Oral history interview with Helen, 1980

Biographical Note

Helen was born on August 11, 1917 in Cameron, South Carolina, the youngest of fourteen siblings. Her formal education ended in the 5th grade. At sixteen, Helen moved to New York City to live with her sister and brother-in-law, and began working as the first African American chambermaid at the Hotel New Yorker. After two years of working at the hotel, Helen met and married her husband, and moved out of her sister's apartment. She was introduced to drugs through her husband who, unbeknownst to her before they were married, used cocaine. She began to use cocaine with her husband, and after a few months they transitioned to using a mixture of heroin and cocaine, called a speedball. In 1938, Helen quit her job and began engaging in sex work and selling drugs in order to support herself and her husband. Helen was arrested once for prostitution in the late 1950s, for which she served no jail time, and once for drug sales in 1962, for which she spent eighteen18 months in a women's detention center in Greenwich Village, New York. Once released from jail, Helen separated from her husband and continued sex work and using heroin. In 1972, Helen joined a methadone program and stopped using other drugs. Helen 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, Helen speaks about her life in New York City, focusing on her drug use. She discusses how she was first introduced to drugs, namely cocaine, through her husband, and explains how they transitioned to using a mixture of cocaine and heroin (speedball), and eventually, to only heroin. She describes her various jobs, including as a chambermaid, prostitute, and drug dealer. Helen also remarks on World War II's impact on the price, quality, and prevalence of heroin being bought and sold in Manhattan. She touches on the difference between addicts who bought drugs on the street, and those who bought drugs in closed, trusted circles inside apartments or other private buildings. She describes how she kept her personal needles and other heroin paraphernalia clean. She also discusses how she turned to other drugs like codeine when heroin was scarce. She describes the eighteen months she spent in a women's detention facility in Greenwich Village, New York after being arrested for a drug sale. She discusses how she joined a methadone program in 1972 and quit heroin. She mentions that she visited Bernstein in July 1980 to detox from alcohol, which she had begun to develop a problem with around the time she entered the methadone program

Subjects

• Cocaine abuse--United States--History--20th century.
• Drug addicts--United States.
• Drug dealers--United States.
• Drug traffic--United States--History--20th century.
• Helen--Interviews.
• Heroin abuse--United States--History--20th century.
• Imprisonment--United States.
• Interviews.
• Joseph, Herman, 1931- interviewer.
• Methadone maintenance--United States--History--20th century.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Prostitution--United States--History--20th century.

Access Conditions

Copyright by David Courtwright