JODO SHINSIHU IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

just beer and wine. They liked booze. They liked tequila, the scotches, the Southern Comfort, the J.B.’s, the Jack Daniels. They didn’t like to drink generic scotch. They wanted name brand booze and drank in alarming patterns. In addition to that, they were taking a drug called “crank” which is a methamphetamine —— a stimulatory drug used as a diet pill. They would take it and drink more alcohol, and the two drugs went well together.

When we did the Chinese-American study, it validated everything we believed in regarding drug abuse in the Asian community. The Chinese youths were involved with an epidemic of Quaalude abuse. I don’t know whether you’d ever heard of that drug before, but Quaalude is a sleeping pill. Once a prescription sedative, it is no longer available in the pharmacy. It was a tablet sold to help people get to sleep. It makes you very drowsy, makes you very sleepy. We found 43% of all the kids we surveyed in Chinatown in our Chinese study (120 kids, in ages 13 to 16; and in ages 16 to 19) were using Quaalude. We had a Quaalude epidemic. It became clear to us why they use Quaalude. They have a real difficult time talking to members of the opposite sex. They have a real difficult time expressing themselves at meetings or anywhere else. Asian youths are very shy people, very inward people, so when they take Quaalude, it’s like drinking alcohol. It lowers their inhibitions, puts their inhibitions to sleep. It makes them feel more awake, more alert, more “with it,” more open, and more willing to talk. Ultimately, the person slumps over and goes to sleep, but in his mind, it gives an illusion of more confidence and less shyness —— just as Buddhism teaches that all life is an illusion. Definitely, that’s what’s going on here. This drug gives them the illusion that they’re more talkative and friendly, that everybody likes them more. Basically, they’re sitting in a chair, slobbering all the time, so that’s why some of them said they like it, but there were a few kids in the Chinese youth study that said that Quaalude gave them all the same benefits that alcohol gives you, the feelings that alcohol gives you. But you don’t get red in the face. You don’t feel nauseated. You don’t have a hangover. You don’t throw up, and you don’t have any of the side effects; so Quaalude was a drug that gave you the benefit of alcohol without the negative side effects or problems.

Quaalude is a very addictive substance. It’s a drug that changes your brain chemistry, changes your body cells and causes addiction. It causes you to need that drug and take it over and over. When the kids come into our program, they have been taking at least five Quaaludes at a time, and about ten Quaaludes a day. They take five tablets a time to get sleepy and drowsy. Since tolerance rises, they start taking more at a time. If you get up