When I could stand the pain no longer, I unpacked my things and made some amphetamine in the kitchen, gazing with trembling anticipation as dunes of fuzzy yellow needle-shaped crystals settled from the cooling Everclear grain alcohol recrystallization bath. This was the purification of a couple hundred grams of alpha-methyl-nitrostyrene I had, just that morning, found deposited in the bottom of a methanol solution of bitter almond oil, butylamine, and the racing fuel additive nitroethane (1:0.1:1) which had been sitting in the back of my closet for a week. I adapted the technique of Gilsdorf and Nord⁽¹⁾ to the reduction of this material, tweaking the procedure to maximize yield by optimizing the reagent ratios, substituting THF for ether in the hydride reduction, and halting hydrolysis of the reaction products at the formation of easily-filtrable oxides. By the time I had worked up the mixture, I was riding the crest of a raging euphoria from nothing more than skin contact with a small amount of the filtrate solution.

     The next morning I assembled a low-pressure distillation setup at the kitchen sink, using a water aspirator, rubber hose, and a hose clamp that I'd picked up at some plumbing supply outlet. The residual oil from evaporation of the reaction filtrate (which I had dried over sodium metal during the night) distilled smoothly at 99C / 25mmHg to yield a clear, pungent, oily dl-amphetamine free base of searing purity. Bottles of sulfuric acid and Everclear alcohol had been sitting in my freezer all night. I slowly swirled the acid into three times its weight of alcohol and dribbled, a few drops at a time, a small portion of this mixture into a magnetically-stirred flask containing the amphetamine base dissolved in more of the ice-cold Everclear. Great clouds of pure amphetamine sulfate formed continuously until the pH reached 5.5, at which point, quivering with exhaustion and impatience, I quickly filtered the product off, dried it, and ate 30 or 40 milligrams.

     Remembering how the dexedrine had seemed to give me so much drive and positive outlook in school, I'd hoped to use it to help pull me out of this slump. I had overlooked at least one important fact: that amphetamine is strictly contraindicated in depression. In fact, though the individual initially experiences a false sense of well being, the drug actually tends to exacerbate the depression by draining desperately needed neurotransmitters from storage sites inside brain cells. Black moods became increasingly regular.

     One day I ran into an old acquaintance who, upon seeing the speed that I had made, helped himself to some and put it, along with a couple of drops of water, into a syringe, which he had produced from his pocket. He then proceeded to inject this solution into a vein in his arm. When he could talk again, he spoke of a state of transcendent ecstasy and suggested that I try it. I demurred but the idea had been planted in my mind and I eventually tried it alone. The feeling was intimate, ecstatic, erotic, and compelling; I was instantly enthralled and soon began to carry my custom-made injection kit everywhere. I felt my sense of personal power and control return, along with heightened awareness. This seemed important to me for, after learning how I had been spied upon, my telephone tapped, listening devices trained on my house, telescopes, and cameras with starlight collectors used against me, I had begun to experience a sort of post-traumatic feeling of utter violation and powerlessness, as if I'd been raped. Profound paranoia and fear had become my regular companions until the drug replaced them with ersatz confidence. . . however briefly.

     I quickly discovered, though, that coming down was nothing like I'd experienced after effects of, say, having a few drinks. My body protested vehemently as I defeated its natural defensive barriers and pumped this garbage into my bloodstream. The crash was horrible with residual unpleasantness lasting for several days and the only apparent option was simply not to come down at all. Distortion of my consciousness and overwhelming fatigue manifested itself as the mounting doses wore off, drastically impairing my performance at work and at home. I became antisocial and withdrawn, eventually losing my job.

     Cyndy became increasingly frightened by my ever more bizarre behavior until; on October 31 of 1980, I took her over to visit her sister a few miles away and she never returned. This overloaded my capacity to suppress the guilt created by what I was doing to myself and by the distress my behavior was causing for my friend of half a decade. As even practiced awareness began to fail, these emotions boiled over and came frothing forth in the form of a paranoia of schizophrenic proportions.

     I heard persecutory voices continually; voices which seemed to emanate from almost anywhere that I wasn't (the next room, next door, just outside the window, etc.). Responding to my delusional system, I became obsessed with finding the unseen watchers and speakers. My personal hygiene suffered grievously for I could not tolerate water running long enough for such things as baths (the attendant noise making it impossible to hear what the voices were saying). I feared that it was during such lapses in my hypervigilence that my tormentors came sneaking into my apartment to move my things around, steal my drugs and replace them with useless substitutes, take pictures, place listening devices, and introduce poisons into the food and water to drive me mad. Sleeping was also out for similar reasons.

     Eventually the plot thickened as I began to experience a growing conviction that the watchers now included the authorities who were using "advanced technology" to control my mind in order to obtain evidence with which to prosecute me. The fear escalated exponentially until I suspected that my life was actually in danger; that I was to be killed if my security measures and 24-hour vigil (at this point, I never slept) proved too great a nuisance. It became necessary, therefore, to prepare for a siege. This involved unplugging the phone and TV (which had probably been converted into spy devices when I had let my guard down at some previous time), blacking out all windows, putting heavy screws through the windows and doors so they wouldn't open, and installing intercoms so that other rooms and the outside environment could be continuously monitored.

     The false sense of security which resulted allowed a brief respite from my paranoid fantasy and this, in turn, allowed drug use to be stepped up to yet a more furious pace. Toxic side effects became such an aggravating annoyance that I was forced to institute countermeasures to combat them. Dehydration I dealt with by starting IV fluids and installing small plastic stick-up hooks in various places along the walls to hold the IV bag when I was working and one on a strechband on the back of my head for use when I was moving from room to room and needed my hands free. I added lidocaine to the bag to stabilize my heart rate, consumed three ounces of whiskey every two hours to cut the anxiety, took antihistamines and corticosteroids to combat the allergic reactions on my skin and in my eyes, and drank protein concentrates to prevent starvation, along with periodic prophylactic antibiotics.

     Soon I reached doses upwards of 300 mg of virtually pure amphetamine sulfate per injection, at which point, even these measures failed to control the fierce toxicity. Unwilling to accept its own complicity in this patently suicidal behavior; my mind began suggesting that noxious agents had been surreptitiously slipped into my drug supply. Pathetically decompensating, I embarked on an absurd and futile quest for some clue as to what had been done to me, pouring endlessly over thick medical tomes as I lay foul and fetid amid the squalid wreckage of my life. Of the unspeakable horrors that populate the annals of human pathology, a disconcerting number of them appeared likely candidates, given the symptoms I seemed to be experiencing.

     Initially, I believed that the larval forms of certain parasitic worms had chewed their way into my brain, spinal cord, and visceral organs. I could actually feel them migrating through my flesh and, at times, sat for hours with a power magnifier and a razor blade, shaving the skin off the tips of my fingers where I thought I saw the heads of the females coming up for air. Later, I revised the diagnosis to include, in succession: pathogenic fugal spores; bacteria of leprosy, syphilis, or yaws; or a potent chemical toxin which had triggered some rare, progressive, and hideously fatal disorder, like necrotizing angitis or Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. Ghastly images, redolent of death, danced and gibbered obscenely at the fringes of consciousness -- writhing abominations whose ravening eruptions emerged, gravid and spewing, from vilely wizened and scabrous loins. . . .

     Approaching two weeks without sleep, I started to nod out from time to time or to just suddenly forget that I was holding something in my hand and drop it. I initially dismissed these occurrences as inevitable manifestations of my pathology, such as a worm migration within the tissues of my brain, until I noticed hissing sounds issuing from the ventilation ducts. Suddenly, I realized that my lethargy and impaired reflexes were the result of gas that was being pumped into the room to subdue me in preparation for the final assault. This drove me into such a frenzy of fear that I dashed through the apartment, turning off the lights and cautiously peering out the windows. To my horror, the parking lot was almost empty and people carrying clothes and suitcases were getting into the few remaining vehicles. Convinced now that I was about to be killed, I, very quietly, crawled into the kitchen, got a large cooking knife, locked myself in the bathroom, and sat naked and afraid in utter silence to await the invasion and death.

     When I regained consciousness, eight hours had passed, according to the clock, and I took a look around. It appeared that my furniture and possessions had been moved, ever so slightly, indicating that someone had slipped inside while I was out. Curiously, I felt less worried about this sort of thing after having slept. I got something to eat, went back to lie down, lit a cigarette, and tried to decide what to do. There was no one I could call. My brother had flown in to help, at my desperate request, but returned home to Shreveport in disgust when I could not even compose myself enough to get my things packed. I tried to plan some type of escape but, each time I looked back over my notes, they were just indecipherable scrawls. Snatching futilely at evanescent wisps of thought, mirages of ideas that refused maddeningly to solidify, I drifted among various trains of images until, again, I blacked out.

     With a sudden sense of alarm, I came fully awake to find my mattress smoldering from the cigarette I'd dropped when I went out. After trying in vain to put it out, I panicked and, in my confusion, ran outside to evacuate my neighbors. It was after midnight when the fire department arrived; they simply removed the mattress to the outside and extinguished it while I watched with the crowd. Venturing back into the apartment out of curiosity, I was told by firemen that they were looking for the tenant because it appeared that drugs were being used and that the police had been called in to investigate. I assured them that I would go try to find the guy and quickly slipped around back where I jumped the fence and slept in a field of tall grass next door.

     In the morning I walked to a public phone and called my father to relate what had happened. He picked me up and took me to stay with my grandmother. Dad's wife had been married previously to an attorney that was a friend of the assistant federal DA. Word filtered back from him in a week or so that I was expected to come in to discuss this matter. This, in turn, led to violation of my probation and a sentence of 15 years in federal prison with an initial 90-day psychosocial evaluation for possible sentence reduction. I was given 30 days to report to the federal correctional institution at Lexington, KY. At the end of the three-month study, I was returned to court and the sentence was reduced to two years of which I served twenty months.

     It was, I fear, not truly in the best interest of society to have sent me to prison alone, depressed, and afraid, without even enough change for a pack of cigarettes. Too many people there wanted the knowledge I had and were willing to pay for it. Incarceration only served to make me very bitter and resentful toward the establishment and to turn god-knows-how-many fledgling drug chemists loose on the world as a result. Years passed before I began to view life from a more mellow perspective again and, to this day, I still carry an abiding resentment that I try to suppress only to have it affect my outlook and my behavior in unexpected ways.

     The hateful stigma of a permanent public criminal record is a relentless albatross that haunts my existence incessantly. The landscape of my adult life experience is tainted with the stinging pain of rejection and littered with the corpses of my dreams. Among other things, I have been turned down repeatedly for professional work, positions for which I was otherwise more than qualified, often following exciting personal interviews in which I was practically hired on the spot. The accumulation of frustration over such things occasionally causes the gelid anger within to crystallize into a tenacious depression, smothering my determination and leaving me virtually paralyzed for weeks -- even months.

     

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