Put yourself and six other people on a deserted island. One of you finds a tattered box labeled drugs and decide to ingest the myriad of colors inside. As a microcosm of the real world you all came from, the group decides to eliminate that person and 1/7th of the population for no good god damned reason and cage the smiling drug user. Makes sense right?
Loosely translated from a Joe Rogan pod cast.
In The Beginning
I was introduced to marijuana on the New Years Eve of the new millennium. The bong we used had unremarkable, but detailed glass sketching and the owners claimed it was ensured. I fought off the urge to freak out and went to find the over excited giant who was making the room contract and expand like an accordion.
I wanted to like marijuana but every time I tried I would drink three jack Daniel mixer bottles. Two would be a rambunctious night. Three with a sniff of marijuana smoke and I typically woke up beneath the lawnmower and fertilizer on the side of the house, clutching the rake for warmth.
Magical Experiment
To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.
Timothy Leary
A friend told me he could have magic mushrooms shipped to my house.
They arrived in a glass Nestea container with construction paper hiding the contents. I called upon Bashaw and Rockero to help me find out how good this stuff was.
“Gotta make tea man, it’s the only way for purity.”
Five grams go into the tea.
We drink the green water with baby poopy faces.
Thirty minutes later, nothing…
We split up the soggy tea remnants and chew them down.
Another forty minutes later…
“Maybe we should smoke some.”
We stuffed crushed up mushrooms into a four-foot tall glass pipe and think we are feeling something. We go to the park to play who can throw the Frisbee the farthest while a light drizzle coats our sandaled feet.
It was clear it was not working. As the rain intensified Bashaw announces the end of the experiment and says that him and Rockero are going home. Begrudgingly I concur and eat thelast gram that I had put into my pocket.
Defeated, I returned to the house to find my roommate and friends preparing to watch Blade Runner for a philosophy class. Now two and some hours after the beginning of the experiment, I recounted our efforts to the amazed group who all understood the necessary quantities usually required with magic mushrooms.
I was offered a conciliatory sample of the tall four-foot glass bong. As I prepared to inhale, the glass turned into a giant bird beak and fused with my mouth. I laughed hysterically and lifted the behemoth glass piece into the air letting the nasty water fall onto my face and floor. It had begun.
The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson
The rain was pounding down outside and my last few coherent thoughts wandered to Bashaw and Rockero driving 80 miles back home.
Ring …. Ring … Ring
Calm, collected, “Bashaw, how’s it going.”
Too calm, too collected, “Good. How ‘bout you?”
“I think it’s working. My face grew a beak and my toes are much longer. Dude, where are you?”
“Ya we’re pulled over on the side of the freeway. It’s definitely working.”
Bashaw and Rockero later explained that they drove for quite a while in silence. Each of them battled with the idea that they were moving down the highway at high speed, in the rain, and the effects of an unusually high amount of magic mushrooms were permeating their spines. The first words exchanged were “I think we should pull over. We’re not going to make it.” Sanity briefly
prevailed.
Relieved that my friends were safely parked on the 405, I spent the rest of my night taking pictures of myself slowly falling down the stairs, locking myself in the bathroom, pressing my body into the corner of the wall and the floor, and imagining three dimensional space giving way to my mind pressure, allowing me to transcend space, but not time. Apparently, I was making noises the whole time doing it.
There Must Be a Better Way
“I’ll do anything twice that isn’t gay.”
A Fresnonian koala
A sometimes wise Englishman explained to me that the atomic spin property of the THC molecule is what determines how good a strain of marijuana is. More left spinning, more effect. If you isolate THC, then slam it with ultra violet light, you convert right spinning THC into left spinning THC. Simple. Incidentally, the Englishman explained, THC is soluble in acetone and ultra violet lights can be purchased on ebay.
Now ignore the fact that acetone is used to strip paint, and ultra violet light was determined to give you cancer. If I told you that I could take four grams of your good weed, and turn it into two and half grams of outrageously awesome weed, would you do it?
The Lowest of My Life
Moderation in all things — including moderation.
Benjamin Franklin
My colleague invited me to his wedding in San Francisco. Two hours before the ceremony, I headed to the Men’s Warehouse to get a moderately expensive and extremely flashy pin stripe suit. The wedding went off without a hitch and everyone was very merry.
At this point, an aging, overweight black lady, who was not a member of our party, coerced me outside and offered some quality drugs. I follow her and her very large male friend into what I later learned was the worst part of town. Chatting away, cracking jokes, spinning my jacket – I was cock of the walk. As we walked down a very long hallway to the apartment, I had a vision of the TV show “The Wire”. At the front of the hallway was the landlord, hidden behind a steel grated window. He said nothing.
The apartment was no more than a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchenette.
I was immediately pushed hard to the bed by the towering male. He slapped the girl hard and told to sit next to me. We then did drugs, which were not that great. Then the large male jumped up. He grabbed my collar and pulled me up, demanding I give him my ATM card. The girl attempted to intervene and he backhanded her back onto the bed. He got my card. I even gave him my pin. He left and told us to stay. I know I should have ran, but I didn’t.
I stayed, trying to grasp the moment.
Who was this girl? Did I owe her any help? I felt bad for her. Did she do this often? Fish guys out of bars with her horrible looks and bring them to this den of depravity?
The guy returned in more of a rage than ever since my card only allowed $300 to be pulled. He stormed around the tiny apartment and beat on the girl some more.
I ran.
I left my new jacket and its contents and ran. I desperately tried to urge the landlord to do something. He just groaned something and turned around. I ran outside and called the police frantically. I shouted horrible directions into the phone and they were there in minutes. They attempted to extract information from me as I bounced up and down, looking around, as if the big guy was running for me. I pointed to the building and said which apartment. They told me to go to the hotel and they would be in touch. I made a few more drug addled phone calls to friends in southern California purely to freak them out and provide no details but only concerns. I made it back to the hotel where the police came and gave me everything but the jacket and the photos that they erased on my camera.
I have never been so ashamed and have never tried those sort of drugs since.
It’s as Easy as Going to the Grocery Store
Certain cough syrups can make you really high. Drink an entire bottle of Robitusson and you’ll know what I mean. Nico and I tried this one night. We visited a friend who I never usually visit and all I could say were a few mumblings and then I ran to the bathroom to begin the hardest shit of my life. Sweat, tears, and groans for what seemed like 40 minutes. I exited the bathroom to eyes of shock. The party later that night only served to bring my anxiety to a maximum level and I was not sure how to respond. When confronted with conversations I felt like my brain was about to explode because I was thinking too hard or they were asking too many questions. I have no idea what happened to Nico but I know I will never do that again.
Or As Easy As Going Online
I desperately wanted to do mescaline after reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and figured out that it came from the San Pedro cactus. Turns out you can get these online. Three days later a 12 inch piece of live cactus is delivered to the door. Staring at it, I pondered how to extract the Mescaline. Apparently there is a lengthy and difficult process to do it. So I opted to circumnavigate these problems and eat the entire thing. I diced it up and covered it in salad dressing and spent the next four hours slowly ingesting this enormous plant. No results.
And in Summary
If you don’t think drugs have done good things for us, then take all of your records, tapes and CD’s and burn them.
Bill Hicks
These times have passed me and my only drug now is the pain I endure during hours of bike riding at ridiculous speeds. Maybe equally as dangerous. I have no regrets from these tales nor the others that avoided these pages. You walk through life attempting to define yourself through experience and interaction and failing to do these things will make for a boring individual. Now whether it is drugs or skydiving or broccoli, get out there and put yourself in an unknown situation.