Word: freaking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Today's version of the Great American Tragedy is teen-age drug addiction. Milton Travers is a pseudonymous magazine writer whose 18-year-old son Ricky became a speed freak and vanished into New York's East Village. In Each Other's Victims, Travers describes how he tracked Ricky down and tried to rescue him. He is brisk, professional and explicit-about his son's life as an addict, about his own confused, guilt-soaked reactions, about the grubby details of the drug culture, or at least that part of it involving amphetamines. Except...
...welcomed on the grounds of public utility. Each Other's Victims will probably be so welcomed too. At any rate, the author apparently makes this assumption. He sedulously offers nuggets of information: "One physician estimates that five years is probably a long life span for a practicing speed freak." He also hazards scary opinion: "There are something like seven million college students in the country, and God knows how many millions of kids in high school, probably five, six times as many. I would guess that of that total alone, an absolute minimum of 50% have used [marijuana...
Some people are going crazy at Harvard. Those who really flip out end up in Stillman or McLean's. But others, not quite mad enough, have to hang around here until they freak out and someone notices...
...intelligence but also in Johnson's use of it. When challenged by headquarters, the commander of a two-destroyer U.S. naval patrol that was supposedly attacked at night by North Vietnamese torpedo boats replied hesitantly: "Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects and overeager sonarman may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings." Washington insisted that it had independent confirmation of the attack, but it was a skinny reed on which Lyndon Johnson based the first U.S. air strikes against North Viet Nam and his successful request to Congress...
...personal reflections: "I have slept with men and women and with a man and a woman together but collapsed because I am a gentle person," says one actress. Another follows up, "I could have married a rich man and lived in a big house, but no, I'm a freak...