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Oral history interview with Greech W., 1980

Creator: W., Greech
Project: Addicts Who Survived oral history collection.
(see all project interviews)
Phys. Desc. :transcript: 85 pages sound file : digital preservation master, WAV files (96 kHz, 24 bit)
Location: Columbia Center for Oral History
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Biographical Note

Greech W. was born on August 25, 1912 in Charleston, South Carolina, one of four siblings. He completed school through the fifth grade. He left home at fifteen years of age old and traveled in the western United States, leading a vagabond lifestyle. He moved to New York City in 1926 and lived on 62nd Street. Shortly after, he began using cocaine. He moved to Harlem in the early 1930s. In 1942, he was drafted into the army, served as a combat engineer in Burma, and was discharged in 1945. In 1957 he got a job at Port of Simon, and later that same year, at Hudson Bay. The latter position he kept for eighteen years. He started sniffing heroin in 1957, and in 1966, started mainlining and using a combination of heroin and cocaine (speedball). Greech also began selling heroin in 1966 in Harlem around 134th Street and Eighth Avenue. He earned over $1000 per week. He entered a methadone program in March of 1980. Greech W. was interviewed for the project that led to the book Addicts Who Survived. The name is likely a pseudonym for the project

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Greech W. discusses his life in New York, with special attention towards his drug use. He discusses how he first began taking cocaine after he stole two or three thousand dollars worth of cocaine from an acquaintance who asked him to watch his supply. He explains how he soon after moved from 62nd Street to Harlem to avoid accidental encounters with this acquaintance. Greech describes how he experienced a perforated septum from his cocaine use, but continued to use. He also describes the paranoia he sometimes felt using cocaine and a mixture of heroin and cocaine (speedball). He discusses the price and availability of cocaine in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. He discusses why he was prompted to transition from snorting heroin and cocaine to taking it intravenously. He touches on the time he served in the army as a combat engineer in Burma during World War II, and how he was able to use marijuana and opium while enlisted. He explains that before he joined a methadone program in 1980, he would trade heroin for methadone on the street in order to attempt self-detoxification. He mentions his various arrests, and the time he spent incarcerated on Rikers Island. Greech also discusses how, while maintaining on methadone, he has continued daily use of heroin and cocaine, as well as drinking two or three pints of wine a day

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Copyright by David Courtwright

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