(Originally posted 8/15/11)
I used to do a lot of hallucinogens years when they were more readily available. Actually it is misleading for me to say I took a ‘lot’, actually I only did them once in a blue moon. I suppose the experiences can be so intense that they leave a very strong impression on you, so you may be inclined, based on those recollections, to exaggerate the number of times you took them, or the amount of time you were on them. Seems these days I can’t even find LSD anymore. I hear the Deadheads in SF are still into it, but I don’t know any of them, so I can’t verify this. I actually might have some mescaline somewhere, but I don’t know, something about being an adult makes me feel funny about indulging. Besides, I liked acid much better. Even psilocybin. People will tell you psilocybin and mescaline are the same thing, but there is, for me, a noticeable difference. Psilocybin is much more fun for some reason. Anyway, bottom line, my life is kind of a bummer, so I don’t feel like freaking out and getting funky. Not now at least.
The first time I dropped Acid, I was in 10th grade. I was 16. I remember I felt unreal, like the world was a dream. Like I was a dream, like I was dreaming myself into existence. I was actually in school when I took it, in 5th period, I think. By the time school was out, and my Grandfather came bouncing up to the shore of the sidewalk in his yellow submarine to pick me up from school I was pretty fried.
Everything seemed magical. Life was fun. The world was just a series of art projects for me. I remember we had fish and chips for dinner. The food was alive, squirming around on the plate, and there was a goldfish or something swimming around in my iced tea.
My friend Michael really wanted me to come over to visit him that evening. I had forgotten about the ‘open house’ they were having at my school that night. I feel horrible about it to this day, but I sent my Grandfather there with incomplete and misleading directions to all my classrooms, and I went to see Mike. Hell, I was fried on “L”, I would have got him even more lost had I gone with him. To me, this is another example of how suspiciously weird my upbringing got once I was in my teens. They really should have made me go with him. I dunno, maybe making me do what I was supposed to would have interfered with the show? I really don’t know.
Anyway, at Michael’s I told him I was on Acid. He never tried it before, but he just dismissed this confidence saying, Awe, that’s nothing. You gotta try this stuff, it’s the best! Apparently, the kids around where he lived were into PCP. So, even though I was already on Acid, which was more than enough for me, we went to ‘The Tree’, which is where all the local stoners used to hang out to get high, and smoked Angel Dust. The tree as a gathering point for druggies annoyed the neighbors, so at some point they chopped it down. After that, the stoners met at ‘The Stump’.
I got pretty damned high on those new chemicals, and was treated to a stage play put on by the local heads. I saw their rendition of ‘Frankenstein’. I can still remember Patrick, Michaels’ youngest brother, who was the youngest one there, playing the monster, when he breaks his bonds and gets up fitfully, grunting and growling, off the slab, as the mad doctor, played by another stoner, tries to restrain him, and the nurse, played by one of the foxiest druggie chicks in the neighborhood, recoils in horror, screaming. We always used to do stuff like that. Do people even BOTHER trying to be creative when they’re on drugs anymore?
After all that excitement we went to bed, my imagination abuzz with novel hallucinations. The next morning we got into Mike’s parents’ liquor supply and made screwdrivers. I had never been drunk before. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Then we went to a neighbors house and everyone smoked an awful lot of dope. My body had finally had enough, so I passed out. I mean, come on, LSD, PCP, alcohol, dope, and so much of everything, and all within a 12-hour period, and I was only 16, and, except for the weed I had ever done any of those other drugs before. I never before partied anything like that. I guess I learned the hard way that it’s not always a good idea to just go along with what others want to do.
I came out of it on my own, and we went back to Mike’s house. I must have looked a mess because his mother knew right away what a state I was in. Or maybe she heard about me passing out. I don’t know. She was trying to be the ‘cool, understanding’ adult, which was pretty progressive for the time. She could have gotten me into a hell of a lot of trouble if she told my Grandparents. She was sympathetic, and said she ‘knew it was hard growing up’, or something to that affect. However, we all know it was her hell-spawn that put me up to it.
I saw Michael again around 13 years later and that afternoon left quite an impression on him as he still talked about it. I guess everybody must have thought I was dead or something. Apparently I freaked a lot of people out. What disturbs me about the whole thing is it seems to have gone down in history as an example of my own gluttony and lack of self-control when, in fact, the whole fiasco was the result of my doing whatever people told me to do.
I’m too easily influenced by people who I think like me. It’s a major character flaw that has been repeatedly exploited by conspiring people all my life.
Loof Lirpa 