Red Gargon wrote:
CB, your latest piece on Miltown was fascinating, bravura stuff ... 

I can't take credit for it-- it's all from Andrea Tone's research about tranquilizers in the '40s, '50s and '60s. When I read her book, I was amazed, too... she's got soooo much cool stuff about how-- in the days before popping pills was considered a scandalous moral failing that tabloids (and the tabloid-minded) fixated upon-- people talked freely about how they had achieved better living through chemistry and how that was reflected in pop culture. Once I started rattling off some of her Miltown tales for the blog, I didn't know when to stop: popular songs, politicians' speeches, cocktail recipes in magazines that called for mixing Miltown into Bloody Marys, etc. In such a world, talking about tranqs while hawking a horror/thriller movie syndication called "SHOCK!" makes all the sense in the world, but fifty-three years later, it seems bizarre. Can you imagine? "Just in time for Halloween-- order TCM's  'Greatest Classic Films Collection: Hammer Horror' DVD set and get a free month's supply of Prozac..."