Still need to edit this one...
26- College Daze –Part 2
The next morning I smoked a bowl out of the bubbler in my dorm room, which I found would bring back the effects of LSD in a mild but definitely noticeable way. It would happen the next two or three times I would smoke the day after tripping, certainly energized me with the feeling of youthful living. I went through the past weekend in my head over and over. It was a totally new experience for me and I found myself wishing someone had told me about Farm Parties a long time ago. Camping, live music, and LSD were like the perfect prescription for my mind. I was inspired to find more events like this.
After smoking my second bowl I was feeling great and was ready for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, I had an appointment to get my wisdom teeth removed, so it wasn’t the best way to spend the first morning of spring break. I had some kind of condition that made it so I couldn’t go to a regular dentist; I had to go to a maxillofacial surgeon. I got to the office and soon was in a chair with a mask on my face pumping a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen into my mouth and nose. I don’t remember anything interesting in terms of any psychedelic effect from the nitrous, but I do remember the feeling of being conscious of the surgeon the entire time he removed my teeth. The feeling of non-feeling was odd and at the same time disturbing. I wished he had just out me under so I didn’t have to know what was going on.
I had never done any nitrous oxide before, even though I’d seen it many times at raves and parties. It seemed like a very sketchy drug, and I heard it killed brain cells instantly, so I stayed far away from it. But I was at some parties where people had a tank and were filling balloons, and it seemed like as soon as the first ones were done, people were heading instantly back for another. I also didn’t like what I saw it do to people’s attitudes and behavior. It is called “hippie crack” by some, and that was the exact vibe I got being around a tank – it made people act all cracked out. When I first started smoking, the people who introduced me to it had very clear boundaries they set for themselves, so in many ways their philosophy guided me for many years. They liked “hippie drugs” like cannabis and mushrooms, but not “yuppie drugs” or “white powders” like cocaine and heroin, or even alcohol. So I tended to stick more to the hippie drugs. Also nitrous oxide can be called laughing gas, and being around tanks at parties, it didn’t seem like a very accurate name. Sure, some people might laugh a little, but I would’ve thought laughing gas would make a whole room of people double over in laughter if it was released into the air.
When I walked out of the office and back to my car, I sat down in the driver’s seat and got a case of the giggles. I literally could not stop laughing. I just sat in my car with the door open and me laughing away to no one and at nothing at all. Luckily the parking lot was in back of the office, and no one else was there or walked up before I was able to get myself together enough to drive back to the dorms. I’ve done nitrous from balloons since this experience, and nothing has ever given me the giggles like that. I’m sure it was due to the fact that a professional was giving me a mix of oxygen and nitrous oxide, as opposed to inhaling straight nitrous oxide from a balloon. In fact, It was a totally unique experience in my lifetime. I also had not slept much at all over the past 48 hours, so when I got back to my dorm room, I smoked another bowl from the bubbler and slept until the next morning.
The next half of the semester seemed to be extremely dense in experience for such a short amount of time. I kept working, mostly selling pot to the few guys on campus that were moving weight, but also selling John’s champagne split ecstasy and Gary and Ray’s LSD here and there. I would sell small bags of buds on occasion, but mostly to pretty girls, or people that caught me at the right place at the right time. A few weeks after the farm party, I got another chance to go to an outdoor camping event, the Journey to the Glades Hemp Festival on the Seminole Big Cypress Reservation. I got together with some good friends and we all drove out to the everglades for the party. This time we brought tents, camping gear, and some food with us. I wanted to do this right this time and have our own campsite instead of bouncing all night from one campsite to the next. The Big Cypress Reservation was where I had my first LSD trip ever, so I was excited to go back. We were going to a different part of the reservation, but all the land out there has a similar feel, wide open spaces as far as the eye can see.
As soon as we pulled in and jumped out of our car, we met the neighbors sitting on the tailgate of their pickup truck. After a few words with one of the guys, he says, “Do you want to see one of the five top strains of herb I’ve ever seen in my life?” Of course I said yes, and I have to give it to him, even to this day, what he showed me would have compared favorably with some of the best strains available. It was nice compact nugs that were so completely covered by THC crystals that the bud looked white. It was a great way to start up the hemp festival.
This was my first time ever setting up my own tent, so I pulled everything out of the bag and looked for the instructions. Soon with some help from two of my friends, Jason and Chris, the tent was set up and filled with our gear. Once the site was set up we walked from the camp grounds to where the music was playing. Big Cypress is a great venue for outdoor events in the spring. The weather was great this time of year, not too hot, and usually a nice refreshing cool in the morning and evening. Even in the early afternoon, it just couldn’t have been a nicer day. On the way to the festival stage, we kept having people offer to sell us herb, some holding the bags out in their hands for all to see. We could also smell herb everywhere the entire time we walked. Jason was a major smoker, his parents had a lot of money and he didn’t sell, but he always had herb. A lot of the time he would get it from me, since we’d known each other for a few years. He didn’t go to my high school even though he lived right next to it. He went to a private school, but we were introduced by friends, and both he and Chris would go out to raves with me every weekend in our eleventh and twelfth grade years. He had a car, so he did most of the driving for us in those days.
This festival was professionally promoted and there were about 10 times the amount of people that had been at the farm party. I could see how a small private gathering, especially one that seemed to be almost entirely filled with dealers, could be kept discreet, but this was a much bigger event and people were not being discreet at all. It felt very free here, like the normal cares of the world were not a part of this place. We got to the stage and saw Elvy Musikka, one of the handful of people to ever get medical marijuana from the Federal government, speaking about cannabis as medicine. It was one of the first times I realized the complexity of the cannabis plant in terms of therapeutic use. We wandered around the festival grounds, from the stage to the vendors, and I ended up purchasing a copy of Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Soon we realized we weren’t really into the bands that were playing, so we headed back over to the campsite.
Once back at the campsite we broke out our own stash, not brave enough to smoke out so openly in the festival grounds like many others here. Jason had a nice big bad of herb and was passing around a bowl at the same time he was rolling a joint. We rolled a few more joints ate some LSD. From this point on we never made it back into the festival area. We stayed at our campsite, smoked, tripped, and played mix tapes and CD from our favorite DJs on a boom box we’d brought. As night fell a band called The Machine, a Pink Floyd cover band came on, and we turned off our boom box for their set. I wasn’t too into Floyd, they always seemed dark and weird to me, but it seemed like most people wanted to hear them. Now in the darkness we could see the stage lights tearing into the night’s sky, with the music infusing the air all around us. All of a sudden from the stage came a loud cacophony of alarm clocks and bells tolling all together. I didn’t know it was part of a Pink Floyd song, but hearing all those clocks put my mind into one of the endless thought loops about time that had become almost commonplace for me. Time can be one the most fun and most confounding things to explore when tripping. It is a completely man made, made-up map placed over reality, but at the same time, it has a sense of marking the changes in days and seasons accurately, giving it inherent and unquestionable value. It can be measured in eons and millennia and also divided so finely into nanoseconds. It is infinite going up and down, and in theory can be divided parabolically, never quite touching infinity or the zero-point.
Soon the music ended for the night and we turned up the music at our campsite, still not tired at all. The LSD and music got us lost in the experience and soon it was pretty late and we began hearing what sounded like shouts from the nearby campsites for us to keep it down. I think the real problem is not that we were being loud, but that we were playing electro breaks and most of the people here were more into classic rock. We really did not want to have to keep quiet; we were tripping and having a great time. We hadn’t seen each other as much recently, so on top of being excited to be together again, the LSD was keeping our spirits high and wide awake.
So instead of just giving in, I got up and walked over to the next campsite over and found about 8 or ten people sitting in a ring around a fire. I walked up to where people could hear me and said “Hey, we’re over at the next campsite and we’re gonna be up for a while. We all took acid and, “ looking down and reaching into my pocket, “I have some here if any of you want.” Everyone was looking at me, and a few people immediately said variations of “Yeah!” and walking beginning to walk over to me. I took a ten strip out of the bag I had and tore off squares into people’s hands.
“How much do I owe ya?” one asked.
“Nothing, we’re neighbors, now we’ll all be up for a while!” I said tearing myself off a square and eating it myself. As abruptly as I had appeared I waved and walked off to the next campsite. I repeated the process at two other nearby campsites and walked back over to my own campsite. We turned up the music and passed around the rest of the doses between the people at our site. Soon we could hear people laughing and carrying on all around us. The night passed and as the sun began to rise we could see everything was covered in a thick blanket of fog. Someone put on the Sasha/John Digweed CD Northern Exposure (the 0° North disc) and we all went on a journey together. Some of the people from the other campsites came over because the music was so perfect for the setting. That CDs took us on a journey, which was cool, because it transformed the negative energy from before about the electronic music into a deep sense of appreciation and togetherness, at least between us and the people who came by.
About two weeks later I was sitting on my bed reading a book when the phone rang. My roommate answered and passed me the receiver, it was my mom. When I picked up, she said “Jason Thass is dead.” That sentence didn’t make any sense in my brain. When she said it, the words didn’t register with any meaning at all into my conscious mind. “What?”
“Jason is dead.” She repeated, I could hear tears in her voice, and I felt my perception expand and contract around the moment. As I began to understand her words, a sense of disbelief flooded my mind. “What happened?” was all I could get out. It turned out that he overdosed on heroin. Apparently his mom found him in the bathroom, and his skin had already begun to turn blue. Our parents were all saying it was the first time he’d ever tried it, but I heard whispers from friends that he may have done it before, but I never found out the truth one way or the other. Sometimes I still believe both. Jason was the first person I’d even known personally that died. It seemed so wrong. After hanging up I sat down and tears just started pouring from within me.
He was buried the next day and at his funeral, I was asked to be one of the people to carry his coffin. When they lowered his casket into the ground, it was something I will never forget. I just couldn’t believe that he was gone and I would never get to see him. One of his best friends, a girl named Janice threw an eighth of herb into his coffin, crying. A lot of my friends were there, and I think several people threw herb in to be buried with him. I know some people were very discreet about it, but I seem to remember when Janice threw in the bag, it was more brazen and open. I don’t remember anyone saying a word about it, which seems weird, but it was a gesture that seemed appropriate. He definitely loved and smoked herb more than most people, so it seemed far more fitting than putting flowers on his grave.
When I was a teenager I didn’t think much about dying, but this really awakened me to several things. One was that you never know when the last time you will see someone might be. I hadn’t imagined that our trip to the everglades would be the last time I would see my friend. The fine thread that separates life and death became something I thought about a lot after Jason died. Just like time could be confounding to think about, death had its own set of circular thought patterns that I would move through trying to look closer at its mysteries. But things like these are beyond answering for humanity, so I think that these eternal mysteries are the source of many of Earth’s philosophical schools of thought. These are the types of questions that most people will come face to face with at some point in their lives, though some look into them more intensely than others.
Just like the leaf I saw spinning into eternity during my mushroom trip at the park with the mail-order mushrooms, after Jason died, the world kept spinning. I mourned for a while, but soon the momentum of day to day demands moved my focus forward and I found myself moving into my familiar patterns. I kept moving herb, ecstasy, and LSD between Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and campus. One day, shortly after the festival in the everglades, I ran into a guy I knew, Gerald as I walked out of my dorm building heading to class. He also sold herb, but mostly small bags around campus. We didn’t work together but were friendly. When he saw me he walked with me and whispered “Hey man, do you think you can get me a some rolls?” I told him I didn’t have any right now, but I could get him some acid. He said okay and I gave him my pager number to get in touch later.
There were pager codes that people used to tell you what they wanted. Some of these were familiar things like 411 for information, 911 for an emergency, romantic things like 823 for “thinking of you,” 143 for “I love you” and of course, 057 for LSD, because if you flipped the pager upside down, 057 reads as LSD. The next day I got a page from Gerald with 911, so I figured he wants to grab at least a thousand dollars’ worth of something. I was in class and I’ve always been serious about school. In college I was even more concerned, since classes would only be an hour or two at a time, and I was paying hundreds of dollars for each one. But since I saw the 911 page I walked out of class and over to a payphone outside. I dialed him up to find out what was such an emergency. “Hey can I grab like 3 of those tabs from you?” I just about lost it, but I kept cool, and told him that I couldn’t do it now, but I would call him later. I went back to class and got myself all worked up. Usually no one would send a page 911 unless it was something very important, either financially, or in some way. Three hits of acid; that just didn’t register as an emergency and I just kept thinking that thought over and over in different ways. This annoyed me, but I quickly forgot about it. He tried to page me a few other times, and each time it was 911. This went on for a few days, and sometimes I would return his calls, but after a few more 911 pages for the same thing, I mostly ignored him. About a week later I got another page when I was sitting in my dorm room. I told him I didn’t have any tabs. “That’s cool do you have a $50 of herb?” This was the first time he actually caught me at the perfect moment. I was home, I had nothing to do, and I had some herb. I weighed out an eighth for him and when he knocked on my dorm room door, I answered the door with it in my hand.
As the door swung open I saw not only Gerald, but a much older looking guy with him. I felt immediately cold, I knew something was off. I would’ve just said, “sorry, I couldn’t get anything” but they’d both seen the rolled up bag in my hand when I opened the door. Gerald gave me a hug and said “Here this is my buy, B, it’s his birthday. Can you hook him up?” Something about the whole situation felt very wrong. Gerald was a college age black guy, and he’s paired up with this older short and stocky white guy. I was pretty sure I was busted right there, but I had them come in from out in the hallway and I handed B the bag and he pulled out his wallet. I knew when he flipped it open there would be a cop badge there and I was going to jail.
But no, he opened his wallet, pulled out two twenties and a ten, handed them to me, thanked me and they headed out. I was glad my Spidey-senses were wrong, but I couldn’t sleep that night thinking how badly I’d fucked up. If that guy had been a cop, and I had answered the door with that bag in my hand…it was just pure sloppiness. I was glad I didn’t have to learn that one the hard way.
About two weeks later I had two of the guys that were selling herb for me on campus call and order a half pound each. I called up Dan and asked if they had anything there. He said John did and it was only so-so, but I could come over and check it out for myself. I drove over and the buds they had were not that nice at all. They looked scraggly, brown, and didn’t even smell right. They were selling them at a huge discount, but that herb just looked like problems to me. I could hear the complaints already and had to take a pass on that. Usually these guys had several different types to choose from, but today there was nothing but this schwagy brown disappointment. I called Justin in Miami, but he said nothing was going on for another few weeks. Dan made a few calls for me and found one of his friends with nice buds at a good price. But we would have to go all the way across the county and back to get them. Dan tried to have them delivered, but the guy didn’t have time to do a run, even though we offered him a little extra for delivery fees. We talked about it, and decided that we hadn’t had enough time to just chill and hang out recently, so we went to play pool instead of picking up the weed.
The next day was the last day of classes before finals started, and I got a call from one of my friends upstairs. I walk upstairs and as I come into his room, he sits me down by the window. “That sheet I got from you is either bunk or super weak stuff man. I gave it to some friends and no one is happy.” People would tell me from time to time they thought this batch or that batch of acid was fake. And I had a few times, when I was buying from people I knew, but didn’t have that close of a relationship with, when it really was fake. But this sheet was from the batch I got from Ray and Gary when they were in town, and I knew it was top notch. My method whenever anyone said some doses were fake, was to take about 3 of them, that way, I would know, with no if’s, and’s or but’s if it was good or not. So I told him that I would eat a few hits, check it out and if it wasn’t any good, I’d give him his money back. I was so worked up about him calling the acid fake that I totally forgot I had one last algebra class. I ate the hits and we smoked a few bowls before I realized that I had to run to class. I ran downstairs grabbed my books and rushed over to the class. I got to class on time and sat down in my chair. Of course, shortly after the class started, I noticed the first alerts of the LSD coming on. But it never really got much farther than that. I was able to concentrate through the class, and by the time it let out, I was in agreement with my friend, these were very weak doses. I felt great, very floaty and even relaxed, but I was not feeling how I should after eating 3 hits of this acid. I wasn’t sure what happened, because the sheet I gave them was from the same books that other people had loved. I had left the sheet in the trunk of my car over a hot afternoon before giving it to the guy, and to this day that is the only thing that would explain the loss in potency from this one single sheet. I could imagine maybe it was somehow unevenly distributed on the paper, but since none of the other LSD from that same batch had any issues at all, I believe it had to be from leaving it in a hot humid trunk.
I got back to my room and pulled out the big bubbler with the sun burst flowing into the yin yang, filled it with water and herb, sat in my chair and concentrated on how I was feeling. The LSD wasn’t strong, but it was definitely there. I was seeing some slight visual patterning and color enhancement, and had a feeling of being light, almost weightless. I took a big hit from the bubbler and blew the smoke through my fabric softener filter. I would always give the smoke a little sniff after it went through the fabric softener and never failed to be amused and impressed that it worked as well as it did to cover the smell. I relaxed into my comfy recliner chair, kicked back, lifted the leg rests and took another few puffs from the bubbler. Soon I was feeling very good, enjoying the experience, even though it was mild. There was a knock on my door and I started smiling. I walked over to the door, unlocked it and was pushed backwards forcefully. “Get on the fucking floor – NOW! Police Department” I dove for the floor and was cuffed within seconds. I looked around and I saw about 7 or 8 officers walking all over the dorm room. Looking at the uniforms and badges, I could see that there were cops from at least three different departments. I saw the County Sheriffs, local city police, campus police, and at least two plan clothes cops who were much older guys. “We have a search warrant” one of them said, waving a small stack of papers as other cops lifted me by my armpits onto one of the chairs in the main room.
Edited by dwpineal (03/13/13 05:01 AM)
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