Doctor to 1960s rockers to talk about addiction Friday

December 8, 2010

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The addiction doctor who treated legendary rock stars and helped introduce the nation to the idea that people have a right to health care will deliver a Grand Rounds lecture this week at the University of Florida.

Dr. David Smith will talk about “The Summer of Love: Sex, Drugs & Rock ’n Roll” at 2 p.m. Friday in the DeWeese Auditorium of UF’s McKnight Brain Institute.

Much has transpired since the free-wheeling days of 1967, when illicit drug use was an expression of both freedom and destruction. Artists like Janis Joplin, one of Smith’s friends, personified the moment. She would perform to raise funds for Smith’s free addiction clinic in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, only to succumb to the drug trap herself.

Today, Smith still lives in walking distance to the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, where he became semi-retired in 2006. In true “what goes around comes around” form, the clinic’s founding philosophy — health care is a right, not a privilege — is a central issue in the national health care debate.

“People don’t know if the idea came from a speechwriter or wherever,” Smith said, “but it is right out of the counterculture revolution of the ’60s.”

Smith had been an unlikely participant in the social upheaval. His pedigree from solid Oklahoma stock had him squarely on a path toward “professional and academic success.”

He received a public education at the University of California Berkeley and set his sights on medical school. He bought an apartment building to live in — never dreaming that it would become a center for drug treatment — and became interested in pharmacology. Then came the LSD explosion of the 1960s.

“The whole, hippie better-living-through-chemistry idea hit Haight-Ashbury, and I got involved, although it was completely not in my background,” he said. “I was seeing all these kids with drug problems, and I did something that was totally out of character. I started a clinic for them.”

Joplin and the members of the Grateful Dead lived just blocks away, and became not just friends, but supporters. And they believed that health care was a right, not a privilege.

“It became the founding slogan of our clinic,” Smith said. “Ours truly was a clinic built on rock ’n roll. It was the beginning of a nationwide free clinic movement aimed at the uninsured. Our idea was that addiction is a disease and an addict has a right to treatment.”

Although the era’s irreverent spirit — and its flaws — are deeply ingrained, Smith said the social contributions made during the Summer of Love are overlooked and provide insight to problems the nation is confronting today.

“So much of this is lost in history,” Smith said. “What I’m trying to do with this lecture is trace the origin of these ideas with a West Coast perspective, because I’ve found most people who live where policies are made don’t know the origins of the issues involved.

“One of the most satisfying things about the free clinic movement is that it is an alternate way to respond to the needs of the uninsured,” Smith said. “For example, we supported a common ground free clinic in Louisiana to help people who were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. That’s where free clinics have their eye on the ball. They don’t change their purpose in life based on whims of government or the electorate.”