NONFICTION - July 16, 1995

TALES FROM THE GERONIMO: My Seduction by Junk and Desert Dreams by Scott Frank (Grove Press: $20; 257 pp.). Late in this account of heavy-duty drug addiction Scott Frank writes that for many years he had but two frames of mind; one was “Soon,” waiting to feel better; the other was “Now,” feeling good. Little action and development can be found here, just as there isn’t much to be found in a heroin junkie’s life, but “Tales From the Geronimo”--which takes its name from the seedy Tucson hotel in which Frank once lived--is an engaging volume nonetheless. You feel like a fly on the wall as one junkie insists to his fellows “You can get a buzz from tetracycline!”; as another, to the great joy of Frank and his wasted acquaintances, scores prescription cough medicine over the phone; as Frank and a rich addict, “filled with the enthusiasm of adolescents thumbing through a skin magazine,” peruse a four-color copy of the “Physicians’ Desk Reference.” Frank--who confesses he first altered his mind at the age of 9 by inhaling exhaust fumes issuing from a six-lane road--is no moralizer, and his just-the-facts-ma’am account of a crippling drug habit doesn’t fall prey to false romanticization, either. Frank kicked his addiction many years ago and today is a successful musician, but his story reads as if it had taken place yesterday--and could happen again tomorrow.