I just got back in touch with a college classmate. It was a weird little college in the late 60’s and most of us were hippies. The last time we got together was a year after college. He had a serious, nasty monkey on his back. So did I. His was heroin, mine was meth.
Somehow we both stumbled into recovery and have been doing fine for many years now. We reflected that we lost a lot of friends.
I’ve been to the edge
And I stood and looked down
Lost a lot of friends there, baby
Ain’t got no time to mess around.
In spite of all that, there were some amazing good times then too. I was at Woodstock. It was a peak life experience. The late 60’s were a tumultuous time. Cities were burning. Leaders were assassinated. Anti-war protests raged. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I’m glad to have been part of it.
Many of us from that college are in a private Facebook group. Not surprisingly, many of us have been clean and sober for a long time now. Other classmates died before their time as a direct result of drugs. Why some of us survived and others didn’t, I don’t really know.