This true story is held sacred, therefore the names have been changed to protect the rights of those involved. It's something I need to review in full, by sitting down and writing it out with every little detail I can remember. I need to do this so I can close the memory in my mind, and understand it - knowing that I've analyzed it as much as I'll ever need to will give it peace. I want to stop thinking about it on a nearly daily basis.
This is not that version - for the full version would be book-worthy. So, here is a paraphrased rendition of this horrible, soul crushing experience.
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This experience is one that has haunted me subconsciously for almost a year now. Since January 18, 2007. It was my friend, C's 18th birthday. The idea is that we take 18 hits of LSD on his 18th birthday. It's the only "bad trip" I've ever had.. but before I get into it, a prologue is necessary... and let it be known that without C's influence, this trip would have been the best of my life. Unfortunately.... he completely snapped.
My experience with psychadelics before this one began the year before, during the summer. Me and my fairly large group of friends (8 or so) all tripped on acid that summer in a trailer, and for 6 of us it was our first time. My friend C, who actually was the "provider" -so to speak- of the LSD most of the time, in essence had a rocky trip his first time. He took 6 hits of this shit, which was the second best acid we've ever ingested since (though, let it be noted I no longer seek LSD the way I used to, and also, C and I do not talk anymore due to a conflict of interest). I was on my bed for the majority of this first trip, because I was so blown away I didn't want to move too much. I was meditating, and I felt as though I assimilated with all the people I was connecting with in this trailer, taking a piece of all of them with me, while leaving a piece of myself with their souls as well...
I had a poster of a trippy mountain scene covered in flowers on the wall, with a flute-playing frog sitting on an egg in the middle. It was a blacklight poster, and it was morphing in time with TOOL, which was playing in the background... it was the most amazing thing my eyes had ever had the honor to witness. Everyone lost themselves in that poster, as the graffiti-type designs surrounding the top of it weaved and ducked in and out of themselves. I was able to watch their faces as it unfolded before their dilated eyes; that look in their eye was the same kind of new amazement and awe you can see in a newborn's eyes.
We listened to the entire Lateralus album about 3 times that night. We all came down in my room, me on my bed and my friends huddled in their respective spots covered in blankets, coping with what had just taken place over the last 15 hours...
But C was the only one who, outwardly, had a hard time controlling his trip. He seemed like he was on the verge of losing it after coming out of the bathroom near the beginning of the trip, screaming "I'm on acid!!" several times, in between tears. The first thing he did was cry, I remember the image vividly when LSD first made its way through my brain...
I have also eaten shrooms a handful of times, and had nothing but good experiences with them. My best [most spiritual] experiences, actually.
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I didn't know it at the time, but C's first reaction to LSD would become, in my mind, a precursor to what happened that freezing winter day at my grandfather's 500 acre farm.
Another one of my friends, S, came with us to partake in the spiritual pilgrimage. We planned this for 3 months, and C was at the head of the expedition, as it was his birthday we were doing this for. We were taking 54 blotter hits of LSD, a dry ounce of P. cubensis mushrooms, 4 ecstasy tablets, and around a 1/2 pound of Cannabis, all pre-rolled in beautiful blunts. S and I took only 1 of these fire rolls he got his hands on, leaving C to take 2... which also might be a factor in what happened.
The night before, I didn't get much sleeping done. I did manage to meditate for a few hours beforehand, however, and later I learned S did the same, but C did not... and I wondered if it also accounted for what happened to him.
I rose before the sun had, clad in insulating layers topped with my trenchcoat, and I made my way to C's house. The morning wind was piercingly cold. I was recording the event using a hand-held voice recorder, and I brought a video camera along as well. An experience of this magnitude needed to be recorded.
After rousing C, I picked up S, and then returned to C's house. He had gotten ready, so we loaded up the lock-box of drugs and made our way, in Fear and Loathing fashion, to my grandfather's farm, a straight shot east down Highway 64 until you come to Elmo Rd...
We conversed in excitement when we first took off from C's house, but when we left the city of Barlett behind, and came upon the countryside, the reality of the near future set in. We didn't talk. The sacredness of the situation permeated the air.
We finally came upon the main gate of the farm, the headlights defined by the dust rustled by my car's wheels. I stopped and gave C the keys, and he unlocked the gate. I pulled the car up next to the block house (named that for its cement block exterior), parked, and got out.
We entered the house. It's an insanely cluttered and dirty place. There is some kind of organization, I think - but my grandfather is old, and over the years so many people have come and go from there hunting deer, turkey, squirrel, dove, and such that a massive amount of farming equipment, bullets, buckets and other random farm-household-items have built up everywhere.
You first are in the kitchen. From there, ahead of you is the living room where a fireplace rests to the right and a sofa sits in front of it, as well as a lazyboy and a rocking chair. There is also a room with 3 home-made bunkbeds, but I wouldn't stay in there to save my life. Brown recluses and black widows galore. Fuck that...
To the left of the kitchen you enter the storage room, on the left of which is the door to the bathroom. There is a doorway that leads into the bunk room on the right.
The first thing we decided to do was eat the mushrooms. By the time we had eaten them, it was light outside so I hatched the idea to take a ride in the 5-wheeler. There was a 6-wheeler, which is obviously newer and better, but it was out of order for the time being, so we took the older ATV. It was a blast. I drove while C sat beside me in the passenger seat, with S riding in the bed.
We drove out to the fields, past the pond, and down into the valley. Corn was usually grown here, but at the time it was just covered with tall grass. We ran through it, the mushrooms already well into our bloodstreams. I felt as though I was in Alice in Wonderland. That is exactly what the colors, and the way C and S looked, reminded me of. Alice in Wonderland.
We decided to head back to the house, and while we did S was proclaiming the land "The Promised Land," which still remains its name. Tears were in his eyes as he saw the green fields; I could empathize, as upon seeing the lush green life contrasted against the barren neutral white and gray colors of the sky and ground I was almost brought to tears myself - but I had to drive back to the house.
Time passed, and when we felt the shrooms beginning to die away, we decided it was about time to take the ecstasy. After that, we chilled in the living room and C and S managed to get a fire going, which I would end up stoking and keeping alive for the rest of the day and night. We smoked blunts to ourselves, to the head, and continued to rise on the crest of the beautiful chemical wave we were raising within our brains.
After a while of messing around with the cameras and voice recorder, they ceased being used, partly because they were messing up but also because we were reaching a state of mind where such technical tasks were deemed impossible. We decided it was time to take the LSD... the main course.
We should have waited longer, but we had ants in our pants, to say the least. This is the moment we had been waiting for. Over three months. It felt triumphant. C seperated the sheet of 54 hits into 3 sections of 18. We placed the strips on out tongues, and let the acid dissolve into our bloodstreams. As C put it on his tongue, he moaned and acted as though he would come on himself. It was a little creepy, and was the beginning of the bad vibe I felt within myself. It made it seem like he was a crackhead getting his fix, and this is not the way I view psychadelics whatsoever. They are to be respected.
After we dropped the LSD, I paced around trying to gather my senses, because I knew that the journey had not even truly begun yet. I tried to fathom what I was in for - but I did not have to for very long. Before long, S began to speak of the awe he was in. It hit him first, and he had to escape to the bathroom to be alone for a while. C and I sat in the living room, coming into this new world ourselves. The rocket had taken off. I got up from my seat in the living room and made my way clumsily to the kitchen. I sat down in the middle of the floor in the fetal position.
S came out of the bathroom and joined C in the living room. I heard them talking about random shit, and I could tell C was really feeling the 2 rolls he had taken... whenever he rolled, he made this irritating clicking sound with his mouth from the speedy effect. He was clicking incessantly. As for myself, I was losing my mind sitting on the floor, my head buried in my arms. I was looking down at the raggedy tile floor though, and the paisley patterns were moving in completely impossible patterns before my eyes. This was the most intense LSD hallucination I've experienced to date.
This was the point where things crossed a line... something happened in C's mind. One of two things happened - either a spirit did make its way into his mind and cause the upheaval, the tryptamine cocktail just completely reverted him to a primal state, or the jackass that he is took this trip as an excuse to let himself go and be a dick. It might be some deep-seated paranoia within myself that causes the third suspicion. I don't know, honestly. It's beyond me.
It started with C repeatedly asking S and myself if we needed anything. He was being extremely over compassionate... to a corrupt degree. It was peculiar, and he took such a sarcastic tone with it. He used the term "honey..."
"Can I get y'anything honey? Y'good??!?" "You alright manCanigetyouasnytrhinng!?"
It just seemed so intentional to me, but know that he had no control, because when I tried to speak it felt as though someone else was...
He was pacing around, like he was looking for something when I quickly got out and went to my car to escape the bad vibes he was creating. But then, unbelievably, he jumped in the passenger seat and started doing it again!!! He said
"Some speedy shit we got huh??", referring to the rolls, when I got out of the car. He was fucking gone, and I couldn't handle it. I was just trying to enjoy my trip, but C was disrupting my peace, and S's peace. It really pissed me off.
You may be thinking that was the extent of it. But no. It certainly is not.
C's behavior continued on a downward spiral, becoming more and more uncontrolled. He was running around howling in this primal yell... it haunts me still. The image of C running around with that look on his face has been seared into my brain. He was rolling around on the ground like he was possessed.
Which reminds me. At one point, an old bonafied southern black farmer (a friend of my grandpa's) who was incoherent came to the gate on his tractor to get a bail of hay, and this just so happened to be when C was thrashing about in the front of the house. He ran up to the gate while the black man was trying to unlock it. The guy had cut himself - it looked to me like he nearly cut his finger off, but after S assured him that we were
"just having a good old-fashioned exorcism,"
he took his hay and left us. I can only imagine what he thought of us... it's actually hilarious looking back, but at the time me and S were trying desperately to get C back to sanity... it was truly scary.
The peak of C's strange behavior occured when he pulled his pants down and was masturbating in the cold winter wind in front of the house. Me and S were becoming increasingly worried that a passing car (they weren't that frequent, but they did pass occassionally) would witness this insanity and call the police. That wasn't the end of it, but I do not feel comfortable going any further into the strangeness of his actions.
We finally got him to lay down on the kitchen floor at one point while we were trying to calm him down with the words of reason. I looked into his eyes... he seemed catatonic, as if he simply wasn't there. He had gone somewhere else, and his brain was left to cope with being without his conscious mind. He was acting as if he was mistaking me for his ex-girlfriend, who he had recently had a bad break-up with. It would be understandable, as I had very long hair at the time. But it just wasn't right. His shadow had truly been revealed to S and I. S and I both shed tears during this 2 or 3 hour ordeal, thinking C had crossed a line and cuold never come back. We'd have to take him to the hospital, and he'd be deemed insane.
I looked into the burning fire while S cried and C was howling and bellowing in tongues. I saw our friendships burning in the fire - and now, I can see how this has come to be a premonition of the future. Our friendships have drifted to nothing.
It was when C was walking around, not yelling anymore, but still having his pants around his ankles, scrolling mindlessly on his [..scat tainted] iPod, that he came back to his senses. I was leaning against my car, watching the trails of birds blur across my vision and my vision shaking from the LSD. The sky was darkening slowly, but still remained completely white. It is this aspect of the environment that made the entire trip feel like stepping into a rift, through which Purgatory was reached.
He stopped and was scrolling. I could hear it. I looked over.
"Man, why the hell can't you just pull your fucking pants up?"
He looked down and pulled them up. I could see on his face that he was trying to ignore that reality - the reality that he had just humiliated himself in front of S and myself. He had turned the whole trip into a trip to hell.
"John...?" he said to me. He said it as if he had just come out of a coma, and was barely remembering who I was.
"W....why?" he asked.
"Because you fuckin took 18 hits of acid, among other things." I laughed.
I was relieved that it was finally coming to an end. His fit of insanity was ending. We went back inside, stoked the fire, and recovered. I sat next to the fire, C in front of me and S to the side as well. C was staring into the fire, probably trying to remember what had happened over the past 3 hours. We ended up falling asleep that night, our brains and bodies exhausted from the strain we had put on it with the drugs. We retired several hours after the sun went down.
I fell asleep staring at a spider web.
We awoke with a new sense. An unexplainable sense. It wasn't even the first LSD experience for any of us, but it was an experience that made us all face the raw truth in us all. The most primal drives of nourishment and reproduction.
The experience would unfold in our memories over the next weeks, and I remember remaining in a kind of hazy existence the days after d-day.
I didn't take LSD again until some time after. C and I went to the farm by ourselves, revisiting ground zero. Facing demons.
The goat on the wall saw it all. Its judgmental eye bearing down on us...
Edited by manyc (01/20/08 06:15 AM)
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