Where Have All the Flower Children Gone? A Five-Year follow-up of a Natural Group of Drug Users

Abstract

Using the senior author's unique access, the fate of 95 predominantly street-oriented, non-patient, noncriminal, “natural,” heavy drug users (“freaks”) from the late sixties is documented. It was found that in five short years social networks had disintegrated, 80% of the “freaks” had assumed “normal” drug using behavior, 70% abandoned deviance as a way of life, and 60% escaped the ill consequences of detection by “the law.” “Street days” variables were analyzed with those from the follow-up period to determine why some went straight and others drifted towards other forms of deviance. Present way of life was more easily understood as a manifestation of their present situation than as vestigial characteristics of their deviant past. “Reform” occurred not necessarily because of the ever increasing efforts to “stop the drug problem,” but rather because of subtler, more natural processes.