Not all calls are rewarding, however. On one call the woman clasped my arm and said, “I’m going to die.” She did, clinically. My partner and I started giving her CPR. We kept getting her heartbeat back, then losing it. Three hours we worked on her, finally revived her. Her first words to me were: “You should have let me die.” “Oh, no!” I groaned. She was old and sick and tired of living. We got her to the hospital. Her heart was so damaged that they put in a pacemaker. The last I heard, she was still living.

On another call I found three fire fighters from a nearby station who had beat me there. They were sitting in the living room, misty-eyed. One of them motioned me toward the kitchen. An elderly couple lay on the floor, both dead. The man had been a cripple, had no legs. It was a deliberate murder-suicide. The woman, his wife, had lain down on the floor, head on a pillow, face turned away from the man, and he had shot her in the back of the head. Then he had lain down beside her, put his arm around her, then put the gun to his head and shot himself. The notes left to their children indicated their love for each other, but economic and health problems were too much, and they were tired of living. They made the decision that they were going to die together. A deeply touching tragedy. No wonder the firemen’s eyes were moist.

On one occasion, at one o’clock in the morning, we were summoned by a young man’s mother. She could not get him to respond to anything. When we got there he was sitting on the couch in the living room. He was about 5 feet 9 inches tall, very thin, weighing about 135 pounds. A couple of police officers were there taking information from the mother.

My partner and I tried to communicate with him, but he was “gone,” hallucinating. He wouldn’t roll his eyes nor would he blink, and his arms and legs were spread out stiff. And he’d been holding them outstretched like that for 30 minutes. Sit in a chair and try holding your arms and legs out for three minutes, then remember​—he did this 10 times as long! We began to take his vital signs​—blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, things of that nature. He seemed to be in a stabilized condition and in no real danger. So we decided to transport him to the hospital. At this time we still didn’t know what drug he had taken, but one of the police officers suspected that it was PCP.

By now the ambulance had arrived and we had six emergency personnel present. When we started to pick him up to put him on the gurney, he exploded into action. He literally threw the six of us off of him. I remember being on his back with my arm around his neck, and he simply reached behind himself and took me by my shirt and literally threw me over his head and onto the ground! I’m 6 feet tall and weigh 190 pounds, but he tossed me around like a five-pound bag of sugar! Finally the six of us did get him pinned down, handcuffed and strapped to the gurney. He lived. PCP doesn’t ordinarily take life, but continued use of it, according to a pharmacologist who has made a special study of the drug, can cause the brain to be “fried”​—his word for it. When a person reaches this stage he is unable to speak or think for himself.

At another time my partner and I were summoned to a wild beach party by police who had already arrived on the scene. They were trying to subdue a man who was on PCP. With our help the police finally got handcuffs on him. Police handcuffs are well built, a strong steel chain linking the two cuffs together. Well, this young man flew into such a rage that he snapped the chain that linked these two cuffs together! It was all the two police officers, myself and the other paramedic could do to get him on the ground. In fact, one of the officers finally had to use his billy club to subdue the man. Then they handcuffed him with two sets of handcuffs, and we took him to the hospital.

These two instances graphically show that PCP gives a strength so phenomenal that it’s impossible to believe it until you see it. Even when you see it, it’s still unbelievable.

Heroin is another drug we repeatedly encountered. It is a central-nervous system depressant and causes breathing to stop. I went on one call where a man had collapsed from heroin use. He was surrounded by others who were high on it. The needle was still sticking in his arm. He’d stopped breathing and turned blue. I started an IV on him and my partner put a tube down his throat so we could breathe for him. He began to get pink and we gave him some Narcan, which stands for “narcotic antagonist.” It reverses almost immediately the effect of heroin. (No such drug is available, however, to counteract PCP.) The man revived in seconds. When the other addicts saw this they became threatening, wanting to take our Narcan away from us. They wanted it to make their use of heroin safer.

There is no amount of words that will drive home to young people the damage drugs do to mind and body, even 5 or 10 years after they stop using drugs. They refuse to believe because they don’t want to believe. If I could take them with me for just one day to the mental-health ward in UCI Medical Center in California and let them see people who have been involved in drug abuse for many years ​—paranoid and catatonic patients—​they might open their eyes. I have seen individuals who have had over 1,000 trips on LSD, and for all practical purposes they are no longer human. Their minds are gone. They’re almost vegetables.