Asian Skag in the 70s

[voodoobudah]

When I was stationed overseas in the Western Pacific (WESPAC),there was 2 kinds of smack available , one was called Hong Kong Rock, the other:China White,I remember one was suitable for smoking and the other snorting,and both were IV ready(I think).Both were probobly 90+%.....As I remember the White we got from Singapore and the other- H.K.of course. Anyway, a 15 dollar investment of the White",was probobly3 or 4 gr.,so obviously this lead to widespread "activity" on the ship I was on.Off the coast of Viet Nam for 28 days during the evacuation of Saigon and some other stuff near Cambodia every body (I mean EVERYBODY)ran out. I remember getting quite ill but honest to God I think we were to damn dumb ,young,and scrared for our jobs to let it get us down.The Chief told us all at Quarters(morning meeting):"There's an awful lot of you sumbitches coming down with the flu all at the same fricken time,leads me to believe sumpin else is a going on,I don't give afuck about that ,but I tell you one thing:Nobody goes on sick call in this division,If they want a day off they can go see doc and piss in his cup" .Nobody took him up on his offer...
Two or three days of misery at sea and the ship pulled in to our homeport in Japan. Naval Investgation Service of Japan called in 88 out of 300 enlisted men\ for interviews off of our ship.You can take a guess what they wanted to know about.Anyway after this I never touched another opiate untill I got off that ship and had my wisdom teeth pulled in San Fransisco several years later.

[anthropod]

Thanks for that interesting anecdote.

This is something I don't know about first hand, but I've read the following case made to support the idea that once a person becomes addicted to opiates, s/he is not necessarily addicted for life: US service personnel that had developed opiate habits in the far east tended to abandon their habits after a period of time upon returning to the States. Reasons given for this were: quality and price of available opiates in the States did not compare favorably to what they were used to, disapproval of family and friends, return to semi-normalcy where the need for something to cope with the bad circumstances was not as great. Also, presumably, most of them had not used for longer than a year, though obviously that wasn't always the case.

I really don't know how legitimate it is to apply that conclusion to opiate addiction in the general population, who find themselves trying to kick under much the same circumstances in which they became addicted.

One thing I do know, I'd hate to go through the situation described aboard a ship, all the while having to perform naval duties. Yikes.