A Phat First Trip

I wake up to a ringing phone. It’s John. He asks me if he woke me up. I say he did. Radiohead is today, Sunday. I have been looking forward to the concert. Everyone is meeting at my house, my parents are away. I take a shower and John calls me back to tell me that it’s cancelled. We’ve had monsoon like conditions here the last couple of nights. We both had the day off from work so he came over anyway and we went to get breakfast. McDonalds stops serving at 1130 so we took our business to Dunckin donuts instead. And I’m glad we did because it was a good breakfast. I got meal number 5: an egg cheese and sausage sandwich and a chocolate frosted donut and coffee. We smoked a cigarette in the parking lot and then went home to smoke a bowl. We smoke two or three. And then went to Starbucks to get free coffee…a perk of knowing the guy. We sat at a table outside the store and just watched people going by and some Goth girls at the other table fought.



We went home to smoke some more and burn CDs. We had Pho 75 for dinner. Vietnamese noodles lots of bean sprouts some good as shit leafy stuff with plum sauce. We had met Matt and Jeremy at the Pho and they came back to my place. I ate two caps and a few stems. One of them caps was all sealed up and purple. It wasn’t big but looked like it would be powerful. A peach helped me get them down all right. Almost immediately my stomach felt kind of heavy and knotted. I wasn’t nauseous yet. I waited. Soon I started to feel a little high…kind of happy like, almost giggly like some schwag will do to you. But soon things got to be too much I got feelings from everything…vibes. The kitchen where I was sitting felt so cold and uncomfortable Jeremy and John Matt and Neil were sitting and standing around the table and talking. Everyone was talking all at once and nobody listened. They would holler and gesticulate but no one communicated It bothered me.



I threw up. And felt better. But then I went back to the chair in the kitchen and felt bad again. This time real bad. Everything was wrong. Nobody was happy, loud voices, doors open, unfinished business, I just need to put the paper on the. What? Sweating. Pulse of my heart pushes through my entire body and I have no control over what’s supposed to be mine. Hot and anxious I go to the bathroom again and throw up. The walls look like bags of Wonderbread as plastic bubbles of red and blue flash and move. Frame. Frame. One moment at time. Bad trip? Throw up. Feel better. My vomit is gorgeous. Perfect little chunks of turquoise and mustard yellow swirl in the vortex of my toilet. What now?


Smoke a cigarette on the front porch. Jeremy is one scary motherfucker. He’s got shadows under his eyes, and angular hair. I’ve seen him like this before…why? He smiles like a demented little league coach. Hair curves one way and his chin protrudes the other. John and Neil are packing new packs of cigarettes…slap slap SLAP SLAP over and over, slapping the hell out of those packs to the point that it just felt bad. They made an odd little rhythm, and they kept slapping those packs but damn, it scared me. A piercing metallic sound tears through the air overhead, ripping sheet metal?


A fighter plane.


The tree on one side of the porch has grown; the leaves create a ridiculously complex pattern that despite its complexity makes so much sense to me. But the shrubs on the other side of the porch have gotten smaller. RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRR.


Fighter plane again. We remain sitting in our trench as the tropical wild life bourgeons around us and the sounds overwhelm. "Hey guys, is anyone else getting a Vietnam kinda vibe out here?" I look over at John…he is sitting next to me with his knees up to his shoulders and leaning over towards me with a grotesque leer. I panic and look at Neil…a bear is coming right out of his neck and eating his face. I panic and look at the hard cement in front of my Indian style legs.


The concrete bulges up at me like the Northern Hemisphere of another world. Deep inside the half orb, the lucid pattern of the tree that I saw earlier resides with un expected vibrancy. I look around again. The pattern everywhere, crawling like ivy in all directions. After a moment of analysis, I realize, the pattern isn’t on everything else, but moves with my sight. I continue to view the world through my filter as Neil and John discuss what sounds to be the B-side of Abbey Road.


…Oh how good that would sound. Not just pleasing to the ear, but pleasing to the soul…it would make things right, but nobody goes inside. I don’t have the will to initiate a charge. Haplessly I look at my hands to notice that they have become a staunch series of red, blue, and green pixels like a television set. They seem far away despite their proximity to my face.


Back inside Jeremy and Matt are breaking up some ganj on the kitchen table. It bothers me. They seem like disgusting animals rooting through dirt and a bizarre and disgusting search for a fix. There beady eyes greet me and their filthy paws twitch quickly folded in front of them like flies on rotting meat.


Sitting in my chair again is too much. Jeremy resumes his distortions as bags of gray rotting flesh sag around his eyes and the white refrigerator, now yellow, limbos underneath overhead cabinets. The kitchen table, with a wood grain, begins to jiggle. When I move my head people speak distantly from other worlds. When I move my head again, they speak from within my head. I have to leave this kitchen of discontent and listen to the B-side of Abbey Road.


I now have a mission and feel very good about it. I head down the hall, up the stairs, down the other hall, and into my room, turning on lights and flicking on my ceiling fan. Putting things in order, the way they are supposed to be. The fan feels good on my stale skin…cleansing as I fall to my knees and exhort the goodness of my fan. Shortly there after I search excitedly through my CDs for Abbey Road. There it is! Right where it belongs! Between the white album and magical mystery tour. Now it belongs in my hand! In MY hand! How RIGHT is that?



I arrive at the family room to put on the music only to be dumbfounded by the CD player. I put the CD in the 2 slot of the five-disc changer, but the machine lacks buttons for both one and two. After extensive cajoling and aimless punching of the keys I am rewarded by Paul’s voice. (Note: I discover the next day that the two buttons reappear where they belong). The room feels so warm and comfortable with the music. I not only hear it, but also feel the warmth on my skin. I see the warmth laminating around the room casting an orangey red glow across the rug. Despite the figurative warmth of the room as in peace and harmony, the room is cool and comfortable as another overhead fan breezes on. I toy with its chain curiously before returning to the kitchen.



Everyone else sits at the kitchen table. Only four chairs and I am the fifth. I am alone and excluded. Why? It’s my house isn’t IT? They use my knife to split a cigar and leave the tobacco all over the counter. They drink MY beers (which I know I had offered them but still angered me) and now make me stand in my own kitchen as "Here Comes the Sun" jumps and quivers inside my mind, shaking and modulating like never before.


We go outside in the back patio to smoke the blunt. I grab a Dr. Pepper and come out…again the last to sit down at the table. But this time Matt acts out of extreme good will and removes one of his shirts to wipe off a wet chair for me. This simple act of kindness and care moves me to thought. As we slowly pass around the blunt my mind comes to ease and works quickly through all the issues of relationships, love and kindness this that the world has ever seen. Though the marijuana robs me of my confusion and hallucinations, it allows me to focus my chemical insight.


The world functions on relationships. Between people, between things. Before sitting down and smoking, I had experienced, in exaggerated terms what tremendous effects ANYTHING, even as simple as a light being on or a certain song can have on another entity’s feelings. If only I could focus on what other people and things wanted and what felt good for them, I could make them feel better, and they could make me feel better. Matt didn’t have to wipe my chair…the thought didn’t even occur to me, but he was in tune and anticipated my desire.


It was somewhere between three and four hours since I had eaten the mushrooms and I was filled with an exhilarating sense of well being that only comes from accomplishment or insight. Matt and Neil departed and Jeremy john and I went to an all night diner. They wanted me to talk, asking me if I was getting visuals or if I felt good. I didn’t want too respond because my mind was working over all of my relationships with others and putting my goals and desires in order. At the resturant. I wanted nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and not even to smoke. I was content. I hadn’t eaten a meal in about 8 hours and had thrown up most of that earlier, but I was still reeling from my thoughts. I was alert, awake, positive, optimistic, happy, as I arranged sugar packets and silverware restlessly in front of me.


John took Jeremy home, and then me. Asking me questions along the way I could not articulate answers to his questions or explain the tremendous sense of well being I was now experiencing.


I listened to Dexter Gordon play ballads as I layed in my bed. I couldn’t have any sheets or a pillow, so I layed naked on the floor. It felt right. I didn’t sleep until almost six in the morning (I had taken the mushrooms a little before 9) but slept until noon and woke up refreshed and optimistic.


It was my first time tripping, I had smoked a fair amount of weed, over the past three years, done E twice, smoked opium on occasion, and snorted coke a handful of times, but nothing was anything like my mushrooms. They aren’t drugs like other drugs and I feel they shouldn’t be treated that way. I took them, as I had seen my friends previously, in middle size group setting or at a party as a substitute for smoking or drinking. That I feel is why early one I had had bad feelings. Others were not really paying attention to what I wanted and circumstances didn’t allow them to be. If people tripped together in small groups or if one-person trips while the other interact with them in a sober state, devoting attention to facilitating their pleasure and insight, the experience would be heightened incredibly. I am glad I ate my mushrooms and probably will do it again but I will take extensive steps to insure that anybody involved including myself will have a trip that is focused on them and comfortable.