Hillary Clinton's Shocking Drug Diary!
From cyclamates to Pez, a young and rebellious
Hillary Rodham did it all –
By Frederic Schwarz
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton said that he had
tried drugs only once, and that was on foreign soil. If true, it would be yet another
example of his wife bringing more than her share of know-how to their marriage.
Hillary’s personal diary, a copy of which has been obtained by The
Hillary Clinton Quarterly, reveals frequent attempts to expand her mind in many
different ways. It’s no surprise that during the 1960s she participated in the
experimentation and questioning of social taboos that formed such a large part of that
decade’s life-style.
Yet even as a pre-teenager in the Eisenhower era, little Hillary
displayed the curiosity and urge to explore that would show up again and again in her
later years. The following is a typical early example:
November 5, 1959.
Went over to Lorraine’s house after school. She told me how her
cousin Jim at Northwestern gets "high" by drinking cough syrup. We looked in her
parents’ medicine chest, but we didn’t find any cough syrup. But there was a box
of Sucrets. We didn’t know how many to take, so we each ate three.
I sat down and closed my eyes for fifteen minutes but nothing
happened. So I decided to go to the kitchen and eat a banana. Then as I was getting up,
the room suddenly started to spin real fast. The picture of Fabian on Lorraine’s wall
looked right at me and winked. Then I got real dizzy. The walls were starting to collapse,
so I fell on the floor and rolled myself into a ball. Lorraine was talking so fast that I
couldn’t understand her. After a while I opened my eyes and the room was turning
around slower and slower, like when you turn a record player off. Finally it stopped and I
was able to catch my breath. I’ve never been SO SCARED in all my life. We’re
taking some more tomorrow.
After this episode the girls went on a Sucrets jag that lasted until
shortly after Christmas, when the local druggist got suspicious and refused to sell them
any more. Hillary and Lorraine tried sniffing Elmer’s Glue, but it paled in
comparison. They cast about for a substitute, testing and rejecting Vitamin C tablets,
Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and St. Joseph’s Children’s Aspirin. The
period of experimentation and disappointment lasted several months. Then Hillary found out
about boys.
Hillary’s diary from this period reflects the anguish of a
young girl cast adrift in a world she does not know or understand, bereft of the one thing
that has given her life meaning. A typical entry reads:
December 20, 1961.
I’m bored. I wish it would snow. I want to move to Chicago. In
Chicago you can walk into any store and get all the Sucrets you want. All the boys at
school are yucky. I want to go to Chicago and meet a nice handsome boy and take Sucrets
with him. My teachers assign too much homework.
Despite these yearnings, Hillary stayed clean for most of high
school. In the fall of her senior year, however, worn out by after-school campaigning for
Barry Goldwater, she started sniffing ditto paper to keep herself going. As usual, it
started as an occasional thing, a last resort on particularly stressful days. Then she
began carrying a freshly dittoed sheet around with her, to allow an instant fix whenever
she needed one. The next step was to carry a whole sheaf of ditto papers in a manila
envelope wherever she went. Soon, inexorably, she became hooked.
On the Saturday before Election Day, a potential disaster struck:
Hillary was caught breaking into the principal’s office to renew her supply. Rather
than call the police, the principal, recognizing her leadership role among the student
body, let her off with a stern warning and a plea to change her ways. It worked, for a
while; she never sniffed ditto paper again.
Upon graduating from high school, Hillary found herself at loose
ends for the summer. With the confidence of a woman striding boldly into adulthood, she
decided to put aside childish things and experiment with her hardest drug yet:
Pez. Pez
had long been a favorite of musicians and other hipsters; in fact, in the 1967 hit
"Incense and Peppermints," by the Strawberry Alarm Clock,
"peppermints" is a thinly veiled euphemism for Pez. In the summer of 1965,
however, few outside the tiny but growing counterculture movement had heard of it.
Hillary, as a leader of Park Ridge’s bohemian community, was one of the first to
learn about Pez, and she lost no time in testing it out:
July 9, 1965.
Tried Pez for the first time yesterday. WOW! Now I know I’ve
just been fooling around with that other stuff. I went to the park at 11:00 and met
LaVerne, my contact. After I gave the password, she took me to her ratty apartment above
the candy store. The shades were drawn and there was a big Snoopy poster on the wall.
After peeking out the windows to make sure we weren’t being watched, LaVerne opened
up a drawer and pulled out two dispensers. One was Donald Duck and the other was Goofy.
She asked if this was my first time and I said yes. Then she asked what my favorite flavor
was and I said strawberry. She laughed and said if it was my first time, I wasn’t
ready for strawberry.
She told me to lie down on the couch, and after I did, she pulled
Mickey’s head way back and a little yellow candy came out. I grabbed it with my teeth
and swallowed it. I asked if I could have any more and LaVerne just smiled and shook her
head. Then she went over to the record player and put on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana
Brass.
The next thing I remember, LaVerne’s pet dachshund came into
the room, turned on the television, and started flipping through the channels. His coat
kept changing color, so I figured he wanted to go for a walk, but when I tried to get up I
found my feet were chained to the floor. Meanwhile the dog was watching a commercial where
this little stagecoach drives into a kitchen cabinet. Suddenly he started barking and
leapt into the TV set. I tried to stop him, but it was too late, and before I knew what
was happening, I was in the TV set too.
I ended up on the Ponderosa Ranch on "Gunsmoke." Everybody
kept waiting for me to say my lines, but it was an episode I hadn’t seen before, so I
didn’t know them. The whole thing seemed really weird, because "Gunsmoke"
is usually on a different night. But then I realized it was a rerun. Anyway, I was getting
really embarrassed, but then LaVerne’s dog showed up and told me to get on her back
and ride off into the sunset. He had a little saddle with stirrups and everything, so I
hopped on and off we went. The Cartwrights were gaining on me, so I started digging in
with my spurs and shouting for him to hurry up, but his little legs couldn’t go very
fast, so I started riding him harder and harder. That’s all I remember, until I found
myself back in LaVerne’s living room, whacking her little dog with a copy of
"Seventeen" magazine and singing along with "The Lonely Bull" (which
is funny when you think about it, because "The Lonely Bull" is an instrumental).
Then I went back home. Mom had fixed meat loaf and mashed potatoes
for dinner. She said she’d never seen me with such a big appetite. Afterwards I was
very tired, so I went off to bed. I barely had enough strength to say my prayers before I
was out like a light. I can’t wait to meet LaVerne again.
As the summer progressed, Hillary moved on from lemon to experiment
with new flavors. She took three hits of cherry while listening to Herman’s Hermits
and spent most of the next day throwing up. Orange Pez and the Swingle Singers yielded a
very intense high, while grape combined with the Turtles made for a relaxing change of
pace. Some of her friends started chewing wintergreen Life Savers in the dark, but Hillary
never went that far; she knew her limits. After reading in "Life" magazine about
college students getting high on sugar cubes, the figure-conscious Hillary downed a packet
of Sweet ‘n’ Low, but the ensuring rush was so intense that it scared her. She
retreated to the familiar, friendly Pez high; when things got frightening, she could
always clutch her favorite Mickey Mouse dispenser.
Inevitably, Hillary built up a tolerance for Pez. Larger and larger
doses elicited smaller and smaller responses, and it was murder on her waistline. Then
when she got to Wellesley, she found that strawberry Pez (the favorite of experienced
users, which is how the Strawberry Alarm Clock got its name) was unobtainable in
Massachusetts. Besides, in the rapidly developing counterculture of the mid-1960s, being a
Pezhead was already passe. Hillary decided to put aside girlish amusements and concentrate
on schoolwork and social activism. Her next hallucinogenic discovery came about completely
by accident:
April 27, 1966.
Anthropology paper due tomorrow. While typing, I found it hard to
concentrate and began nodding off, so I went to Diane’s room to see if she had any
No-Doz. She seemed worried that I’ve been taking too many, but I assured her that
it’s just for finals and I can quit anytime. I took two and washed them down with
Mountain Dew.
Diane asked me what I was staying up for, and I told her about the
paper. "This couldn’t have come at a worse time, either," I continued.
"I was feeling really crummy this afternoon, so I took some Midol and . . ."
Diane’s jaw dropped. "You mixed No-Doz and Midol?"
she screamed.
I shrugged and said yeah, so what? Diane muttered a quick "Oh
my god" and shouted for her roommate, Martha, to get in there.
Before I knew what was happening, Diane and Martha had grabbed my
arms and were trying to make me lie on the couch. I resisted for a few seconds, but then I
noticed that Martha’s hands had turned into huge red claws. In fact, her whole body
was a giant lobster. I knew she and Diane wanted to cook me in boiling water and cover me
with tartar sauce, so I ran down the hall and into someone’s room. Just my luck
— it turned out to be Jane Austen and she was very busy with her next novel, so I had
to leave.
I went to the stairs, but they were crawling with poisonous snakes,
so I slammed the door. Then I noticed that the entire hallway was filled with water and
all the girls on my floor had turned into octopuses, jellyfish, stingrays, and other sea
creatures. They were coming right at me, and I had no choice but to swim for it. I started
doing the breaststroke as fast as I could, but Martha and Diane (who had become a rather
plump squid) caught up to me. That’s when I remembered that I don’t know how to
swim. I got so scared that I must have blacked out, and when I came to, I was lying on my
bed desperately flailing my arms and legs as Martha and Diane held me down. They had
returned to human form, which calmed me down a lot. They fed me some milk and cookies and
then we watched "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Pretty soon everything was back to
normal.
With the Midol-No Doz combination — known to Wellesley girls as
a Bloody Mary — Hillary had finally found her ideal stimulant. It had all the kick of
Pez but none of the morning-after effects, and instead of requiring a bulky dispenser, the
pills were easily hidden in one’s pocket. There was little potential to get seriously
hooked, since she could trip only once a month. Scoring was no problem; Midol could be
found in everyone’s medicine chest, and No-Doz was easily obtainable from the Amherst
and Harvard boys who swarmed the Wellesley campus on weekends. (Unlike some of her more
libertine classmates, Hillary was careful never to trade more than a chaste peck on the
cheek for a box.) On top of all that, it cured cramps.
Law school brought a temporary halt to Hillary’s drug taking.
Bloody Marys were beginning to pall, and the eager young idealist found regulatory policy
much more exciting. For most of her first two years at Yale, Hillary abstained from drug
use, except for the occasional handful of Good ‘n’ Plenty at an impromptu
gathering in someone’s dormitory room. Then, in 1970, Hillary moved in with a
classmate, Bill Clinton.
The act was quite daring by the standards of the time, especially in
view of Hillary’s conservative suburban upbringing. It seemed to have a liberating
effect, as the couple went on to experiment with other forms of social rebellion. They
tried smoking banana peels, but Bill refused to inhale; in fact, he ran from the room as
soon as he got a whiff of the foul odor. Unaware that you have to dry the peels first,
Hillary could not achieve the desired results, so she revived a trick from her suburban
Illinois girlhood and tried smoking popsicle sticks. Bill was able to share in this
activity more fully: He would eat the popsicles and then hand over the sticks to his
pleasure-seeking lover. Unfortunately, this system soon resulted in a huge backlog of
unsmoked sticks, which attracted roaches and other pests. Hillary’s studies left her
little time to indulge, and one day early in 1973 she dumped the whole sticky mess into
the garbage.
Things happened fast for the bright young couple after their 1973
graduation. The following summer saw Hillary working 16-hour days as counsel to the House
Judiciary Committee, which was considering the impeachment of President Nixon. The stress
of such an important assignment told on her, and as the work mounted, between tracking
down leads, researching legal points, and briefing committee members, she fell into her
old habits:
June 25, 1974.
Charles Sandman is the WORST!!!!! Every time he starts asking
questions I have to sneak off to the ladies’ room and take another Sweet
‘n’ Low to calm myself down. I’ll be glad when this thing is over —
not just to get rid of Tricky Dick, but so I can put my life back in order. Yesterday at
the luncheonette I poured six packets into my coffee and then compulsively stuffed another
six into my purse. All the waiters were looking at me. How much longer can I keep this up?
Two weeks later, with the hearings approaching a climax and the
Washington summer heat at its most oppressive, a troubled Hillary degenerated even
further:
July 11, 1974.
Another crazy day on the Hill — running around, meetings, phone
calls, one thing after another. Didn’t get home until 12:30, and I have to be up at
6:00 tomorrow. (I mean today.) The only bright spot came during lunch recess, when
_________(a fellow staff member) handed me a packet of bootleg Canadian sweetener with
CYCLAMATES!!!!! Praise the Lord — I would have kissed her if we weren’t both so
busy. One hit of that stuff and I was flying all afternoon. Next chance I get for a
vacation, I’m definitely going to Toronto.
The next month Nixon resigned, lifting an enormous weight from
Hillary’s shoulders. She quit Sweet ‘n’ Low cold turkey, and after a few
weeks of Cremora maintenance under medical supervision, she started drinking her coffee
black, a habit she has retained to the present day. Marriage to Bill in 1975, and the
responsibilities of being a rising young lawyer and the wife of a prominent politician,
sharply curbed Hillary’s drug use as the 1970s wore on. There were occasional Necco
Wafer parties on the weekends, but they became less and less frequent. Then in late 1979,
after learning of her pregnancy with Chelsea (itself the result of a green-M&M binge),
she completely gave up chasing after kicks, in preparation for her new role as mother.
Nowadays, as she leads the fight against teenage drug use, it’s
revealing to look back at an earlier Hillary, one who was determined to live life to its
fullest, come what may. Today’s kids have much harder drugs available to them:
Nutrasweet, ibuprofen, and even Pop Rocks, which are making a distressing comeback in the
inner cities. Yet their problems and concerns are the same ones that faced young Hillary
Rodham in the suburbs of Chicago in the early 1960s. As she and her husband struggle to
frame a solution, it’s encouraging to know that at least one member of the team
understands what it’s like to be a lonely, bored teenage kid looking for kicks —
and what sorts of things you’ll resort to when Sen-Sen just doesn’t do it
anymore.
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