All of this plays a part in my high school years. I got low grades in school and would barely make it to the next grade; just by the skin of my teeth!

Between age fourteen and sixteen I did a lot of amphetamines, some drinking, but not on a regular basis; perhaps a couple of times a week. The drugs started to influence my behavior; the way I thought the way I felt, and the way I acted. All of this combined with a dysfunctional relationship with my father was a recipe for disaster. When I look back on it now I say to myself: “how else could this have turned out?”

During this time I hung out with a core group of seven guys. All of us stay in touch right up to this day. One guy is in Federal prison and has been there for twenty years. The rest are successful business people who have done well, but all of these guys were druggies.

I hung out with these guys from the time I was seven years old until the time I was sixteen. We drank a lot, smoke cigarettes, and went down to the Jersey shore.

When I was sixteen I started getting involved with a more serious drug crowd. I moved away from my core group of friends, and by eleventh grade forward we didn’t hang out that much.

By the time I got to eleventh grade, I flunked that year. They told me I would have to repeat or I was out of the school.

I said: “f____k you. I’m out of here”

I told my parents that when I was sixteen, I was quitting school.

In south Philadelphia there was a school that was called a prep school, but actually it was a school for misfits. There was tuition but not a lot. But if you were poor you couldn’t afford to go there. I didn’t go to school with many blacks while I lived in the suburbs, but the school had blacks, Puerto Ricans, and the drug use escalated.

Now, I was going to school in the heart of Philadelphia, and I made all kinds of new contacts. At the school you got a GED. Every three months in school at this place was equal to a year at public school. I caught up to the rest of my class and graduated with them.


My Father Dies

In the meantime, my father died when I was sixteen or seventeen years old. He died of a heart attack. He was on the road in Chicago at some meeting and had an acute myocardial infarction. He dropped dead on the spot.

I had a lot of mixed feelings about them. I was messed up on drugs. I had feelings elation and feelings of sadness. Now, my drug use picked up speed because I didn’t have to answer to anyone. No one could tell me anything about what to do. These were intense times.


“Good-bye. Have a nice life.”

My mom would ask me: “don’t you wanna go to college?”

I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went to a community college. I went there for four months and failed everything.

One point that Dean called me into his office and said, not in a mean way: “son, you’re wasting your time here, and you’re wasting your mom’s time here.”

I said: “you know, you’re right. I’m out of here.”

He said: “goodbye, have a nice life.”

Several months later I got drafted into the military.