For the love of Florrie

You've got to check this out, it's hilarious. Florrie is the model for Jerri Blank (Strangers With Candy). Way back when I was a social worker I worked with many reformed junkies, coke fiends, speed freaks, and drunks who were sort of like this. I came to the conclusion that the only thing worse than a junkie, coke fiend, speed freak or drunk is a reformed junkie, etc. (luckily I wasn't doing addiction counselling). Their incessant prosyletizing made me want to punch them - and it messed with my stone.

A 50-year-old Florrie made a name for herself in the early '70s by traveling to high schools and pretty much assaulting assembled students with her tales of 25 years of hard living on the street as a drug addict and whore. Basically, she ranted and raved (and chain smoked) at them, telling her serpentine and labrynthine hard-luck story using any old thing that popped into her head, with the goal of disuading them from ever trying 'stuff' (or maybe her whole point was to rope teens into the cultish Synanon program she spoke so highly of -- the jury's still out on her true aim). Regardless, all of this was captured in the 1970 PSA/scare film The Trip Back, which nearly shared a title with her memoir The Lonely Trip Back. It was all so manic, nonsensical and hilarious that it formed the basis of Strangers With Candy -- central character Jerri Blank was also a (semi-) reformed drug addict and hooker who found herself back in high
school (though not addressing the students, but as one).

via Metafilter