Drug Stories! Narcotic Nightmares and Hallucinogenic Hellrides

The woman in the last segment ("The Trip Back") with the thick Brooklyn accent spoke at the school I went to in NYC when I was around ten years old (early 1970s). Watching her, I remember as if it were yesterday. What a hoot! The prison she refers to, on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, was shut down and re-opened as a branch of the US Public Library. It's really a very nice building; it looks kind of like a castle. While it was still a prison, some of the hippie types used to shout encouragement to the prisoners (who were all women) when walking by.

New York was so different. It was the New York of SERPICO and THE GODFATHER and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE.

DRUG STORIES! Is a compilation of educational shorts that range from endearingly goofy to gut-busting-ly funny. Among the drugs presented are the usual suspects: Alcohol, pot, LSD, heroin, etcetera.

Many experiences are shown in ultra-dramatic fashion. The LSD section is of particular interest, containing a large chunk of the overall mirth. One example of a "bad trip" has a teen girl putting her hand in open flame, believing it to be a flower. Ouch!

At one point, a woman talks in front of an audience of semi-interested high school students. Her performance makes up about a quarter of the film's running time. The fact that she's a quaint riot helps, but it does get tedious.

Still, as these sort of documentaries go, this one isn't terrible. Be sure to watch it late, preferably with your friends and favorite intoxicants...

Drug Stories is a compilation of various videos from the 60s and 70s showing people why getting addicted to chemical substances is not good for you. There's no real story here because it is just an amalgam of various films, but there are some things to talk about. One of the first ones they show discusses marijuana and how doctors at the time were trying to discover whether or not it has any medical usage. They're unable to find any evidence that it enables you to stay awake longer or concentrate harder, but they do agree on one thing: it isn't good for you. They raise some good points here as well. The film says there's a difference between people taking drugs to get high and taking drugs as medicine to get well. When a doctor prescribes people medicine, he's had years worth of experience. When he hands over drugs to you, he knows what they'll do to you, why you need them, and how they'll affect you. What would a dealer know about any of that? The film goes on to say how even though weed may be basically harmless by itself, it tends to creep its way into your life as a habit, just like normal cigarettes. After a while, your body can't live without it. Not just this, but weed acts as a stepping stone for people looking to climb up the totem pole to access more dangerous drugs like meth and heroin. Even in the 60s, it's been said that meth kills, and it has. One thing that is said in the film is memorable to me. It says how almost every single heroin addict started by smoking weed, and he never thought he would do dangerous drugs like heroin. Once you're addicted to it, the way back is almost impossible, and living without the heroin is more physically painful than using it. This is just one film contained in this program. One of the best ones focuses on LSD, which was already widely used by the 1960s for its ability to make people experience outrageous and delirious hallucinations. This might sound fun at first, but LSD is so extremely powerful that a drop of it the size of a pinhead will send a roomful of people to the brink of insanity. Even getting one breath of it will force you to lie down for several hours. The film states how LSD is taken by people looking for an easy way to experience a good time, but every once in a while, they have a really bad trip. The user will see horrible things like visions from hell and will have no choice but to endure it for hours. Like weed, LSD is (by that time) being studied by doctors to find if it has any medical importance, but they find none. The risk of taking it is not worth the reward. Towards the end, a woman comes to speak to a bunch of schoolchildren in New York. She is a former drug user, and tells the kids how easily they can destroy someone's life. She has been arrested several times, and if someone else was in this situation, it would make sense for them to hate the cops. In reality though, it makes much more sense to help them. The police are only doing their duty to uphold order in society, and want to see you be successful and stay out of trouble. Drug dealers are not your friends, and only want to see you get addicted to things they sell so they can get rich. In all, Drug Stories is a strange experience that can ironically be compared to being on drugs, since a lot of it feels very dreamlike, especially during the LSD film that features a lot of colorful patterns.

This collection of anti-drug commercials and public service videos is from Something Weird Video, a company that sells all sorts of strange DVDs...including some old porno films, exploitation films and harmless junk. Oddly, it was shown on TCM and it still bore the Something Weird label.

The film begins with a commercial that got me into a bit of trouble when I was only about 5. The anti-drug ad, though well made, encouraged me and my friend, Karl, to become drug dealers...and we were giving out jellybeans and repeating the dealer's spiel in the ad! Obviously the ad did NOT have its intended effect since it just encouraged us to WANT to be drug dealers! This is likely what the rest of the films in this collection often did, as although they are packed full of good information, there's quite a bit of misinformation as well.

As for the quality of the prints, they vary a lot but are mostly poor...scratchy, faded or with out of whack colors. Considering the films were never meant to last very long, it's not surprising they were allowed to degrade.

Overall, a film that is mildly interesting but after a while the repeated anti-drug messages really became dull and repetitive.