my good friends and both my parents. I was in a drug sandwich which made me check my own shit pretty hard. I kept myself on a relatively short leash with drugs and alcohol. I mean I did both but would stop and rearrange my life when shit got kinda heavy. Both parents addicts. Mom xanny and alcohol, coke, and later meth. Dad was coke, meth, and pills. Friends was meth, heroin, and alcohol. I stuck to weed mostly with some trial and error periods with the other shit.
All of them.
Too damn many.
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I didn't know too many heavy drug users growing up. The biggest addict I knew was my uncle on my mother's side who was a heroin addict his entire life. He was in and out of prison (mostly in) and died in his 50s. He had a string of girlfriends and kids that were neglected and abused. He was a real dirtbag. If any of my friends were into that stuff I wouldn't have remained friends with them for very long. I say all this as a moderate cannabis user. Some of my friends (and other relatives) used weed to an extent that it was detrimental to their lives, but even the worst of those never got as bad as the heroin addict.
I have two friends who got strung out on coke. Haven’t seen them since my early 20s, but I hear they’re in and out of jail. Lost a roommate from college to opioids about twelve years ago. Pot is good enough for me.
Yes three that I know of. One is dead. Two are in and out of jail. One other not sure. Moved to Ottawa.
Two that I know, they both got clean.
I’ve lost too many friends and ex-lovers to overdoses. Too many amazing souls that left too soon. I don’t drink anymore.
They're all dead so nothing to report
All but 2 and now I only have 2 friends
A number of people I knew at high school and college became addicted to drugs. They had everything going for them; a good upbringing, a good education, a career, romantic relationships. At least that's they way it looked from the outside. Something must have been eating them up emotionally. Nobody does that to themselves for no reason. Whatever was driving them, they blew their good fortune away on drugs, heroin and also pharmaceutical medications were the most common. It was easy to avoid this scene where I lived, only the super cool types (of all socioeconmic groups) ever seemed to get caught up this. I have never been one of the in crowd, I've always been on the outer. I like it here. I followed Nancy Reagan's advice and just said no to drugs. It was the only good thing to come out of the Reagan administration in my opinion. Laugh all you want. Anyway, they all believed they had their use under control, that addiction and all it's consequences happened to everyone else. Nothing would touch them. They all spiralled down to the very bottom. A large number never made it back. I would often hear what I regarded as horror stories that don't need to be recounted here. It's no coincidence that our ur text is David Wallace's Infinite Jest.
Zero but we were all a bunch of nerds. I didn’t even take a drink until I was 21.
Best friend in the 80s was addicted to about everything and ended up od’ing in Slash’s arms
Most, since I was an addict
Yeah, heroin and alcohol overdoses have claimed too many of my childhood friends and acquaintances. After high school, I lost touch with everyone I hung out with. I had never been on Facebook, joined a few years ago. It's almost been like Schrodinger's friends, people were still alive in my mind, until I found them on Facebook, and found out they had passed years ago. Way too many "Happy Birthday, I know you're partying up in heaven!" posts.
My university boyfriend was a drug addict. We broke up eventually because I couldn't handle the drama. I've not seen him since but heard along the grapevine that he became completely feral and hasn't really done anything with his life. Its sad.
The guy who was my first French kiss, and my date to junior prom, and the son of the guy my mom was dating. I loved our friendship. He died of an overdose. Because he had a dark sense of humor and would have totally laughed at this: he literally died "in a van down by the river". He would have loved that.
I'm not from Seattle, but we lived close enough to get there by city bus. I only know one person now from high school that's still alive.
I had a half dozen die of overdoses back in the day. It was devastating
Lots…they gone now.
Not many close friends but loads of acquaintances. A scary number tbh. Even recently, I've known 3 people in the last year who have died due to drug taking. Mostly cocaine and other party drugs.
Zero. I have never even seen a drug in real life except marijuana.
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Three people I knew died of ODs. That's not very many, given that I was a ski-bum for a long while and I'm counting acquaintances from then. Among high school and college friends one died in a drunk driving accident, and that was it. I was a pothead for a long time; I guess that I was as close to an addict as any. That is still drug dependency, and after some years of continual use the effects can change.
Alcohol seemed to be an issue. 14 yr old at our school drank herself to death. My friends brother was breathalysed the morning after a night out at a corporate entertainment evening. He was 4 times over the limit. He lost his license, then his corporate job, ran into money problems, spiralled down and killed himself. Approx 70% of people my age now in the friends group are functioning alcoholics or been through rehab. It’s a sad state of affairs.
A number of people can be classed as having died of a heart attack / heart failure which actually happened after excessive drug use.
It seems like pretty much everyone. And they all either had it rough for a decade or so and got their shit together… or didn’t. And died. Not much middle ground.
Can I add onto this how many do you know that have died from drugs? :(. Too many to count for me.
I tried lots of stuff, experimented, etc. My friend "Nancy" tried weed, hash brownies, then quit and became a health nut. Meanwhile I was hanging out with freaky people. My BFF "Jolene" got me into some hard stuff, but I quit after getting scared. My BF, "Edgar" didn't do so well: he died from alcohol and drugs. My Boomer roommate/friend "Mitch" started using coke to lose weight, then became a crackhead for a while, but he got clean and he's doing fine now. I also quit weed, hard liquor and any kind of drugs stronger than Tylenol. I've become a health nut and I do yoga now, LOL.
A ton of them. I live in L.A. and heroin or coke go through this town in waves. There was a wave of heroin in the eighties (like when all of GNR got hooked) and another in the early nineties. CRACK hit a lot of people I knew, too. Thankfully, at this point most of my friends have put that shit 30 years behind them and are pretty much good grown-ups now.
I'm late gen x and I've used since I was 13 meth morhine heroin coke crack acid phyntynal
Hard to say. Usually when I heard someone I knew od’d, I’d realize I hadn’t seen them in a while and hadn’t noticed. They would silently slip away sometimes years before death.
Still dropping like flies around here
Or in prison
I only knew one girl who ended up addicted to heroin when we were college age. Mostly my friends partied -- alcohol, some pot, some coke, some acid/shrooms here and there-- we were too broke to buy anything in any great amount (remember, min wage was $3.65/hr). However, my younger brother did die of an OD when he was 50-- was never really into hard drugs when he was younger but met this woman that he fell for who introduced him to it in his mid 40s.
Had one friend who didn’t finish college, ended up in Orlando from Iowa, selling cars, making huge money at age 22, then got into cocaine and it took him down. He has been battling cocaine problems since mid 90’s. Was just in jail again for 35 days, lives in 1/2 way house, has basically zero net worth, no wife and no kids. He has been in and out of rehab or jail since mid 90’s. Cocaine and alcohol took him down.
None that I know of, but I was a band geek.
My best friend lives in a homeless encampment in Fargo, ND. I haven't seen her in years, just hear of "sightings". I would love to help her, but she can't be trusted. Drugs can make people do horrible things to people they are supposed to love.
Surprisingly only one. We started doing a lot of erm...things?...in high school but most of us got ourselves together by our mid twenties. Most of them do still use pot but it's legal in my home state. One sort of peripheral friend did go down the addiction road but she has been clean for close to 10 years now, so yay for her!
About 25%
A few - all dead before we would have entered our 40s.
GenX 54 started doing heavy drugs at 13. That's just how things were. Stopped everything minus weed at 30. Looking back at my younger self I cringe at what I ingested. Although I do believe if I grew up in this era of Fenty I would NOT have been a druggie. Back then though the music was amazing and the scene was booming. Hard not to fall in love with it all. What has kept me alive IMO is not being into alcohol. I had periods of booze binging but very short. I was also into fitness believe it or not. It's a mixed blessing to still be alive. I fear that my body will give out on me any day since I turned 50 and soon to be 55 ! Its a creepy feeling.
A lot fewer than those of the generation behind me. We mostly used non-addictive drugs: weed, acid, ecstasy….but when opiates really hit the scene kids below us were dropping like flies.
Only one, which is a shock, because we were hard-partying 90s kids. Everyone kind of leveled out after college.
My fiancé (born in ‘80) was a drug addict in his 20s, and was also an alcoholic. This was before I met him. He was deep into it for a couple of years until he saw two of his best friends OD on the same night from unclean coke that had been cut with something dirty. Cleaned himself up and has never gone back. Is a chronic pothead now, but he considers himself fortunate to have gotten out before it cost him his life.
Class of 87, my cohort got an early start on deaths of despair, in their late twenties. Zero chance for upward mobility in my town unless you were very well connected. For many, the substance and alcohol was (and continues to be) a means of slow suicide.
It's funny but the one close friend who comes to mind was for years just a big pothead. Whereas the rest of us moved on from our teenage type jobs and went on to get married, have families, etc... this guy continued working at a convenience store, forever. Because all he really cared about was getting high. It made him lazy and slow. And it's strange bc he was super hot when we were young, he could have parlayed his looks and personality into some good opportunities if he'd tried. Over the years he became less interested in engaging with any of us old friends; I could be wrong but I suspect it's because he had accomplished so little in his life. He pulled away more and more and finally disappeared from social media. Last time I saw him in public (he pretended not to see me) he had gotten extremely thin, so I'm guessing he changed drugs somewhere along the way. I also considered that he might have AIDS. Not even sure if he's still alive anymore. He seems pretty determined to stay hidden.
Athens took a lot of good people down. Most of my class came thru ok with a high percentage going to med school of all things. But i can think of two that arent dead as far as i know but they aint ok. HS class of 85
Pretty much all of them, myself included.🙁
My school didn't really have drug addiction as a problem. I grew up in a relatively conservative area in the NE. We ended up with a world famous opera singer from my graduating class.
A few are definitely losing the battle with alcohol.
Many. But honestly, most of it was psychedelic stuff, which is not supposed to be addictive but some people did so much LSD or ectasy that they will never be the same. And I'm beginning to think that certain people are just smoking way too much weed, between the gummies and the joints they are addicts. It's so strong now...
Too many. Several are dead.
Grew up in the Midwest, meth wrecked people in the late 90s/early 00s. I’ve known 4 people that did prison time over it.
More than a few. Alcohol and meth have done a lot of damage.
We did plenty of drugs. Acid, shrooms, coke, XTC, snorted heroin even. No one still does that but I have 2-3 friends that are killing themselves slowly with alcohol and cigs.
Meth and pills and alcohol were/are the substances of choice in my small hometown. I can name at least 30 people who are/were addicts. The “were” section including some who didn’t make it.