Alcoholism & Drug Addiction

Two writers describe how their lives have been shaped: Kim Ponders was an Air Force pilot during the first Gulf War; and Nicole Lea Helget grew up on a turbulent Minnesota farm in the 1980s.

From 1998 to 2000, William Queen went undercover for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and rode with the Mongols, a southern California motorcycle gang. His new book is Under and Alone.

In the past several months, singer Marianne Faithfull has released two CDs: a two-disc set of her hits, and Before the Poison, which includes tracks written by PJ Harvey.

As half of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, Tommy Chong made a career out of making jokes about being stoned. Along with Cheech Marin, Chong recorded six gold comedy albums and starred in seven films. He currently has a recurring role on FOX TV's That '70s Show.

U.S Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan prosecuted Tommy Chong. We talk with her about Operation Pipe Dreams and how it applied to Chong, as well as the investigation that led to the charges against him.

The acclaimed HBO series begins its third season. Simon is the show's creator and executive producer. Simon was a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun who moved to television and wrote for the show Homicide: Life on the Street. Pelecanos is a D.C.-based crime novelist who now writes for TV and film. Esquire magazine calls him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world."

Filmmakers Josh Marston and Orlando Tobon discuss Maria Full of Grace, their film about a Colombian girl who swallows pellets of narcotics and travels on a plane to New York. In real life, Tobon runs a travel agency that arranges transport back to Colombia for dead smugglers, who have died when the pellets burst.

She works on the streets near the safe injection site, assisting addicts. From her perspective, preventing HIV and STDs is such an important task that it overshadows addiction issues. Two days a week, Gold walks the streets of Vancouver, handing out clean needles to addicts shooting up in alleyways. She also treats infections related to needle use.

He'll discuss how the site was set up in an area known for its addicts. Campbell explains that the program's success is consistent with similar operations in Europe.

Pinksy co-hosts the syndicated sex advice talk show, Loveline. His new book, Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again: A Doctor's Story, is about his work as medical director of an addiction rehab clinic in Southern California.

Comedian Richard Lewis. His new book is called “The Other Great Depression,” (Public Affairs, 2000) and chronicles his recovery from alcoholism. He’s an award winning stand up comic and has appeared in over twenty movies and TV shows. Currently, he co-stars in Larry David’s HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Dr. David E. Smith is Founder and President of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco. He is a specialist in treating drug addicts including heroin. He talks about the rise in heroin's popularity in the 1990's.

Filmmaker Steven Okazaki talks about his movie "Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of The Street." It will show on HBO tomorrow night 4/14. The film tracks five teenage addicts in San Francisco over a two-year period. As a filmmaker, Okazaki won an Academy Award in 1991 for his film "Survivors" which retold the stories of several Hiroshima survivors. He also directed "Living on Tokyo Time" a comedy about a Japanese dishwasher . He lives in Berkeley, California.

Dickey has written a new memoir about his relationship with his father, the late poet and novelist James Dickey. It's called "Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son" (Simon & Schuster). Dickey writes that his father was "a great poet, a famous novelist, a powerful intellect, and a son of a bitch I hated." But Dickey writes that he also loved his alcoholic, abusive father. And as an adult, he picked up his relationship with his father again, after a 20 year absence.

Actor Gary Oldman. He's making his writing and directed debut with the new film "Nil by Mouth," based on his South London childhood. The critically acclaimed film prompted this from The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, ". . . this movie is something else.

Writer Eddie Little is making his debut with the semi-autobiographical novel, "Another Day in Paradise" (Viking) about a 14 year old boy who gets caught up in a world of drugs and theft. Little himself is a former heroine addict, who spent time in prison for armed robbery and grand larceny. He also helps run We Care, a Los Angeles organization that provides assistance to house bound people with AIDS and elderly shut-ins.

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Carl Perkins died yesterday at the age of 65. He died of complications from a series of strokes. Perkins is the pioneer of a style of music called Rockabilly, which is described as "a country man's song with a black man's rhythm." He's the man who wrote "Blue Suede Shoes," the hit song sung by Elvis Presley which became the first Sun label record to sell over a million copies.

Mary Anne Hunter, the president of the Fair Hill Burial Ground Corporation. A member of the Quaker community, Hunter led the Quaker community in the restoration of the burial ground, which had fallen into disrepair and had been taken over by drug dealers. North Philadelphia itself has the highest murder rate in the city. Community activists have sought to make Fair Hill a place where people can go safely to enjoy a clean, green space and to visit an historical landmark in which historically important people, such as abolitionist Lucretia Mott, are buried.

Actor Vondie Curtis Hall was raised in Detroit. He plays a doctor on the TV series "Chicago Hope" and has had roles in the movies "Broken Arrow," "Passion Fish," and "Romeo and Juliet." His latest project is the writing and directing of the new film "Gridlock'd," a comedy about the troubles two men encounter when they make a pact to overcome their heroin addictions, starring Tim Roth and Tupak Shakur.