Drugs

When I was 16, in my Junior year of high school, I jokingly suggested to my friend that I’d take Adderall to get a better score on the AP US History Exam. He was terrified. He reached out to my sisters and made a real serious concerted effort to stop me. I never really was going to take the drugs anyway. I laughed at his sincerity. I planned never to take drugs or alcohol in my life. 

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When I was 17, in my first semester of college, I ingested an unknown quantity of edible marijuana, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the dorm bedroom of the most beautiful girl who had ever taken interest in me up to that point. 

After the common ‘i didn’t take enough, i’m going to take twice as much’ rookie mistake which soon rendered me unable to understand the rules of Jenga, I immediately turned my attention to people. I laughed so hard I cried. Painful physical convulsions.

I emerged from her room anew. Looking people in the eyes, smiling, laughing, loving, entertaining. And with the help of a lot more marijuana that I somehow never grew a real tolerance for, that is the way I remained through most of the first year of school. Except for the times when the acne on my face made me want to kill myself. 

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When I was 18, I tried LSD. With a group of 6 guys, each a year older than me, connected through my friend high school friend Eric. All six of us tried it for the first time, together. it was insane. everyone was yelling and playing instruments and laughing and we watched that animated Beatles movie you’re supposed to watch when you’re tripping and we went outside and struggled to deal with sober humans and I came out of the experience with a very positive opinion of the substance and of life, generally.

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When I was 19, I took a very high dosage of psilocybin mushrooms at the New Orleans Zoo with my girlfriend Suzie. I became extremely disoriented and paranoid and for a moment looked at my girlfriend and saw the most terrible, alien creature I could conceive. I never told her of this feeling and never saw this image of her ever again. Our relationship remained for entire years after this moment. It’s still kind of inexplicable to me. I took the same shrooms at a slightly smaller dosage the very next night at a STRFKR concert and had a great time. I trust the process.

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When I was 20, I snorted a heavy line of cocaine off of a bathroom counter-top, just to try it, in my Third Year apartment which I shared with three relatively-high-functioning drug addicts. Immediately, mid-party, I cleaned the entire apartment. I felt a godly degree of confidence and pocketed a substantial amount for future experimentation.

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When I was 21, my friend helped me order a golden cartridge of DMT off of the dark web and after a few weeks of anxiously waiting it arrived at my doorstep in Los Angeles enclosed within a “Delta Farce” DVD case. 

My lungs weren’t strong enough to have the kind of brain-shattering experience you might read about online, but it was obviously a powerful substance. It made me feel like I was about to die. Not in a sad way, or even in a particularly negative way, it was thrilling. It felt like playing a FPS when the screen is splattered with blood, time moves slowly, your actions in this moment seem of dire importance. 

Then I went outside and the huge trees which lined my neighborhood felt smaller. Or, I felt larger.

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When I was 22, a Mexican waiter at one of the many tourist traps of Tijuana sold my friends and I several pills of prescription-grade Xanax, literally under the table. Which we then downed along with several margaritas before splitting up to separately embark on individual degenerate adventures thousands of miles from home. Easy confidence. The fact that I was a tall young white man casually strolling through the streets of Tijuana also had something to do with this feeling, I’m sure. 

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When I was 23, I found myself extremely dehydrated at a music festival at the beautiful Gorge Amphitheater in the middle of Washington. "Rolling" on a high dose of MDMA. Painfully, urgently thirsty. The most so I have ever been. 

I pushed my way out of the crowd, collecting a few audibly negative reactions in tow, bolted past the line of people waiting to pay $8 for a bottle of water, went up to the cashier and announced loudly CAN I HAVE WATER PLEASE, I NEED WATER to which she replied: “Uh it’s gonna be $7.99 do you have — “ interrupted by her manager “WHAT ARE YOU… JUST GIVE HIM WATER!” which resulted in the lady handing me over some free water which I swallowed whole at light speed, thanked her for, and disposed of before retreating back into the thousands-strong EDM-buzzing crowd. 

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When I was 24, I bought a same-day round trip ticket to Los Angeles to purchase and smuggle 70 tablets of Adderall IR back to my sad little apartment in Washington. Restless, focus-less, health-insurance-less 24 year old me decided that this was the most cost/time efficient way to acquire the thing that made me the way I thought I needed to be. 

In 4 months I’ve used maybe 10 of them.