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thing with an inflammable liquid .
One young man had been bar–
becuing and thought he could get
away with pouring a little gaso–
line on the fading coals to get
them going better.
Sorne were mechanics whose
engines backfi red in their face
when they tried to start them by
pouring gasoline down the car–
buretor. One teenager was a gang
leader. He had severa! Molotov
cocktails (gasoline bott le bombs)
thrown into his car by an enemy
gang.
Most of these burn victims suf–
fered 15 percent to 50 percent
burned skin damage. One was 85
percent.
1
was only 5 percent to 7
percent. Many of t hese burn
pat ients had to have regularly
spaced painkilling shots to endure
the pain they experienced. They
needed those shots to survive.
But here's the lesson. O ne
young ruan of about 20 years of
age was brought in with second–
degree burns over his chest and
stomach skin arca. A metal–
red ucing fu r nace at h is job
ex.ploded into him.
In agony, this you ng man
wanted the powerful pain killing
shot that the others received. A
nurse went to get it, but just
be fore ad mi nister ing it, s he
asked:
" 1
forgot to check your
record. Have you smoked mari–
juana in the last few days?"
The young man said , "Yes."
The nurse said to him, " J'm sor–
ry, you can't have t his shot," and
walked away. He had to take a
less effect ive pain ki ller a nd
endure sorne suffering. Do you
know why?
The answer was d riven borne to
me as never before: it does matter
when you reall y need medica!
help what drugs- any kind of
drugs- you have casually used in
the past! You see, combining
wrong kinds of drugs in t he
human body can lead to disaster
or death!
This lesson- li ttle realized by
many in society- was empha–
sized to me yet again in the burn
ward. My burns necessitated sur–
gery to clean out dead tissue arcas
40
so they could heal and also so
1
could receive sorne skin graft ing.
But before
1
went into surgery,
the anesthesiologist carne to me
to go over my total d rug history
again. After confirming that
1
had almost no drug usage for
more than 20 years, and no kind
of bad react ion from any drug
before that, he said: "You are
clean. l t is unlikely we wi ll have
any trouble with you. l t is the
pi ll-poppers that we have to wor–
ry about. They cause al! kinds of
drug reaction problems because
of the things we have todo to save
them."
No Safe Drug
Mi llions in our society don't real–
ize the t rue nature of d rugs and
what potential damage many
drugs do. But the best doctors do.
They don't like to take dangerous
risks in admi nisteri ng drugs.
They can't afford to in these days
when so many costly malpractice
suits are being brought against
them.
Marij uana may seem as com–
mon as cigarette smoking in
your area or school. Maybe alco–
holic part ies among your friends
or pecrs are even more popular.
Maybe you 're pressured to get
loaded or stoned witb d rugs or
d rink. Maybe pill-popping with
uppers, downers, hallucinogens
is t he "in" thi ng. You know
many of the various names–
reds, blues, bennies, angel dust,
etc.
What you may not know is
there is no such thing as a totally
safe d rug. "The d rug with no ill
effects has yet to be made,"
warned a medica! column in a
newspaper a few years ago. Simi–
lar recen t warnings from the
med ica) profession go totally
unheeded by many.
George
P.
Larrick, former U.S.
Commissioner of the· Food and
Drug Administration warned that
data on the damaging side effects
of new drugs can often only be
learned by painful
experience.
"People d ie every year from
d rugs generally r egard ed as
innocuous," he said. " The admin-
istration of potent drugs [by doc–
tors] involves a calculated risk
where the presumptive benefit is
balanced against the possibility of
toxic effects or [individual] id io–
syncrasies"
(Chemical
&
Engi–
neering News,
April 6, 1964).
Understand this. The adminis–
tering of d rugs by doctors is not a
pure science.
lt
is aJso an ar t.
lt
involves sorne guesswor k. T he use
of any d ru g involves tak ing
chances and risks.
That's under
trained
medica!
supervision, even if single drugs
only are being administered!
How much more dangerous is
it for humans to assume they can
casually take any drug they want,
singly or in combination with
others, simply because others are
doing it and seem, temporari ly, to
be getting away with it. The
shocking truth is, they really
aren't getting away scot free.
"Whether or not you realize it,
every time
you take orare given a
d rug, you are conducti ng an
experiment,"
said Dr. Harold
Thomas H yman, M. D., in a news–
paper medica! column (Newspa–
per Enterprise Association re–
lease, J anuary 7, 1960, emphasis
ours).
It
is critica! that you grasp this
one point, if nothing else. Your
life may depend on it. Not every–
one responds to drugs in the same
way. Humans metabolize d rugs
differently.
What kind of react ions may
occur if you take medica! or any
other drugs after smoking mari–
juana or dr i nking a lcoho l or
engaging in pill-popping for kicks
and thri lls?
There is no way one can tell
with absolu te assurance. T he
react ion may be negligi ble- or it
could be a disaster!
J ust how any drug wi ll act in
any one person depends on his •or
her age, size, heal th, medica!
problems and metabolism at a
particular moment in t ime. No
medica! practitioner can predict
precisely the side effects of any
d rug for any ind ividual.
A person may respond well to a
d rug once, and then experience
The
PLAIN TAUTH