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throughout our history. Americans have been welcoming home the survivors of war. Now, after a decade of indecisive battle, the war in Vietnam is said to be winding down. I am a Vietnam veteran, a ex marine medic and the next morphine addict. I went on an operation

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called Operation Alan Brooke and we're sweep. We were sweeping a bill, a marine that was in my company was with us for about two weeks. Heard noise behind him, turned around and sprayed the area. He hit three women and some Children. This is a normal reaction,

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but when he put the gun up to his shoulder and took individual aim, he was committing murder. That night. When we set up a perimeter, I shot morphine for the first time because of what had happened that day. To me, this was the only way that

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I could rationalize why I was there and what I was doing there, experts guest there maybe 40,000 or more hardcore drug addicts among our homecoming jeez. They have been trained to kill and come fresh from a place where life and heroin come cheap. Now they face

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the problem of adjusting to a society in conflict with itself. Finding work amidst economic decline tonight assignment for looks at what is being done for the G junkie. When President Nixon declared a national offensive on the GI drug problem, a major burden fell initially on the

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Veterans Administration. The V. A. Hospital in Menlo Park is one of 32 drug treatment centers set up thus far throughout the nation, primarily a mental hospital and nursing home. The Menlo Park division is slowly attracting young Gis with drug problems. They come initially to the detoxification

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unit opened in August 1971 where they are gradually withdrawn from their physical dependency on drugs. We are detoxing GI drug addicts with the use of methadone actually, depending on what type of habit they have. We have a capacity award capacity for 30 But only 15 of

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the best operating right now. Up to this point, we haven't had a full capacity of 15 yet. When you're ignorant of something you are afraid. And this is I think this is the main reason if they don't come, usually a guy is sick when he gets

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here. So we try to cut it mission down to approximately 10 minutes and he has brought directly to the war. He's given his initial dose of methadone. Then he was searched their clothing, they stay in hospital clothing because of the task is very short. It's about

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3-5 days. The next day there is a screening that is done with the staff and by the staff. I mean the nurses and the drug counselors who are all ex junkies. Yeah. We sort of find out where he's at what type of happenings hand what he

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plans to do and what just what does he expect from us. And we also tell him what we expect from him. Both of us have certain rules and regulations. They will not involve themselves in any type of violence. There are a lot one phone call during

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their stay here and there are no visits and this is done mainly keep contraband from coming into the war. I would say about 75% of them go on methadone maintenance. About 50 X. G. I addicts are now on outpatient status. They must return daily either to

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Menlo Park or a newly opened satellite clinic in san Francisco for their dose of methadone. A synthetic narcotic methadone is itself addicting but it blocks the effect of heroin while satisfying the addicts drug hunger permitting him to function normally. Those on methadone are mostly older, so

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called hard core addicts, but a few are young. Vietnam veterans who became heavily addicted to the 95% pure heroin available in Vietnam. We have your comprehensive drug abuse unit, uhh, which I think we're extremely fortunate in having is very rare in this day and time. We

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have essentially three treatment programs, aside from our detox unit, what's your long term programs that attempt to help the man change his lifestyle To get out of the lifestyle of addiction and to clean up over a period from 3 to 6 months. And most of our

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referrals go into one of the drug programs, one of the long term live in drug programs. one such program calls itself the family. It serves a mixed group of mostly older men afflicted with what psychiatrists call character disorders, sex offenders, criminals, and alcoholics, as well as

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drug abusers. Eight miles away at the Va's new hospital in Palo Alto, There is a specialist treatment program aimed specifically at the young gi half half of the people in my unit, never even got loaded before they went to Vietnam Ward four B. Two is described

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as a therapeutic community. About 20 Gs live here and undergo a highly structured regime of individual and group psychotherapy. A third to a half of them are and probably will remain on methadone to be admitted. One must convince a screening committee that he is sincere in

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wanting to quit the drug culture. Of 100 who've been accepted. Thus far, 60 have completed the 3-6 month program and are reported to be living stable, productive and drug free lives. The villa is third and most experimental rehabilitation effort is housed in ward one oh five

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B. Two at Menlo Park. Mhm. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. About 25 G's live in this ward and they follow a strict self imposed daily routine that begins at 6:30 a.m. Unlike the V. A's other treatment programs, this one is entirely patient run and

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does not accept men on methadone. Those who make it do not consider themselves patients or inmates. They are voluntary members of a self help program modeled after Sin in awe. They are here because they are willing to face their drug problem and able to convince a

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screening committee that their motivation is strong enough to survive the five stages of the program. But a third of those who apply are turned down and another third do not finish those who remain subject themselves to months of rigorous self analysis through daily rounds of attack

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therapy. The program members would not allow us to film an attack therapy session, But program director Steve Petty, a psychiatric social worker, explains its purpose. What we do is we watch people for for self destructive behavior and we tell them about it. We reflect it back

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to them. We make them sort of stop and take a look at the kinds of things that are involved in. We don't attack people, We only attack self destructive behavior. I could almost give you a money back guarantee that this program is free from illegal drugs

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because we avoid the cops and robbers game of us. And then in essence, there really is no staff in this program, only program members. We don't preach total abstinence. Our philosophy is that drugs are really not a problem. They're symptomatic of lifestyle problems. A person is

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hurting in some way and takes drugs for a specific reason. Once those problems, those causing problems have been taken care of chemical use becomes incidental. I think we've dealt with between 150 and 200 people in the year and a half, nearly two years that we've been

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in existence. And the people who moved through the various spaces to the program, complete the program and graduate generally seem to be very successful. Like why I came into this program. I don't know whether I really had a sincere desire to get myself together. After a

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few weeks I started getting once it's been beautiful. You know, like I really didn't think it could be this good, got my confidence back and I think that's what I needed most. You know, like when I came here, I was still a lying con. You know,

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I lied a lot. The games here, the therapy groups about the only thing that keeps me together. I don't need no pills no more. Where a needle in my arm. I mean if I come in there I know what I want. I'm gonna go get it

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just a matter of time. Probably the single biggest problem that we've yet to find some answers to is re employment. When a person is ready to leave this program. The Va's rehabilitation program is not without its critics. One such is Dr Carl Levin's assistant chief of

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staff of the SAN Francisco Veterans Administration Hospital. The villa is reaching a few jeez the great majority of the young veteran coming back however, are not willing to make the commitments for long term therapy and for identification that entry into such a program demands many if

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not most of the people who enter those programs are already having trouble with the law are having serious personal problems in terms of keeping up with their habit, so that the discomfort of their habit is very, very high. And this, for the most part represents late

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stage addiction rather than the early thing that we might be treating. I think we ought to take the facilities of a out in the community. I think we ought to be participating with the community programs that are going now. I think in areas where there are

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not effective community programs going to via should be the catalyst for bringing these programs into existence. Dr Evans proposed a formal relationship be established with the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic as a way of reaching veterans with drug problems. But the V. A. In Washington refused

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to act on his request. The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic has been dealing with drug problems since it came into being during the 1967 summer of Love. Tens of thousands of young people flocked to san Francisco that summer to

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join the latest mass media sensation, the hippie movement. These were the so called flower Children, restless fugitives from middle America. Come here to smoke, dope dance in the streets and in some marvelous but undefined way change the world. But not everybody who came to

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the Haight Ashbury was looking for love hoods and bikers came to prey on the young innocence and so called respectable people came to gawk and criticize, be referred to this portion of the gray line in the city. It's the first and only foreign tour within the

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continental limits of the United States. We're now entering what is known as the largest hippy colony in the world, the favorite pastimes of the hippies besides taking drugs. Our demonstration and party. Then came the fall and the police sweeps along Haight Street. A psychedelic experience had

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become a bummer. I think in large part that what happened this afternoon was created by the media. I think it was unnecessary. It would be possible to grew if the media would take it on themselves to be responsible in the same way that they take it

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on themselves to be sensational, it never would have happened. Most of the young people drifted away. Those remaining symbolically buried the hippie myth that had attracted so much public animosity. How does it feel to have the hippie debt? It feels very groovy man. No, we don't

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have any labels. You have to, you have to know the american public when the american public has to look at it. I have to say we're three men instead of any other name. We killed hippies were killed freebies. We killed everything, man, the population and the

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mood of the Haight Ashbury change. And so did the pattern of drug abuse. Psychedelics like marijuana and LSD gave way to a deadly combination of amphetamines and barbiturates. It took two years for the speed barb cycle to run its deadly course. Countless desperate speed freaks now

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sought a way down off amphetamines. Many found the answer. And yet another drug heroin, 1969, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic had set up its own heroin detoxification centre. A year later it was treating 60 new junkies a day. The Haight Ashbury was and still is

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in the throes of a heroin epidemic. Dr George gay. At the time of volunteer physician at the Hate Free Clinic found himself with a resident expert on heroin detoxification. Now he is the full time director of the clinics heroin treatment program, which is funded with a

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$366,000 grant from the federal government. What we have found has been an inflexible structure in the V. A. Hospital, especially at the national level, Whereas they are not willing to accept us in our own uh as we exist and of course as we exist uh on

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the streets is the is the very basis uh for acceptability. Too many of these young people who find the structured government institution unacceptable to them. We try to impress on everybody who walks in the door. That confidentiality is absolute, that what we're offering is a non

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punitive nonjudgmental attempt to help him with his particular problem. And we try to deal with each problem individually. Uh huh detoxification of the patient is a very simple procedure. We don't use cold turkey. We attempt to alleviate symptoms with with a few mild non narcotic non

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barbiturate preparations such as tranquilizers. And it usually will work through the withdrawal period which lasts about three or four days. And how many times have you been in a heroin treatment program before? Number? Okay. How many times have you kicked on your own? Mhm. Seven. How

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many? Exactly. Well, every junkie. It goes through a process of constantly swearing off joe junkie swears off again tomorrow, Always tomorrow. Sometimes I go for anybody can kick but it's staying clean kidneys. Real prolonged professional care. First of all, we have to overcome the old at

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age of once an addict. Always an addict. If I believed that I wouldn't be in the business, I don't think any of us would. Street people are the people who were dealing with and so we use them to help us communicate with their subculture, which is

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now our subculture. You said dr generally on paper we call them outreach workers or street workers. And this indeed is the work that they do also. They serve as counselors many times as effectively or more effectively than a trained psychologists come down very hypertensive and hyper

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active. I don't have your file here. How long you've been clean them about righteously righteously clean for about a week and a half. You're feeling good. Yeah. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Just trying to get it. This is where we come to be re energized to get

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strength to coke. Heroin is not the disease. It's a symptom of the disease. So what we do is we try to offer them counseling on an individual or on a group basis. We offer psychodrama, which helps some people act out there are there particular problems and

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perhaps understand them a little bit better. I think you're scared about to me. Do you want me if you want some kind of victory over me? A lot of people seem to have women who take care of them and love them. And I've always wanted and

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I've always had an eagle victory over you and you're kind Yeah, I don't want that anymore. Mm hmm. It's obvious that you don't love me. You arrive at a point in the ex heroin user when the very thought of heroin is so repellent to him that

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he makes a face almost involuntarily. At that point, I'd say this guy is very unlikely ever to go back to drugs along the path that we go to get there. There may be a lot of falling down. What you have to do is expect this fellow

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to backslide a little bit and then try and help him during these periods when he is backsliding and try and get him reoriented to a life that is acceptable both to himself and to society. The kids will tell you that heroin is a death trip. They

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know it, They embrace it. I don't understand it. I don't think any doctor ever is understood suicide in any of his patients. Dr Irving Klompus, a retired physician and am a official is the hate free clinics medical consultant. He does not pretend to understand the drug

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culture yet believes in the clinics approach to the heroin problem. First of all, you can't treat junkies unless they come in and the wide open, unstructured attitude of the medical people and the psychologists who run this clinic, I think accounts for the success of this program.

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About one third will come in, take a look and decide they're not ready for our program. So these people perhaps, or our failures. But 2/3 of patients stay with this from various periods of time. I've been here long enough to have seen dozens and dozens of

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cleaned up junkies. Mhm. Without the support of Meth Adan with very, very few other medicines to combat some of the problems, people have responded yeah. To our brand of medicine and the most important things that they come in. There are genes showing up here, but at

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this point, not in significant numbers. I think if we Would review the last 100 patients that have come in to see us, perhaps five or six would be recently discharged, gis. The point that I would like to make is that there are geese were out on

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the street who don't come in to see us because the physical and psychological pain is not built up to the point where it will overcome the pleasure of shooting dope. We will see them in a period of one year to three years. This is the lag

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phase that we can predict. And we know they're there, it's like knowing that their fish out there when they're gonna bite, but you don't know when it's a line and they landed right on top of the first platoon

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and it's like they wiped my platoon out, you know, and like my I lost half my intestines and my almost lost my arm. You're seeing your friends getting blown away and stuff for no reason. For a stupid reason is stupid cause you know, and when you're

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behaving in a way that's very important like in life or death, you're under a lot of tension. And one way to relieve the tension is to take drugs. Oh. Mhm. It just seemed like life was nothing. Life meant nothing to me. I just you know, all

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I thought about was heroin going to give those who trespass against us. Anita started his temptation. First event that blew my mind was getting off the plane in san Francisco and a girl coming up to me and saying you are a killer, right? Mhm. Fine. The

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youngsters feel threatened by the V. A. Hospital. It's an extension of the military and after all, the military is the basis of a lot of their problems. Many of the young people who are now on drugs represent political attitudes which are not attractive to the establishment.

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I think we tolerate a lot of, a lot of subculture and what people come to call counterculture elements. Our goal is to help people learn how to survive in the real world out there. I don't think we can talk about the american gi in Vietnam as

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being someone separate from american society at large. And I think we've focused rather strongly on this one problem and the one area of the problem of addiction and we perhaps missed a good deal of what's going on at home, addiction is on the upsurge now in

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the high school population preset. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm mm.