On a wet and miserable day a few weeks ago, I drove onto the campus of the State University at Stony Brook, determined to find out what the hip side of college life was like. Within three days, I was part of it. I moved into the off-campus digs of five bright, likable, polite young men - four university students and one 19-year old high school senior - who were steady and enthusiastic users of the milder mind-expanders, marijuana and hashish.

For four weeks I was their housemate and after overcoming the suspicion that I might be a police undercover man, their friend. They and the dozens of Stony Brook students I met through them taught me a lot during my month-long masquerade as a 22-year-old prospective student. Here's a cram course on what I learned...

1. Drugs are an integral part of the social life of a large number of college students - perhaps as many as one out of five at Stony Brook, from my observations. "Turning on" at our house was practically a synonym for Saturday night.
   
   
2. Alcohol has fallen from favor among many collegians.
   
   
3. It's only the milder category of psychedelic drugs, such as marijuana and hashish, whose use is really widespread. Heroin is as taboo as it is in society at large, and even LSD is unusual. The one "acidhead" I met was a 16-year-old who freaked out one night and ran naked around the campus, causing great concern among his friends, other students who smoked pot regularly but were afraid of LSD.
   
   
4. The long-haired, Bohemian types, who are called Ethnics at Stony Brook, aren't the weirdo, laughing-stock minority they were in my day (University of Iowa, '61). At Stony Brook, they're a power to be reckoned with. To the Straights, who still comfortably outnumber them, they constitute a threat.

A number of Ethnics are take-charge people. They write for the student newspaper, they wield power in campus politics, they plan and carry out campus social and cultural events. They also exhibit the kind of life style that may not encourage drug use, but certainly makes it comfortable.

Ethnics aren't called "beatniks," even by their detractors, and that is probably because the term is dated. They are sometimes called "hippies," but that is more correctly applied to a subdivision of Ethnics, those who work hardest at the image. Drug users are generally referred to as "heads," though a new term, "druggard," was in vogue while I was at Stony Brook.

One hesitates to say that all Ethnics are druggards, but that is how one girl with whom I became well-acquainted summarized the situation. I asked why it seemed that none of the students were interested in drinking, and she tried to explain.

"It's a funny school," she said. "The school is kind of divided in half. Half the kids drink and the other half take drugs, and one half doesn't have anything to do with the other."

To find out how the other half lived, I got my inside view in a big, old, weatherbeaten frame monstrosity not far from the campus. The inhabitants, all between 19 and 21, were hirsute types who collectively could have passed themselves off as the Rolling Stones. A freshman girl, with whom I struck up a conversation on campus, knew them all and admired them.

The girl, a sweet-faced, pretty but slightly plump little thing, whom I'll call Cathy, told me about the house and led me there after I asked her if she could suggest a place to stay.

"Well, it depends," said Cathy. "I do know a place where a bunch of guys live, and one of them has just moved out. But it all depends on how you feel about weird people."

"What's so weird about them?" I asked.

"Well, they're not really weird, that's not the right word. I mean it just depends on how you feel about long hair and pot and things like that," she said.

"I'm very broad-minded," I said, "and I'm not as square as I look.

"You're sure?" Cathy asked, then came with me to visit the house. Only one of the boys, a 19-year-old high schooler I'll call Eddie, was at home. Eddie, a lean fair boy whose light brown hair was parted neatly in the middle and fell over his ears, led the way through rooms of incredible disarray to the one upstairs that was to be mine. It was a good-sized room with a fireplace, a bed, a desk and carpeting, completely littered with discarded, dirty clothing and waste paper. Down the hall were a bathroom and kitchen, in a state that would cause any middle-class mother to shriek in horror. "This is great," I said.

Back in Eddie's room, we talked a little before I drove Cathy home. "What's new with you?" Eddie asked her. "Not much," said Cathy, who then mentioned the name of an anesthetic drug she said her dentist had given her when she visited his office the week before. "That was the biggest experience I've had in weeks," said Cathy, who is 17. "I had the wildest hallucinations for about three minutes."

I met each of my other four housemates, all Stony Brook students, individually the first evening and told each my story - that I had just driven up from Florida, where I'd been in junior college, and was thinking of going to Stony Brook for summer school. They all seemed to believe me and said I was welcome to stay, but after midnight, two of the boys came bursting into my room where I was reading.

"Okay, let's see your badge," said one, a curly-headed Brooklyn lad I'll call Barry, whose room was across the hall from mine.

"Badge?" I said.

"I hear you're a cop," he said.

"I'm not a cop. That's ridiculous," I said, trying to laugh.

"He's not a cop," said a boy I'll call Dick, a lanky, live-wire kid who lived downstairs in a room his girl friend often shared. "Eddie's just trying to hassle you."

"I don't know," said Barry. "I don't want to get busted. I want to run for moderator (the equivalent of student body president at Stony Brook). I'd sure hate to get busted. Prove to me you're not a cop," he said to me.

"How could anyone prove a thing like that?" I asked. "You prove to me you aren't a cop."

"You know, it'd be a groove if he was a cop." said Dick, grinning. "It would keep us on our toes."

"I don't know," said Barry, but that seemed to close the matter.

For a week and a half, I was accepted with a kind of mistrustful friendliness. There were several half-jokes about my being a cop, and there was no drug use in my presence. Drugs were frequently mentioned, though.

Late one night, five of us sat around in the downstairs living room. The sixth housemate was entertaining a young lady in his room upstairs.

Somehow, drugs came into the conversation. "Some of these days," said Dick, "everything's going to change around. The heads are going to take over and run things, and then they'll make it bad on the straight people. On applications and things, you'll have to put down the kind of drugs that you use in order to get a job." He chuckled.

"What are you talking about?" said Barry, scornfully. "You know heads aren't like that."

But Dick, caught up in the fantasy, went on: "I can see it," he said. "The next war will be between the acidheads and the potheads, and the potheads will outnumber the acidheads three to one but the acidheads will feel so superior they won't care."

During my stay at the house, one of the most bizarre things I noticed was the temperance of my housemates and other Stony Brook students. If it's possible to spend four weeks on the campus scene and not see one inebriated student, things certainly aren't the way they once were.

At the house, there evolved a plan under which I would buy groceries instead of paying rent. Week after week, the beer would sit chilling on the refrigerator shelf long after the Coke and Mountain Dew had disappeared.

One housemate, to be known here as Tim, a very talented singer-composer who had a deserved reputation as a Lochinvar, was a confirmed user of marijuana and hashish and kept packages of morning glory seeds in his room. One night he turned down a beer that was offered him and said: "Don't you know alcohol is a sign of decadence?"

Another student seemed to think it was worse than that. "Booze," he said, "is middle-class and middle-aged."

A fellow who used to live in the house was back for a visit one night, and he told me he didn't like drugs as much as he once had. "They represent a kind of dependence, a crutch in a way, that I don't like," he said. "If you offered me some pot or hash right now, I'd probably take it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get some."

The same guy was adamant about liquor: "It completely turns me off," he said. "I don't want anything to do with it. I've seen it mess up too many lives."

Barry thought of my beer-drinking as cause for suspicion. One night he said to me: I still think maybe you're a cop. You drink beer a lot. Cops drink beer."

The breakthrough came after a Saturday night party at the former housemate's home in a village near Stony Brook. The party was organised by his sister, a high school girl and was attended by about 20 young persons, half college students and half from high school.

The party was a pretty dull affair, one of those things that never get going. There was no hard liquor there, only a few cans of beer and a bottle of wine that went pretty slowly. Throughout the evening, at least half of the guests would disappear from time to time in groups of two or three. They'd go for a walk outside, or go into an upstairs bedroom and close the door.

They would return to the group in a much gayer mood than when they had left. It was apparent that the people who left the party from time to time were enjoying it far more than those who didn't. No one asked me to come along. Early in the evening, when the party was at its dullest, a Stony Brook freshman yawned to one of my housemates: "Could we please hurry up and smoke so I can lose my inhibitions?"

Back at the house, four of us filed into Tim's room. Besides Tim and myself, there were another housemate, whom I'll call Phil, and Phil's girl friend, who'll be called Ellie. Now it seemed that a moment of truth was at hand. Phil, a senior philosophy major with a thick mane of shoulder length black hair, took a small ball of shiny foil from his pocket and rolled it between his fingers: "Jerry, we are going to smoke this," he said, "and if you are a cop and you turn us in..."

"He'll get you." said Tim. "And if he doesn't get you, I'll get you."

"And if they don't, I will," said Ellie, laughing.

"Don't worry, I'm not a cop." I said. "What is it?"

"It's chocolate. Hashish. You be sure and spell that right when you type up your report at the station," said Tim.

"Don't say that," Ellie pleaded. "He's not a cop."

Phil unwrapped the dark brown pea-sized lump of hashish, placed it in the howl of a pipe, and struck a match.

"Come on, baby, let's find oblivion," said Tim. Phil took a drag, then held out the pipe to me. I took it without hesitation.

Ritualistically, soberly, we passed the pipe among the four of us, each taking a deep drag, inhaling and holding our breath to keep the smoke down as long as possible. The smoke tasted good, but pulling it against my throat was harsh. There was quite a lot of coughing, and conversations came in rasps. Tim had a coughing jag and croaked: "It's not much fun, is it, kiddies?"

All four of us were sitting on Phil's double bed, the pipe moving among us slower now. Phil and Tim sat on the edge, playing guitars and singing. Ellie huddled against the wall, her legs folded under her. After a few drags, she leaned back and closed her eyes.

Phil stood up and went through a few steps of modern dance. With his hand outstretched and one knee raised, he stood still and, looking at the ceiling with delight, said: "Ellie, the ceiling! It's moving! It's pulsating."

Ellie looked up. "What you're doing, it's beautiful," she said.

Phil and Ellie curled up on the bed together, giggling like children. I was still waiting for something besides a sense of well-being, but they had been smoking at the party and were well ahead of me.

Apparently they were ahead of Tim, too. As he and I left them alone, he paused at the door and announced: "People like you two just shouldn't drink." They giggled helplessly and held each other close.

Upstairs in my bed, the hash took hold of me. I'd close my eyes and see brilliant, rippling patterns of color. It was like a kaleidoscope of stained glass windows. The dirty sheets on my grimy mattress felt like silk.

The next day, Phil and Ellie apologised for cutting me out at the party. "I hope you won't hold it against us that we were suspicious of you," Phil said. "It's just that when you use drugs you get so paranoid about getting busted."

Such fears are well-founded. In April, police rounded up 10 students in a dope raid at Southampton College after gathering evidence against them through an undercover man, a young policeman who posed as a student. At Stony Brook, seven students have been arrested during the current school year and charged with possession of marijuana, barbiturates and LSD.

After smoking with my head friends, I stayed on with them another two and a half weeks. It was surprising to me that in that time, I was present on only four more occasions when drugs were used, and three of these were on a weekend. There was plenty of talk about the subject, but weekday use is only occasional; the kicks are mainly ticketed for the weekends.

Before a rock 'n roll concert at the school gymnasium one Saturday, seven of us, including three girls and a visiting Stony Brook alumnus who had been a very big man on campus the year before, gathered at the house to "turn on." It was regarded as an important prerequisite to the proper appreciation of the evening's music and dancing.

All of the drug use I witnessed was smoking of hashish and marijuana - more hashish than marijuana because, I was told, there had been a sudden dearth of "grass" in the New York area. Eddie and I went to buy some marijuana one night from a fellow I will call Artie, a 23-year-old graduate student who was a friend of the boys in our house and a frequent visitor. He apparently was also a favorite pusher. Before we left, Dick asked Eddie to bring him back some "ups" (pep pills). He was "pulling an all-nighter" (staying up all night to finish a class project), he explained, and "could really use some ups, man."

Artie also lived off-campus with several male students, in a house in a pleasant residential neighborhood not far from the college. When we arrived, four boys were sitting in the living room, one of them making an attempt to study and the others listening to The Byrds in stereo. Two others, one of them Artie, were cooking a round steak in the kitchen. Artie looked stoned, and said he was.

He didn't have any grass for sale, but said he expected to by Sunday - four days away. One of his roommates had a little, graciously rolled two "joints" (cigarets) and shared them with Eddie and me and a couple of the others. We stayed for one side of a Rolling Stones record, then left with Dick's "ups" in Eddie's pocket and my order in for a "dime" bag of marijuana ($10 worth-about two whisky jiggerfulls) for the weekend.

I don't know the specifics of Artie's supply line, and curiosity was not appreciated, but they were said to lead into the city, to the East Village. He was one of several students I met who I was told were in the drug business. Their only qualifications, apparently, were the ability to raise capital to buy in bulk and willingness to take the risk of getting caught.

Artie and the others are called pushers by their customers, though the law of supply and demand made the term a misnomer. Just keeping up with the demand seemed to be a problem, with no need to drum up new business. I don't know how many pushers there are at Stony Brook, but one girl told me that last year her boy friend "was one of the biggest pushers on campus." During my stay I heard students refer to several pushers.

My experience with the confirmed druggards I knew convinced me that LSD users, "acidheads," are only a very small, daring minority. The alumnus who came to visit his ex-housemates is presently enrolled in graduate school at an Ivy League college. He came on like a druggard of long standing, but he said he had taken LSD only once.

The only student I knew who was an "A head" by reputation was a 16-year-old freshman, a brilliant chap I will call Ricky, who was a good friend of Phil's. Phil, who is 21, said of Ricky: "He's a real nice little kid, but a pretty crazy kid. He's a junkie. He trips out on LSD at least once a week."

Over dinner in the dormitory cafeteria one night, Ricky told a group of us that his friend who kept him supplied with "A" had made him a bet. "He said that if I wasn't in an insane asylum by the time I'm 21, he would turn himself in to the cops," Ricky said, laughing.

I never saw him take LSD. but I saw him in the midst of a trip that turned out to be a very bad one. It was at the rock'n'roll concert. Ricky, who was small and boyish enough to be 13 instead of 16, darted up on the stage before the program had started, took the microphone and urged everyone to move their chairs back "and we'll have a dance concert right up here in front."

Ellie was sitting next to me in the second row. "Rick was worried that he wouldn't get 'A' by tonight," she said to me. "It looks like he did."

No one paid much attention to Ricky, except a muscular male student-definitely no Ethnic-who was running the sound system. He angrily ordered Ricky off the stage. Ricky, a glazed expression on his face, complied. But at intermission, he was back up on the empty stage, with one hand cupped over the microphone and his eyes half closed. He seemed to be contemplating making some other unsolicited announcement as the sound man strolled to the stage and looked up at him.

Hands on hips, he yelled at Ricky to get off the stage, but Ricky, standing three feet above him, appeared neither to hear nor see. When Muscles reached out suddenly and grabbed Ricky by the wrist, Ricky seemed aware of his presence for the first time. He looked down, his face contorted in terror and he let out an awful shriek as he was pulled, off the stage and hurtled to the gymnasium floor.

He was back on his feet and had rushed out of the gymnasium almost before the gasps had died away. Ellie and I went after him to help, but he had disappeared into the night.

Much later, at the house, Barry and his date came into my room and told me Ricky had been capering over the campus naked, his body smeared with red paint, and had been picked up by the campus police and placed in the infirmary. "Must have been trippin'," said Barry.

Ricky was in the infirmary for two days, and his "freak out" was the talk of the campus. He was released in apparent good health, full of remorse for having been humiliated before the student body. He was asked to visit a counselor, hut wasn't going to be disciplined, he said.

Ellie, who was 19, told me she "felt like a mother" toward Ricky, and was very worried about him. "He's trying to grow up too fast," she said. "All of a sudden he's in college where most of his friends are four or five years older than he is. He tries to keep up with them, but he does things none of them do. He doesn't have to take 'A' to impress anybody."

It seemed like a reasonable enough analysis of Ricky's LSD propensities, but getting at an explanation for relatively secure people risking disgrace and jail for so slight a pleasure as pot was harder to come by.

A 15-year-old high school friend of Eddie's sat smoking hash one night in my room and asked me: "Why is it we do this? Can you tell me?"

"I guess it has something to do with the lure of the forbidden," I said. "What do you think? Why do you do it?"

"I don't know, man, I really don't," he said, grinning. "It's kind of silly, but it's just great. Just great."

Ellie told me she didn't see anything wrong with using drugs. "I feel guilty, though," she said, "when I think of my mother and what she would say. She would say, 'Just look at yourself, what you're doing is disgusting.'"

But parental disapproval like the other barriers, seems to be only a matter of minor concern to most heads. It occurred to me that maybe the drug bit was a part of "the love thing," as one student described the movement espoused in song by a group called The Jefferson Airplane ("Come on people, smile on your brother - Let's all get together and love one another right now") and which brought about the Easter Be-In in Central Park. "You sit around smoking pot or hash with people, passing a pipe or a joint from mouth to mouth, and it's a very chummy, nice, togethery thing," a girl student told me.

There were lots of togethery things to do at Stony Brook, and I enjoyed a number of them. I went to an outdoor Happening where a hundred or more students, mostly Ethnics, danced around a huge bonfire and ate mushrooms and rice out of the same pot, with the same fork. I saw a Marx Brothers movie, a Charlie Chaplin movie, two W. C. Fields movies and attended a meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee to End the War in Vietnam, a panel discussion titled "Homosexuality, A Problem?" and a party for poet Allen Ginsberg. I gathered with the psychedelic set in the lounge of G Dorm while they burned incense and sat cross-legged on the floor listening to raga music, and ate free in the cafeteria with food smuggled to me by a girl with a meal ticket. I even took in a couple of classes.

Near the end of four weeks. I made up a story about my family's summoning me home. As I said my goodbyes, I wondered what could have happened in the six years since my college days ended, or if the phenomenon of campus drug use was only regional. Maybe the boys back in Iowa City are still standing by the good old, wholesome Saturday night drunk. In any case, I left behind at Stony Brook several druggards I had grown very fond of, as well as that dime's worth of grass I'd ordered for the weekend.

Regarding the Jerry Parker article - yeah, it was a four page article that he wrote to "expose" the freaky, doped-up life of Stony Brook and its freak scene.

The guy was a doofus and we goofed on him by saying stuff like "hide the dope, here comes the cop."

One of our friends was quoted accurately when he said "oblivion, here we come" or something like that, but he said it to make fun of Parker.

I went to high school the day after the article expecting to be arrested but nobody knew about it. My name in the article was "Eddie."

If you get it, let me know... it would be an interesting piece of historic arcana for your collection.