ACID TO ACES : Nelson Gary III Serves Himself Right After a Nearly Fatal Addiction to Drugs

When his opponent’s shot landed beyond the baseline last month at the Ojai Valley tennis tournament, Nelson Gary III called it out.

Glancing nervously toward the handful of spectators lining the court, the Pierce College freshman asked sheepishly: “Was it out? I don’t want to take any chances.”

There was a time, not so long ago, when it seemed that taking chances was all Gary wanted to do.

And not just on the court.

Gary says he is a recovering drug addict.

When he entered a rehabilitation program last July at Pasadena Community Hospital, he said, he had been stoned every day for 18 months--often on LSD and other hallucinogens. He had been smoking marijuana on a regular basis, he said, since he was 9.

An aspiring writer--he hopes to have a book of poetry published later this year--Gary said he got involved with LSD “as kind of an intellectual exercise. I felt that it enhanced my spirituality quite a bit--instant cosmic consciousness for $8.

“I was taken in by it.”

His eight-week stay in the hospital freed him of drugs, he said. But his father, Nelson Jr., added that his son nearly died at an early stage of his rehabilitation while having “serious convulsions.”

As recently as last November, on an outing to Palm Springs with his father, the shaggy-haired Gary, 19, couldn’t hit more than two balls in a row over the net.

Even in January, when he enrolled at Pierce, he was “rusty” and couldn’t sustain long rallies, Pierce Coach Paul Xanthos said.

By the time the season started, though, Gary was Pierce’s No. 1 player, helping the Brahmas win their 10th straight Metropolitan Conference championship. He reached the final in the community college division at Ojai. And, by reaching the quarterfinals last week at the Southern California championships, he became the only Pierce player to qualify for the state tournament.

He meets Miles Walker of Marin College today at 8 a.m. in the first round of the state junior college tennis championships at the Cabrillo Racquet Club in Camarillo.

“A lot of people say that what I did was incredible,” said his father, who was an all-league selection as a one-armed outfielder at Van Nuys High in 1958, “but I consider what he has done to be an absolute miracle.”

Nelson III admits to being “very lucky.”

“It’s just God,” he said. “It has nothing to do with me. I think it’s just people praying for me--stuff like that. There’s no real logical explanation for how I’m playing after not playing for so long. I mean, I can’t explain it.”

Has it been difficult for him to stay off drugs?

“There are still times that I think a ‘trip’ would be nice,” he said. “It depends on how I look at it. If I just look at it in a completely sensual, hedonistic point of view, yes. But if I apply any kind of ethics or logic or anything like that to it, it’s ridiculous. For me, it’s really nihilistic to be doing any drugs. So, it’s not a very hard choice, really.

“For me to take acid, it would be like putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger.

“It’s like, ‘Do you want to live or do you want to die?’ I’d rather live, so the choice is easy.”

Gary spins a wild tale of his last experience with drugs.

Late last June, about a week after his class had graduated from Calabasas High, he was walking aimlessly through Little Tujunga Canyon. He said he was naked, having removed his leather pants because of the heat.

Every day for the previous week, he said, he had taken LSD and eaten psilocybin mushrooms.

His father, though, is leery of the story, saying, “I don’t think Nelson really knew where he was.”

Whatever he might have been doing, he wound up being taken by police to Olive View Medical Center in Van Nuys, where he was registered as a John Doe. He spent two weeks there and, after turning down his father’s request to enter a rehab program, was released.

Six hours later, after hallucinating while smoking a marijuana cigarette, he changed his mind about the rehabilitation program. He asked a friend to call his father, who picked him up and took him to Pasadena Community Hospital.

Once there, he spent four weeks alternately thinking he was Pablo Picasso and the prophet Elijah. “He was over there for 28 days before he even knew what time it was,” his father said. He paced the halls, unable to sit still. Most of what he ate, he threw up. In about the third or fourth week, his father said, he had the convulsions, symptoms of withdrawal, as the drugs’ effects wore off.

“They really didn’t know what to do with him,” Nelson Jr. said. “They thought he might have to be institutionalized for a long time.”

In about the fifth week, though, he started getting better. Finally, he was released in September after 56 days in the hospital.

In October, he moved back to Calabasas to live with his coach, Craig Heinberg.

Urged by Heinberg not to just sit around, Gary picked up his tennis racket for the first time in eight months last November, he said, “because I was getting really bored watching ‘Bonanza’ every day.”

Referring to the late French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gary said: “I don’t agree with a lot of things that Sartre says, but one thing he says is, the only way to deal with reality, the only way to save yourself from complete anxiety, is involvement. And I totally believe that. I had to get involved with something.”

One problem was the anti-psychotic drugs, muscle relaxant and lithium carbonate that had been prescribed for him. They left him lethargic. Against the advice of his doctors, he stopped taking them.

“It’s mind over matter,” he said. “I got into this mess. I can get out of it. I went through some withdrawals. After that, I was fine. I haven’t had any hallucinations. I have a flashback occasionally, but I just look at like it’s free acid.”

In his 22 seasons at Pierce, Xanthos said he has had only about five players as talented as Gary.

As a junior at Calabasas, he competed in the Southern California Tennis Assn. Olympic Trials and advanced within one victory of reaching the national Olympic Trials. Although he said he played several matches while stoned, he was the No. 1 player for a Calabasas team that won the Southern Section 3-A championship.

His last year in the 16-and-under division, he was ranked among the top 40 players in the nation. In the 18s, he was ranked among the top 25 in Southern California as a 17-year-old.

“I think he has the ability to win the state championship,” Xanthos said, “but there’s something missing. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Maybe he’s not taking the game seriously enough.

“It’s important to me,” he said, “but it’s not life and death. I have a good time with tennis. And wherever it goes, that’s fine with me. It’s important, but it’s a game.”

What’s most important to Gary is his writing. He’s writing better and more often since he’s been off drugs, he said.

“I don’t think other people could understand what I was talking about before,” he said. “I felt very creative when I was using drugs, but the problem is, it’s really hard to write or harness it when your hands are shaking.”

Linda Farnsworth, an English and journalism teacher at Calabasas High, calls Gary “an extremely talented chap.

“He’s an infectiously enthusiastic student who has a following of other students who love to sit down and talk to him and learn from him. He’s done the same thing with me. After you’ve been with Nelson, you just want to go out and learn more and write more because there’s a magnetism about him that’s very unusual.”

Since quitting drugs, Farnsworth said, Gary has had more time to “read and develop his thinking, which is reflected in his poetry.”

Still, while writing may be Gary’s main interest, tennis plays a bigger role in his life than he sometimes lets on.

“I feel that I have a score to settle with myself,” he said. “I feel I screwed up a lot. I feel like I should be playing for a major school right now. I feel like I’m good enough. And I’d like to do that.”

He’s matured, he said.

“When I’m playing a bad player,” he said, “I show him a little more respect and don’t play left-handed, which I used to do in juniors.”

He plans to stay another year at Pierce “because I don’t want to go too fast. I’ve got to keep my feet on the ground, and be very down to earth, because for a long time I wasn’t.” Next year, he hopes to transfer to Columbia University in New York.

He said he’s “glad” he was a drug addict.

“Whether you make some mistakes or not,” he said, “I think it’s better to live than to exist. There’s a difference between living and existing, I think.

“I don’t want to just exist.

“I feel like I’m glad that I can say that I experienced some things. Yeah, I made a lot of mistakes. I did a lot of stupid things, I’m sure. But there are a lot of drug addicts out there and if I can do something with my life, it gives people hope.”