Comments on: Television, Murder, Vietnam and A Thirteen Year Old Kid In America 1968

By: Lloyd Rowsey

Lloyd Rowsey — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:25:05 +0000

Jim. I misused the word “cravings” in the preceding post. When I discontinued lithium chloride (depakote) and lamictal in 2006, the withdrawal symptoms totally abated after a couple of days. And in the following seventeen months I’ve never experienced any “cravings” for either mood stabilizer. In contrast, when I stopped drinking in 2004, I don’t believe I could have done it if I hadn’t “detoxed myself” for a week; then it was touch and go for another month; and now, forty months later, I still experience alcohol cravings.

In Struggle (which for many of us has had at least two major dimensions),
-Lloyd

By: Lloyd Rowsey

Lloyd Rowsey — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:21:16 +0000

I’d like to read your eight-pager, Jim. Just for me, because I don’t even have a “real” blog presently, much less a website; as well as for those persons you know on anti-depressants, hopefully. Because mood-stablizers can waste you, menatally AND physically, worse than booze, believe me. Moreover, it’s not really until you experience the first couple of days of stopping them that you realize what powerful substances they are. (There is a big silver lining to quitting physician-ordered anti-depressants compared to quitting booze: the cravings go away completely, and almost immediately. Two months later, two years later, they don’t come back.)

My most dependable email is lloydrowsey@hotmail.com.

My radicalization started in the summer of 1960, and continues. So I haven’t written a piece about it, but only pieces. I’m gradually posting them to my cheapo-blog, which you get to by entering “yourdad65″ into a Google Blog Search.

Lloyd Rowsey

By: Jim Klingbeil

Jim Klingbeil — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:45:12 +0000

Yes, Lloyd, about 10 years ago I wrote an eight page piece titled “My Initial Radicalization” It started in ‘68 and ended in 1971 when i heard a legless Vietnam veteran speaking at a large ralley saying that not only should the U.S. pull out of Vietnam, but that the communists deserved victory. I was lucky, i had a high number in the ‘71 draft lottery. Ever since Reagan people have said to me “When are you gonna pull out of your damn depression.” Hope you’ve managed some recovery from yours. Every person i know my age or slightly older who has health benefits (i do not) is on “anti-depressents”.

By: Lloyd Rowsey

Lloyd Rowsey — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:27:54 +0000

I guess I’ve fuzzed the years, Jim. But not the times. If you take the mid-point between King’s and Wallace’s shootings, 1970, I was just coming out of depression. Then, it wasn’t until 2004 that I quit drinking and 2006 that I quit the headmeds (after eleven years) — against my (prescribing ex-) shrink’s very strong objections, needless to say.

Vietnam changed all of us “of service age” in the sixties, even the lucky ones like me who didn’t go and didn’t leave the country. Those who still deny that Vietnam changed us, I think, tend to be the warriors. But it wasn’t until the Chipmunk and Iraq that I realized life is just too serious, all the time, to have to look back on it and think: “well maybe, but that was when I was wasted.”

You and me both don’t think that “the U.S was ever or will ever be a democracy,” and I sure couldn’t have put it any better. I sure couldn’t put the other any better either, though, than a lost friend and Vietnam casualty put it: “Without hope…there is no hope.”

I Googled George Wallace and see he was shot in Maryland. Could there have been a “one third black” high school there in 1972? Did you go to Vietnam? Have you tried to write your story of being radicalized in 1968?

By: Jim Klingbeil

Jim Klingbeil — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:33:57 +0000

Lloyd, Wallace was shot in ‘72 by a kid from Milwaukee, where i just happen to reside.

By: Lloyd Rowsey

Lloyd Rowsey — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:47:59 +0000

Yeah, Jim. It was a watershed. I was two years out of law school; had been depressed for six years, but didn’t have a clue ; and was still basically a radical feminist, just becoming a socialist, and years away from joining Gus Hall’s outfit.

At the time, it occurred to me that “Presidential politics in America without assassinations is like Halloween without ghouls.” Or was it later that George Wallace got his?

By: Jim Klingbeil

Jim Klingbeil — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:47:37 +0000

I too remember 1968 - also the year when my radicalization started. I started high school in January - my father died the year before of the American disease - heart attack. I remember the Tet offensive clearly - all i wanted to do is get our of high school quickly, join the navy and go to Vietnam to kill gooks for Uncle Sam. I was an all American boy raised on the “good” war stories of my uncles. When King was murdered there were “disturbances” at my high school which was one third black. When Bobby Kennedy was murdered during finals the radical kids (children of university professors) walked around in a daze. Watching the Democratic Convention started the change in me - how could things like this happen in the U.S? I now don’t believe the U.S. was ever or will ever be a democracy - just another oligarchy with a bunch of patheticly ignorant “citizens”.

By: Lloyd Rowsey

Lloyd Rowsey — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:14:30 +0000

It was the yearI turned 27, but I wasn’t so lucky. I’d made up my mind to vote for (write in? I can’t remember) Frank Zappa, but when RFK got shot, it just didn’t seem as funny.

I like reading your stories, Ron, but you should try for a little beauty, or humor, or at least irony.

By: road ahead

road ahead — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:37:28 +0000

It was the year I turned 12. It is still there in my heart and soul.