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The first time I used hallucinogens was with Bobby Baloney.
Bobby and I met in college. I mentioned to our whole Intro to Silly Nonsense lab how the painkillers they were giving me post-surgery were making me sick. He pulled me aside right after class, proceeded to whinge and extrapolate all about his fucked up back.
Bobby was full of shit, but what did I care? I also got him a job, but, if you want the naked truth, we became friends because of those free narcotics.
Anyhow, one day, Bobby said to me, “I can’t believe you’ve never done shrooms!”
I forget how long I’d known him by this point. I’m old, and I drink. College has become an island beyond the horizon. Its four-dimensional landscape full of blind cliffs and jags. High school is the void. I might’ve been born at nineteen.
That day, I told Bobby, “I’m interesting enough on my own.”
Bobby persisted.
“You’ve got to do shrooms with me. I NEED TO be there the first time you trip balls.”
Bobby lived behind a gas station. His cinderblock apartment smelled like the toilets at the water park. His carpet was the color of beer-puke. The walls moldy as last week’s challah. Bobby brewed his mushroom tea concoction just as the sun was going down. We were the only two there.
“Hold your nose and hit the back of your throat,” Bobby instructed, handing me a Sesame Street mug.
The liquid looked like mop bucket water. I blame peer pressure.
Bobby didn’t turn on the TV or music or anything. He put two chairs on opposite sides of his room, and we sat there. Facing one another. I got bored. How long was this supposed to take? Then, Bobby said, “Hey, I’m just letting you know, this is what it would be like if we were in Sweden. I mean, I know we’re not in Sweden, but this is what it would feel like if we were.” And that statement was a given, like he’d just said it was supposed to rain later, so clearly something was starting. It came on like a time-lapse of vines and decay. Then, Bobby was dressed as a sailor — white shirt, navy blue ascot — ringing this huge silver bell. I wasn’t in the navy, I knew that. But I also needed to get dressed for review. It was ten bells. Then, Jesus showed up and the Devil. They began arguing, and I felt bad because I didn’t believe in either of them. “You’re fighting it!” Bobby was howling. He was rolling around the floor weeping, his tongue hanging out like he was choking on it. “Don’t fight it!” He screamed. And there was this Native American knocking on the window. I could see his round, shadowy face through the dirty windowpanes, beckoning with his hands. I was to follow him: outside, into the woods. We’d find a meadow, a rock like a bench, and he was going to lay it on me. Life. The universe. Then, I was a raccoon caught in a trap. I needed to leave, right now! I told Bobby my mission, and he began screaming all the louder, “Don’t! Don’t leave me! Please!” Making this pitiful sound like an injured cat. But I’m a terrible person, so I left anyway.
God’s speed, Bobby.
I started my car, putting literally every person in existence at hazard.
While we’re here, I’m making all of this up. This never actually happened. I want to speak to a lawyer. Red rum! Red rum!
On the drive home, that guy from all the crosswalk signs stepped out into the road. Silhouette of deepest black; no face; a basketball head floating above no neck. He stopped in the road and waved to me jauntily.
“Shit!” I whispered, as if someone would hear.
Shit! I was gonna hit him. I was gonna hit the EXACT person you’re not supposed to hit!
***
Weeks later, I was still pondering that Native American. What exactly had he been prepared to tell me? And why did life need some grand point anyway? Sex, whiskey, and Sicilian pizza weren’t enough?
***
The second time I used hallucinogens, I was twenty-four and living in Los Angeles. Surviving on peanut butter and the free Saltines at the grocery store soup station. College was ancient history. I was the last person left in America who didn’t want to be famous. Yet, there I was. Tanned. Thin as a nail. Godless.
Then my friends Doofy and Susan B. Anthony approached me about The Big Rave out in the Vegas desert. We could buy a three-day pass, split it three ways, each taking a night. You could get away with shit like that back then. There were less barriers.
Putting my share on a loan sharker’s credit card. Why not? I was going to starve no matter what I did.
There was this whole crew of us driving out to Vegas. Twelve, at least. We rented two adjoining hotel rooms and slept across the floor, each other. Each morning painted us like the aftermath of a death cult. Susan showed us the trick where if you tell the hotel you have diabetes, they have to give you a mini-fridge for beer. She was missing her foot due to a childhood accident but told the concierge it was diabetes. Susan also brought a whole fistful of MDMA, wrapped up in a Kleenex.
It was good stuff. Very pure. I swallowed mine on Saturday, on the bus ride out to the high desert. The sun was just setting, like last time.
Now, you’re thinking, “MDMA? Well, that’s not a hallucinogen!”
Then how do you explain this, smarty pants?
I knew something was beginning because I was carrying no anxiety about scorpions, spiders, nor the other people in the nighttime sands. I went up like a firework, and, for once, the crowd was kind. Billions of them. Young. Maybe anyone who ever turned twenty-one was there. We were the eternal family; brothers and sisters. I remember touching something true in that moment, understanding we were all in on it. Like I’d won the lottery — like everyone around me had won the lottery, too — so we’d all decided that money wasn’t real anymore. I remember feeling like I could dream for all of us. And the girls in Rainbow Brite outfits that were barely there. I looked, and they knew I was looking, and for the only time in my life, that was all right. Lust was there, but it also wasn’t. As if misunderstanding, violence, and the shame of having a body had never existed. If we were objectified, then we were sacred objects. Like how you imagine admiring God’s ass from the other side of the room. And maybe the reason it was okay for me to love everyone was because I couldn’t get hard. Seriously, I don’t know how anyone has sex on that drug.
I remember some girl grabbing my elbows, jumping up and down, telling me, “Buddha is here!” like a toddler announcing Mickey Mouse was leading the incoming column of tanks. I looked, and it wasn’t Buddha. It was just another DJ. Still, I was brave enough to raise my hand for Them to see. Because They were there. Senpai is always with us.
I never used MDMA again, and not only because nothing could top that first experience. No, it felt too much like “the answer”. And we all know how that tale ends.
***
The third time I used hallucinogens, I was back in Florida, beyond thirty, and living in a house with my friend Bozo and his fiancé.
I walked by Bozo’s room and smelled something like burnt dog shit. I knocked, and it turned out he was smoking DMT from a pipe like a quartz crystal. He invited me to get on his inversion board and take an upside-down hit.
As I inhaled my first I didn’t feel much. Thirty seconds later, the second hit, I had the distinct sense I was standing on the other side of the room, watching myself. On the third hit, the whole room inflated along with my lungs, growing into big sky country full of lions, and lambs, and orcses, and sugar plums. My friend Bozo waving at me from up in his little window in the sky — smiling, verily smiling. Next I knew, I was in this place, which I’ve never been able to fully describe — except as those nightmares where Mothman is chasing you, you have to run, but your feet are stuck in mud. If it was Hell, it was some steampunk version of Hell. Lots of hissing brass. Hard to see through all that steam. Life is like that sometimes. I was there forever. The better part of me is still down there, if you care to know. But then there was this light and a voice like a beam that broke the darkness and lifted me up bodily. Like the aliens. That beam was some kind of concentrated wisdom. It spoke to me, and its truth filled me to my fingertips. I wish I could remember what it said. Drinking.
Then, I was sitting on the bed, blinking, as sane as I’ve ever been, except I was sure the next time I blinked it would detonate the sun. I asked Bozo how long I was gone. He said about three minutes.
The next day, I needed to be outside the way kids need that free cookie at the grocery store.
I begged off work, went to the park, and had myself a think. Birds chirping. Kids laughing. I was different. I concluded that, during my experience, I must’ve stood in the hall of mirrors. Post hoc, I couldn’t relearn the “self” lesson.
I still haven’t. It’s a blessing and a curse.
We are not those we choose to love, the flag we faced in school, nor the specific meals our elders taught us to cook. Deep down, that’s not what makes us. But, silver lining, we’re exactly who we believe ourselves to be. That’s all it takes.
You’re just as rad, happy, rich, kind, punk rock, and kinky as you can imagine.
However, a lot of folks are really, really proud of this version of their life. And I can understand that; I’m not completely insane. So, I keep my little revelation to myself.
