I’ve been sick for about a month now and I’m pretty certain it’s from tripping. I won’t be specific because it’s irrelevant but I do, despite popular belief, consider this said chemical to be a hard drug. It is the cheapest, most accessible, most disregarded drug of our time but in my experience- fucks you up more unlike any other. Ironic, right?
It’s been a while since I’ve digressed into that culture and really it’s because I no longer care to seek it out. But my new ex-rehabilitated neighboring object of sexual tension did, and he had nothing but time. So with him I digressed.
After the enlightening Facebook conversation with the previously mentioned friend and victim, my new neighbor called and we met mid-campus in the rain. I was stilled embarrassed from relentlessly patronizing his life of chasing highs and I also wanted to tell him he could talk to me, he could be honest with me, I wanted to help him like I wanted someone to help my former self or prove that she could have been helped with a little effort. So we talked but instead of sober bonding we went on a little mind trip.
We tripped one day and we tripped another; the second time harder and more substantial all the while watching the first ever Land Before Time. I think he pointed to the grandpa brontosaurus and said “He’s G-d.” To which I responded “Yes that’s Karl Marx.” I remember trying to stand and feeling that the acceleration of gravity had increased tremendously- my cheeks felt heavy. I remember walking, stomping shakily, one foot in front of the other in an exigent production… And I contemplated death watching the Christmas lights, thriftily decorating the wooden sublet floors, flickering like pearls of fire.
“Where is everybody?” My detached consciousness wondered. “There is no one here but us” it answered itself. But I felt the presence of others all around tenaciously protecting me from confronting akwardness, boredom, and the pointless inevitable dystopia of significantly altered states.
With the lights on- my vision was coated in pink-white noise. And without them graphic-novel blacks and whites conquered every form. And it wouldn’t go away. “When will this end?” I begged him. “I don’t know.” And then he said hesitantly “Hopefully soon.” We kids never like to admit when we find something elevated in status and deemed cool unpleasant, when we’ve had enough, or when we can’t take it anymore. To not bask in the coolness of cool is to not ourselves be cool and therefore most, especially those who spend their time treasure hunting for highs, would rather self-deceptively believe in their divinity.
“This is it.” I said to him. “This is what we’re doing now.” “Drugs are so stupid.”
I realized I had just spent my night being fucked up- hallucinating as if plagued by mania, unable to process as if mentally inadequate, dizzy, delusional, and anxious, overcome in unfounded worry, moving like heavy liquidity- and begging for it to stop.
But low and behold- no off switch.
I had voluntarily swallowed insanity. A new state of being- yes, a break from reality- yes, but insanity none the less. I would surely not want to be stuck this way I noted as that very fear began to percolate inside. I much prefer the ease, the torment, the malaise, the exhilaration, and the anxiety of living- real living.
That being said- I did come to feel the validity of that realization while under the influence of drugs. Remember I have been in rehab, I have participated in and seen the hollow depths of anti-substance propaganda but never have I confronted the truth with such rigorous honesty before that night.
-Which leads me to believe there is something to be said for altering one’s perceptions; looking at oneself through the intoxicated mind’s eye drenched in world-shifting chemicals. There is something to be said for escaping natural tendencies, ways of thinking and short-circuiting one’s neurological wiring to the point where judgment does not have the dexterity to latch onto previously engrained biases. There is truth to be seen in a distorted mirror- especially if one’s mind has already distorted the greater culturally accepted facts of doing hard drugs. Perhaps a negative view compromised by a negative substance would have a positive result?
Do not misunderstand; I am not promoting drugs, I am merely presenting an effect of their consumption: What one chooses to think about is often very different form the options presented in waking life. And the persistent compulsions in which trains of thought are pursued are often untainted by previously accepted truths. It’s as if the breaks installed by societal norms are temporarily out of order. And whether that’s frightening, liberating, or hilarious in can open you up to a new way of seeing.
It had occurred to me before, that drugs were cool: Both because my peers told me so and because society, run by rich, tired, old, fat, sex-deprived, self-important white men, frowned upon them. It occurred to me that drugs where fun because Hollywood glamorized a culture of high-chasing gorgeous youths and because the anti-drug campaigns tried really hard to make the consequences look compelling- therefore one could only rationalize that the procurements were perhaps equally or more compelling. But without the dexterity of mind to summon these biases- I could honestly reflect on my inebriated experience while inebriated.
What I realized like an anvil on the brain was that I was ingesting temporary retardation paired with mania. Some symptoms I was experiencing are frighteningly parallel to symptoms that would come with a hybrid schizophrenia- Alzheimer’s. And while I think that gazing through the eyes of a Schizophrenic would be a life-changing learning experience I would not willing try to cause myself full-blown mental derangement too often.
Furthermore, It is my belief that if there were more efforts made to expose the stupidity of drugs [the here give me 20 dollars for a mystery bag made of g-d-knows-what that will *** you up so bad you forget how to tie your shoes] rather than the compelling life-threatening dangers only a carefree badass would overlook- that counter culture would not be so quick to accept getting fucked up as cool.
To be continued (it’s too fucking hot to keep writing in this room- rrrr I could kill my father and his air-condition installing procrastination) …