Acid trip

OK.

So I was 17, and was splitting strips (10 hits) with my buddy Lonnie every Friday night. He'd eat 2 or 3, and I'd eat the rest. I seem to have a natural resistance to it or something. I could always eat a lot more than most other people, usually taking 3x the dose to reach roughly the same level as them. I am not a party tripper. Not a social tripper. I like a quiet mostly dark room and little or no disturbance for 10 hours. I don't do the 'woohoo let's trip and act stupid' routine. Nope. I just like to melt into my chair/floor/whatever and let my mind run wild. I won't move or say a word for hours. Most of the time I can be on a lot of acid and you won't even know it. I can sit there and chit-chat for a bit and seem perfectly normal. The shit just doesn't hit me like it does most people.

So I got the Bright Idea to hammer myself. Dive deep. Dose hard.

So, I buy a quarter sheet. I give Lonnie a couple hits to drive me to the motel. I check in and pre-pay for Fri/Sat/Sun with instructions for no maids, no calls, no bothering me. About 10pm I drop the remaining ~23 blotter doses all at once.

Let me put it this way. From a little before 11pm until sometime the next afternoon, I have zero recollection. All I know is I didn't leave the motel room. I came to my senses sitting in the floor watching rainbow trout swim in spiraling columns up the curtains while Pink Floyd's Fearless played on repeat. The trout were swirling and climbing to the music, that doot-doooot-dooooot-doooooooot-do-do business. I normally don't get visuals beyond wood grain squirming and flat plain surfaces wub-wubbing and little detail distortions. So I realize I'm looking at these trout and I'm just all what the fuck. It was amazing. First and only time in my life I've legitimately hallucinated, saw shit that wasn't there, not just a vague impression of 'oh hey that kinda might almost sorta look a little like X' ... it was awesome but also made clear to me just how hard I'd dosed myself.

So. I slowly gain awareness of my surroundings and find my green dollar store notebook near at hand. In it I find something I wrote, but I don't remember writing it, and yet it's burned into my memory word for word to this day, nearly 20 years later. It was beautiful. It wasn't the sort of thing you think is deep or important when you're tripping and realize it was gibberish later. No. I let others read it years later. A girl teared up over it. It was astonishingly beautiful and soul-aching and I've tried for many years to find a dose that gets me back to that same place. It will never happen. I touched satori, and glimpsed samadhi.

I spent Saturday evening sitting on the Slurpee counter at my friend's 7-11 down the street. Chatting with some customers, trying to avoid the notice of others. I'm clearly not right in my head. Very. Off. But very happy and content. I went back to the motel room, tried to sleep a few hours and may or may not have succeeded, and wandered out on Sunday morning.

I stopped at a donut shop. I ate a tuna and lettuce sandwich and had a cup of coffee. I watched the patrons for a few hours. I was fascinated. Their movements, expressions, interactions. It was so bizarre, even alien, to me. I shouldn't have been tripping, the stuff is simply metabolized too fast. And yet there I am. Completely off my fucking gourd. Not human. Something different, better, but weird.

Sunday evening I trudged back to the motel to pass out for some real sleep. Such dreams.

Monday I see some kids on my way to the park. One has a twisted nail cross on a leather thong around his neck. I'm atheist but it felt meaningful. I gave him $5 for it and wore it under my shirt for years. I meet up at the park with a 14yo girl, my neighbor Nichole, Sarah Michelle Geller's twin, who had a huge crush on me. I spent an hour admiring the beautiful chopsticks and leather butterflies holding up her hair, while I gently tell her it's just not going to happen, even though her mother approved, and even though she looks and sounds even older than I. That was awkward. She's one of my best friends to this day. Her husband is a great guy and I'm lucky to know them both. I think had I not been on my soul-journey that weekend, I would have handled the whole thing differently. I think I wouldn't have some of the best people in my life, now.

Then I show up at mom's. I'm having pizza with my stepbro. I notice I'm not really feeling the pepperoni. I pick it off. Couple more bites. Not digging the cheese either. Off with it. One more bite. No thanks. Big salad time. From that point onward, I was utterly vegan for most of a year. Got rid of my leather shoes and pager case. Lived on fruits, nuts, vegetables, water. All fresh, unprocessed, un-messed-with. Wouldn't even eat BBQ chips because most contain fish oil. I quit smoking cigs. Started shaving my head to the scalp. Sitting in truck stops and Dennys and wherever else. Being that weird quiet guy who watches people. Studied them. Learned nothing.

For that year I was not myself. I was better. I was at peace. I had a river of serenity within me. I would take long walks in the summer rain, and longer ones in the chilly rains that came later. I was being washed, cleansed, mothered, by nature. I found an inner identity I'd never known. I listened to and appreciated music for the first time in my life (I never really did before, and don't now) and I loved art and architecture and sleeping in my jeans on the cool damp grass of the back corners of parks and cemeteries.

After 10 months or so, I started to wind down and change again. More normal. Less odd. Less 'creepy' according to one person, though I was never a threat to anyone. Just quiet me, doing quiet things, finding quiet corners in loud bright busy places, and delighting in the tiniest details of life on this good earth.

Today I am a result of that dose. Among many other things. That trip remolded my psyche and personality. It opened me up. I don't know who I would be if I hadn't chewed up all that tasteless Mickey Mouse paper 18 years ago. But I know who I am now. And I'm happy.