Word: dope
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Mescaline is not another variety of "dope." It is absolutely non-habit-forming, causes no adverse physiological effects, and does not harm the body even when taken regularly over long periods of time. How it works is not fully known, but in some way it seems related to the biochemical mechanisms of schizophrenia and tranquilizers. It produces relatively few physical symptoms, wears off in eight to twelve hours, and leaves no after-effects. In short, there is no reason for a normal, healty individual, if so inclined, not to take mescaline with impunity on occasion...
Then in 1960, one jury panel included an angry Beaumont sandpit operator, James C. Barry. Barry and two fellow jurors toured the county, found teen-agers guzzling whisky, taking dope, stopping off at Rita Ainsworth's, the foremost brothel in Beaumont. When the jurors could rouse no reaction from county officials, they traveled to Austin and brought back Texas Rangers and investigators for a state legislative committee. The Rangers raided dice games and bars, took their prisoners to jail in Ranger cars when local cops declined to provide paddy wagons...
...Doctor! Doctor! Two of my villagers are stuck together!" The critics were not amused ("nightmarish frenzy"; "vast perversity"), but the vigor of their responses suggests that 29-year-old Playwright Gelber has touched some exposed nerve ends of the contemporary scene as he did in his first play about dope addicts, The Connection. Gelber likes to break the neck off the bottle of experience and jab the audience with the jagged edges, including several unhousebroken words. The result may not be drama, but it is the season's liveliest theatrical conversation piece...
...Broadway, the temptation to titillate looms even greater, and is widely indulged. The Living Theater, which produced Jack Gelber's earliest, The Connection, his latest, The Apple, and Bertolt Brecht's Jungle of the Cites, is particularly guilty. The Connection deals with dope, jazz and all that evil stuff. It sells as a result. His new job, The Apple, is set in a coffee house that reproduces the visiting salesman's image of Greenwich Village...
Such episodes are rare in the staid life of the Harvard community, however. And although Leverett House was once branded as a dope den by a Boston tabloid, and Confidential detailed the perversions of Claverly, the University is far from a hideout for perverts and criminals. Crime has had its big moments, though...