I'm looking forward to the ESPN joint tonight on Len Bias. I was a kid in West Baltimore when he ODed. I had no game, but you had to play around my way. There just wasn't much choice. We had a milk crate nailed to a telephone pole that we used to play on. My older brother Damani (Big Bill, if you read the book) used to invoke Bias's name whenever he shot the ball. When Bias died, it broke all of our hearts. Around our way, it was like someone had killed the president. In all honesty, given those times, and give that the president was Reagan, it was worse.
But more than that, I think Bias's death was one of the reasons that, for black folks in my generation, coke wasn't something played with. Between that, and the crack epidemic, we tended to regard coke as the province of addicts. We had our thrills--a 40 and and a blunt--but coke usage was something we felt people should be ashamed of. (Not coke-selling, mind you.)
Don't take this the wrong way, but we thought of coke as some dumb-white-shit. That's not a point of moralism, as a kind of prejudice. We thought of it as along the lines sky-diving, mountain-climbing, and ski football. I don't know if the numbers even back this up (though I'm sure someone is about to tell me.) But this was more about the attitude of the time (late 80s to mid-90s) and the particular group of black people I ran with. The attitude was basically one of, I have no problem rotting my liver out with Mad-Dog and Cisco, but that coke shit ain't for me.
When I got to Howard, you almost never saw people using coke at parties. People did shrooms, and some adventurous cats would pop E. But coke would get you laughed at. You might even catch a ass-whipping for bringing out some coke at a house-party. The shit just wasn't cool. Even now whenever people mention recreational coke usage, I kind of instinctively bristle. I don't really understand coke as a recreational drug. Call it cultural bias.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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When I got over the dissonance of seeing Robert Novak on a video of Len Bias highlights, I listened to what he said about a Maryland win over UNC on the road:
I never knew there was a neocon way to watch a basketball game.
Bob Novak just turned over in his grave at being called a neocon. The Prince of Darkness hated the neocons, perhaps more than he hated liberals. He was a classic paleocon.
But TNC is right, coke always seemed to me to be some serious shit. I didn't know any addicts, but I knew plenty of recreational users, and that stuff always made me uncomfortable. I ran with the potheads, and when anyone would mention coke, or god forbid, start laying some lines, we all just said "Dude, WTF?" My fraternity was the "drug frat" at JMU, and everyone smoked weed, but coke would get you blackballed, no questions asked. To us it wasn't a white-black or city-suburb thing, coke was for Hollywood and Wall Street, and we were just looking to chill, that wasn't our scene. In fact, that scene was alien to us, and we liked it that way.
He didnt seem to hate them when he was helping them out a CIA agent and put a whole bunch of covert intelligence assets at mortal risk, just sayin'
really, which "bunch of covert intelligence assets" would that be?
also, was richard armitage a neocon too, or is that just your word of the day?
My word of the day is Karl Rove, his second source.
What's your word of the day, "useless sarcasm?"
Whoops, thats two words.
And as for "which bunch of covert intelligence assets" try the ones she was cultivating in her role as a covert agent in the CIA's Counterproliferation program, which she had to abandon when she was outed. If your boss Dick Cheney requires his interns to add sources to their reports, let me know and I'll try and track you some down, Jamie.
Quasi-ironically, the one and only time I've ever #1 - seen coke and a coke vial up close #2 - seen someone do lines and #3 been offered coke, was in college and by a black girl. But I went to a PWI, and this girl was essentially Incognegro (she only rolled with white kids and was super into the model scene in Boston and New York - she was FOINE!). The fact that we were both black was *probably* of very very little significance to her, in general. But other than that, yeah, you right.
As a Maryland fan and (grad school) alum, I can't wait to see this one. Considering how dark the times were from Bias' death through Walt Williams, I have a feeling that a side effect is that it's going to make me appreciate Gary that much more.
I was 17, had watched ACC hoops a lot that year, and was amazed by this guy Bias. He was a man playing among boys.
When the Celts secured the second pick, and again when they actually drafted him, I lit up victory cigars that stank up the living room (which my mom wasn't too happy about). Then what happened happened, and everybody was in a daze around here.
My sister quit doing coke because of Bias. I never tried, maybe because that kid's grin was in the back of my mind. Basketball aside, such a young, powerful kid, seemingly happy, world at his fingertips...all gone so quickly...
Now I have three kids of my own. I guess if there's a lesson here to them it's don't grow up to be someone else's lesson. This one still stings. I don't think I'll be able to watch it.
I totally agree about how Len Bias' death affected my generation's attitude towards cocaine. Speaking for myself, I was about 6 when it happened, but I remember crystal-clearly the story of how he tried coke for the first time and OD'd. That single story put the fear of coke in me -- I did NOT want to be the next guy that tried it just once and died. Of course, years later, the story is somewhat less clear, and that probably wasn't his first time. But the power of that type of story over a young kid is incredible. I have never tried it and never will.
TNC - I'm sure your specific set of friends and your personal culture had a lot of influence over how you think of certain drugs. But it's also possible that you don't think of coke recreationally because it's not a recreational drug. I've done coke a few times, have no plans to do it in the future--sounds like the definition of recreational, right? Except not. Reading is recreational. Watching movies is recreational. Shooting hoops is recreational. A night of doing coke is a heart-pounding experience of almost unimaginable intensity that leaves you essentially unable to function the following day. It's possible (for many people) to do that a few times without becoming hopelessly addicted, but that don't make it recreational. Ya dig?
I'm not sure if I FULLY agree with you. I did coke a number of times in college, and I considered it to be fully recreational for me and some of my friends. I had two roommates who came from quite a bit of money, and they would purchase some every few weekends. And while it technically may have been a heart-pounding experience, I never thought of it as incredibly intense. And the only reason it rendered me incapacitated the following day was because I would pound cheap vodka and Natural Lights while we were doing it. It usually just made me feel empathetic and incredibly charismatic.
Anyways, I'm sure it affects everyone differently, and I don't want to be the guy defending cocaine use on a Len Bias thread, but I thought I'd throw in my two pennies.
Wait, you had friends with enough cash to provide coke but you were drinking Nattie Lights? That may be the most messed up juxtaposition of this whole thread.
Well, my friends weren't going to buy my booze for me. When you're doing coke, you want other people to do coke with you. More than anything, I was 20 years old, and still would have gotten Natural Light even if they were buying. I don't drink it anymore, but it still has a place in my heart.
I think it has the same place in my heart. I can think of only one good reason to drink Natties, and that is you are a broke college kid going for the cheap buzz. I remember graduating from Natties to Coors with the about the same affection as signing my first mortgage.
Good times.
As someone who was there "BC" (before coke) a few observations:
- the original belief about cocaine was that it was NOT addictive (it simply wasn't available in quantities and purities, at a cost that would ALLOW anyone but the extremely wealthy to become addicted)
- cocaine's original attractiveness was not as a drug of choice for its effect, but to SIGNAL that you had MONEY (it began to "blow up" when it started commanding $5K an oz)
- it is possible to do coke all night and go to work the next day IF your cocaine is not very pure
- the bulk of cocaine being consumed after about 1980 was at best 30% pure (which eventually created the market for crack)
- the 1 time overdose potential of cocaine was denied, even by frequent users, until Len Bias
As someone who was living with the devastation that cocaine was causing, the whole Len Bias story is simply too sad to want to recall.
I've done coke a few times and I always regret it. Either right away or I do the first line and its fantastic but anything after that and I regret it. I find everyone (including myself) really boring and arrogant on coke, though they often think they're brilliant. It makes you grind your teeth, you can't stop drinking but the worst part is that you just can't sleep, or at least I couldn't, so your next day is totally shot. I know friends who have gotten into it and they just binge - they could not stop doing it and they completely scared themselves. I hope I never do it again. I hope they never do it again. Weed is far more interesting.
But yeah, its true. I was in high school and playing a lot of basketball back when Len Bias died and so every time I have tried cocaine I have inevitably thought of him. Pretty weird. You snort some, and then your heart takes off. Its not a very nice feeling really. I don't get it. I would certainly never go out of my way to actually buy any.
And for whatever its worth - I'm white and I've never seen a black person do coke, but I don't hang out with all that many.
I agree with the not sleeping, the worst part. The problem with coke is that you have to sober up completely awake, rather than drinking where you can just sleep it off if you're too messed up. I tried nearly everything to get myself to sleep. However, I did like doing it quite a bit. I don't anymore mainly because we graduated from college, got jobs and stopped doing it too. Too much stigma and risk for being caught with it, and I like drinking just as much anyways. Of course, the punishment for doing a drug never stopped me otherwise I would have quit drinking a long time ago.
What the hell is "ski football," white people? What did I miss?
That's a good question. I was unsure about that as well...
Ski football I have never heard of.
I've never done it, but I believe that is when people throw around a football while skiing. One of the Kennedy's crashed into a tree and died doing this.
Right.
And here I was thinking it was a euphemism for some kind of coke game.
Sonny died playing it too right?
Coke caused too much pain and suffering to my family for me even to consider doing it. I cant imagine any circumstance in which I'd acquiesce and just "try it out." I've yelled at friends for dabbling in it, and made it very clear to others that I didnt approve of them dabbling in selling it. I've even been sloppy drunk to near incapacitation, only to see fools bust out with it on glass tables and found myself magically levitated out of the party and on the street, almost without willing it. I know thats just my own past with that damned demon drug and maybe others did it and were fine, but that drug is an Ultimate Taboo as far as I concerned, "and I hope it burns in hell!" (SLJ voice)
This has nothing to do with cocaine, but with Len Bias. I graduated from college in Texas in December 1985, and my first job was as a reporter in the Dallas bureau of the Associated Press. I was a maternity reliever, and when she came back from maternity leave, I left for the Baltimore bureau as a maternity reliever there. Packed up my car and drove to Baltimore, my first time east of the Mississippi River.
My third day on the job was June 19, 1986. I sat down to be trained to work the broadcast-writing desk. It was fairly early in the morning, and we got a tip on the phone that Len Bias had been taken to a hospital in the middle of the night. A reporter named Larry called the hospital and talked for a couple of minutes with the hospital spokesperson -- finding out when Bias had been sent there, whether it was by ambulance, etc.
Then Larry asked, "What's his condition?"
There was a pause. "He's *dead*?!" Larry yelled. The broadcast editor said, "Excuse me," grabbed my chair, and wheeled me out of his way to write the bulletin. We knew immediately that this was going to be a gigantic, long-lasting story.
TNC, I believe Len Bias's death not only affected your neighborhood's views about cocaine, but had a long-term effect on drug use by athletes. L.T. used cocaine, and Len Bias used cocaine, but you don't hear much about pro football and basketball players using coke. Maybe pot.
I would just add maybe pro football players and basketball players don't use coke AFTER Len Bias but before Len Bias the NBA and MLB were notorious for coke use. Tim Raines once slid head first into second to not crack the coke vials he had in his back pocket. You are right on about pot though. It's all over professional sports. However, I think that might just be a sign of our culture as marijuana is becoming far more mainstream than coke ever was.
Yes, that's what I meant. Coke before, no coke after.
When I was in college in the early 80s, a friend and a group of her female friends were standing outside a nightclub in Dallas. One of the Cowboys (don't know which) rolled up in a limo, opened the door, and said, "Come here, ladies, and see the snow."
The B-more writing anecdote is kind of cool. I was 12 in ACC country when Lenny died. I remember it being a big deal, and my friend (a Celtics fan) being distraught.
One thing that's maybe here nor there, with regard to cocaine use by present-day athletes: usually we hear of pro athletes' drug use when a test result is announced. Cocaine is untraceable in urine after a day or two. Pot tends to be traceable for approximately 30 days.
Cisco, MD 20/20, Thunderbird and Wild Irish Rose? Man, those might as well have been the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Thank God me and my liver survived college.
I was at Duke when Len Bias was a Maryland student. I remember that news like it was yesterday. Of the people I was lucky enough to see play hoops live and in person, I think Len was definitely second to only Jordan. Holy crap, I may have to channel the inner Novack I didn't know I had, but dude was a freaking force of nature. Teams... good teams... would double team him the whole game and he'd still get 30 and the win.
I obviously need to turn in my white card b/c coke was never for me (nor ski football, etc.), but I knew a whole helluva lot of rich a-holes in college who blew through that stuff like crazy. White and black (mainly white, we are talking about Duke after all... and the black people I knew who did it were of the rich family/fancy new england prep school ilk). So I think it's probably as much economic demographics as racial ones...
Some of them did fine, others not so much. Ulysses is right that people really did believe it was non-addictive. Not sure where that came from.
I think the myth of cocaine not being addictive dates back to the 70's. Sounds like they're saying the same thing about Red Bull.
It does. Was first intro'd in '76 just so and passed.
"Nobody gets hurt."
Tried a line at a post-grad party with a group of art students and was struck by the following:
-Utter lack of imagination in a 'creative group'.
-Complete boredom.
-Ability to channel nothing and everything to nowhere.
Who believes that, ever, about much of anything....?
Including Red Bull.
Or anything else promising trips to Oz.
Steroids occurs as does anything else Guaranteed To Make Us All Smile.
I'm white and from L.A. and have hung around a lot of druggies in my day (college was 1991-1996), and I've never actually seen cocaine, heroin, or meth, though I do know that some people I know have tried them. I have seen tons of weed, LSD, shrooms, E, nitrous, dextromethorphan (DXM, the active ingredient in Robitussin), even GHB. I dunno if Bias had anything to do with it or if I just hung out with the wrong kind of druggies (ravers, hippies, science & tech students), but in my mind, there was a line between OK drugs and bad drugs, and cocaine was on the bad side of that line. I must say, though, that I had no knowledge of basketball, and even I knew about Len Bias. That story penetrated the national consciousness pretty well.
Same rough age and experience as adamnvillani - and TNC, basically. Weed, shrooms, acid, and novelty drugs aplenty, but no coke, heroin, or meth.
There was maybe one guy in college who used coke, along with an 80s-era guy who had never left town. Everyone was scared/repelled by it.
I think our college years were in between heroin booms, and pre-meth, so I can't say for sure what that would've been like.
I was 13 when Bias died, and I think him, plus Don Rogers of the Browns, put the legitimate fear into our generation.
So what did you all think? I thought it was brutal. The film had no let-up at all, just kept coming in your face with the tragedy of his death and the aftermath. Very tough to watch, but very good.
I fucking missed it. Was out working. Damn.
I am still hoping I can actually watch this as ESPN's time zone schedule seems to be all east coast (most channels replay stuff in prime time out west, but it's not showing up on the schedule).
As for cocaine, I don't agree that it's the vintage of addicts, per se. There was a certain cachet to it, as someone said earlier, it symbolized that you had money, at least in some circles and Bias' death didn't deter a lot of athletes (I'm thinking Cris Carter, Lawrence Taylor, Irvin, Gooden, Strawberry....on and on) from continuing to use it.
"Without Bias" will be repeated Wednesday and Thursday nights on ESPN2. Go here http://30for30.espn.com/film/without-bias.html for a list of the replay times.
yeah, i found the espn replay schedule, i was just thinking locally, they usually replay it out here (L.A.) the same day 3 hours later...i guess now I should figure out the DVR....thanks!
I was a huge basketball fan and a sophomore at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and I had two reactions to Bias's death. One was devastation. Our team was so bad if more than two players fouled out we would have to forfeit. The crowd was so small they never pushed the top row of bleachers out and you could keep running on the indoor track during the game. In high school me and my friends rooted for Patrick Ewing and Georgetown. Len gave us a reason to root for the home team. When he died we were all crushed. We were white, yes, but poorer white and could not afford coke. Our idea of a chemical high was a $4 case of Wiedemann's apiece and a Rum Soaked Crook at the duckpin bowling alleys. Coke? Pot? Who had the money? We were despondent for weeks.
Then anger set in. The Bias tragedy sent a shock wave of blame and scapegoating across the Maryland campuses. From then until the day I graduated (and beyond, I hear) every Maryland campus instituted the most draconian rules and laws. Every campus dried up, even for those of us of age. They stopped serving beer on campus, even wine at faculty gatherings were outlawed. Even a rumor of someone doing pot would bring the jackbooted rent-a-cops streaming through your dorm with K-9 in tow. And it wasn't just drugs and booze. Just about any frivolity and fun would draw the eye of the administration. Annual festivals died. Concerts on campus stopped. Everything.
All because College Park was (rightfully) embarrassed by what had happened. Most of us moved off campus shortly after this started happening. Lord knows how much drinking and driving this event indirectly inspired.
I know it sounds selfish but for years I was truly angry that Len Bias all but ruined campus life for us peons and I eventually forgot who Len Bias was. When Maryland beat Indiana in 2002 (double sweet since my family is from Bloomington and still worship all things Bobby Knight) I finally remembered him and what he meant to me before he died. I am sorry I missed the movie tonight. I didn't even know it was on. Since it is ESPN I am sure they will rerun it all year.
I know all that sounds petty and selfish, but there it is.
As a current College Park student, all Len Bias has come to mean to me is an excuse for the school to have extremely strict drug and alcohol policies.
Cosigning what TNC wrote. Bias' death, preceded by Ricard Pryor setting him self on fire, was enough for most brothers to leave that coke sh!t to white folks and the fiends.
It is no accident that in Hip Hop, from 1982 up until about 1995, you barely ever heard any (non gimmick) artist rap about using coke themselves. Selling it? No problem. But using? Nah, shit just wasn't cool (at least to acknowledge publicly).
Richard is the only comic I know that could turn freebasing into brilliant comment and humor.
I miss him.
And he did it without putting it on anyone else.
Well, except for Wu Tang--and their honest confessions of their wild experimentation with coke and angel dust was so shocking and atypical that it added a whole bunch to their cred as wildchildren of the early 80s NYC.
Sorry if it's already been mentioned, but when I think of Len Bias I think of the mandatory minimum laws demagogued through partly in his name(invoked by Tip O'Neill, furious that the Celtics had been denied a draft pick).
They devote a significant amount of time to this in the doc. hope i didn't violate any spoiler rules.
The Len Bias story was used to scare me and my classmates straight as well, a decade later. I'm 24, so my college days were '03-'07. In H.S., coke was a foreign and unattractive thing. Sure, people smoked weed, did pills, and even a few kids tried shrooms. Maybe the aversion to coke came from the stigma of crack addicts. While they're technically different, it was similar enough to get insulted and slightly shunned over. Being considered a crackhead in my Chicago
hood was the top insult possible.
During college and post-college, Coke was more common among certain groups. Ironically, I didn't see it at my frat., but rather at parties with hipsters and punk people. This is not to stereotype, but I think there is a certain social group acceptability with the drug. Inner-city black people, not really. Artsy, college/post-college crowd at weekend house parties, more likely.
TNC,
Couple of things. You KNOW that the most notorious users of coke were the 70's and 80's Cowboys, esp. ol' Hollywood Henderson. I used to be a fan until they fired Landry, but I was always naively wondering why Tom never put the kibosh on it. Probably because they were winning.
Next up, the Len Bias death did have a lot of effect, good and bad. It brought up awareness of the danger of these kind of drugs, BUT, it also put a lot of pressure on politicians and led to draconian mandatory minimum laws, ignoring treatment options in favor of "tough on crime" legislation.
And finally, my old stomping grounds just did this......
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13707672
SAFER Colorado is making strides.
Dolph and Method beat me to it while I was typing.
it's definitely cultural. i have a lot of musician friends in billyburg and a few years ago when the music scene was really starting to get hot and bands had more cash in their pockets, you'd start to see coke creep up at parties and shows. in fact, it was even happening in dc. i remember me and my brother went to see a friend's band at the black cat and some slummin white dude comes up and ask us if we're there selling coke. the funny thing is whenever it's mentioned, not to mention when i see it, i bristle. maybe it was all the DARE stuff they did in elementary school. maybe it was watching several aunts and uncles turn into fiends in the eighties. whatever it was, it seems like the vast majority of my black friends have never even tried it while most of my white friends have had points in their lives when they've done it regularly.
Yes Yes to many posts here. In the 80s as Disco club scene was winding down I remember the coolest-hippest clubs were the ones that had little private rooms and people used to snort caine right out in the open. My band was doing better quality gigs and we were mingling with local celebrities and ex Motown semi stars. This was pre crack when coke was the jet set drug. Maybe it was because most of it was stepped on 3 times butI snorted quite a bit during that time and it wasn't life changing or devastating. I'm sorry to say this but I remember having lots of fun snorting coke back then. The only problem was the high cost. Unfortunately, Coke was cool.
Crack, however shouldn't even be considered the same drug. I think all the people who had enjoyed snorting probably thought freebasing would be just a little bit stronger- sorta like the difference between and joint hit and a Bong rush.
Naw freebasing was the end of the world drug. I saw so many beautiful sucessful people become devastated crack heads over night.
When Richard Pryor did his bit about the pipe commanding his life, so many of us saw that very same thing happening to our friends and associates, and almost to me.
I had smoked about $80 worth with a girl I had desired for years but who was almost unobtainable. We were supposed to screw that night but after the first hit... I had found something much much better that screwing a girl I had lusted after since the 6th grade.
My heart skipped fast and heavy out of desire for one more hit of that pipe for months after that first time I tried it. If I had been able to get in touch with her in the days after that, I would probably be dead by now. The Richard Pryor, Len Bias incidents were Devine lightbulbs over our heads.
"Divine"
Mad Dog? Seriously?!?!? I did that shit ONCE and the hangover from it was the closest I've ever been to contemplating suicide.