How Not To: Experiment with Hallucinogens

Allow me to preface this story with what I feel is a necessary disclaimer. Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad. This is Spot. See spot run.

At the very least, if you're going to do drugs, don't follow my example. Trust me - you don't want to spend a 12 hour period as miserable as I was this night.

It was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. I was still with my seventh evil ex who was very open about drug use. He had done quite a few in the past and was obsessed with getting me to try a few drugs. I didn't feel comfortable doing it, but I went with it anyway to try and impress him. What he came up with, I won't name, but it was supposed to combine the effects of two very potent drugs: the hallucinogenic effects of LSD and the social/active effects of Extacy. For the sake of giving it a name, we're going to call it Waves. You'll understand the name eventually.

The night was full of wonderfully horrible decisions and we have a lot of ground to cover. So, let's get started, shall we?

It was a summer evening. I had just changed into pjs and was sitting down with Tyler when I made my first mistake. Poor bastard, I didn't even see it coming. Research the drug. Maybe research seems like a nerdy thing to do, but when you're basically poisoning your body to achieve an altered state of reality, it might be a decent idea to at least read the Wiki.For example, had I read the Wiki for Waves, I would have realized that it was illegal in five countries and not intended for entry level users. And this, children, is what we call dramatic irony.

The start of the night was, however, redeemed by possibly the only good decision I made that evening: always have a babysitter. You don't know what's going to go wrong during your altered state of existence. You might even have a bad reaction to the drug. It's for the best that you have someone there to take over when shit hits the fan. You might think that you're a god now, but when you come down, you will realize that you were sadly mistaken. Then you will cry. In this case, Tyler would be watching me. Abruptly, the good decisions end. You see, I broke another rule already: always choose someone to be your babysitter who is more responsible sober than you are high.  You would think that this isn't as difficult as it is.

Anyway, moving on with the night from hell and my third mistake of the night: never trust another person to measure your dosage. This, I have learned, is a big no-no in not only illegal drugs, but anything you ingest. Although Tyler seemed to know what he was doing, and although I trusted him oh so very much, I was the one ingesting the substance. If he screwed up, it would be my life on the line and not his. So, naturally, I didn't question him and received triple the dosage I was supposed to get.



This brings me to my fourth and fifth stupid mistakes: never ingest and never mix. Inhaling is the fasted way to get a substance through your body. Ingesting a substance is slower to work, but also slower to get out of your system. It's not recommended that you try to ingest anything the first time you do it. My instructions told me to snort the fine white powder, something I just wasn't comfortable with. My brilliant solution to this problem was to mix the powder in a shot of vodka. You know how you're not supposed to mix medications? You really shouldn't mix drugs either.

So, let's recap: I have a horribly irresponsible baby sitter, I've just ingested a triple dosage of Waves in a shot of vodka, and both of my parents are at home and asleep. What could possibly go wrong?

It took about 30 minutes of impatient waiting before something started happening. I was trying to fall asleep (resigning to the fact that my high tolerance to everything was kicking this drug's ass as well) when I cracked an eye open to try and watch a commercial. It was then that I noticed that the words on the television screen seemed to be undulating. As I looked around my room, I discovered that it wasn't just the commercial, but my entire room that was moving. A light in my room with crystals hanging from its brim threw rainbows onto the walls. My cell phone screen's pixels became apparent. It also became very difficult to gauge movements. As I passed my hand in front of my face, I couldn't watch it progress in a straight line. It was almost a strobe effect - my hand popped out of existence and back in several inches later.

Within 15 minutes my neck became stiff. If anything so much as brushed past my neck, my body was flooded with feelings of nausea. The stiffness quickly traveled through my body, tightening every last muscle fiber to the point where I couldn't stop shaking. Imagine the worst charlie horse cramp you've ever received and now imagine it taking over your body. Because most of my skin decided to go numb, I couldn't figure out what this meant. I thought I felt hot, but I was certain the shivering meant I was cold, so I wrapped myself in a blanket and chugged bottles of water, hoping for the best.

As if this wasn't bad enough, my thoughts seemed to be moving at warp speed. Minutes in my head lasted fractions of a second in real life. I was given the remote to the television for entertainment at some point. According to Tyler, I barely turned the television on before I shut it off again. However, I claimed I had watched a television show in that time. So, for every second I was miserable to the outside world, I was miserable at least four times as long in my head.

Then, my worst fears came to life: Tyler decided to leave. It was bad enough when he fell asleep. The social part of the drug forced me to seek human interaction. I wanted to run into my mother's bedroom and tell her exactly what I had done, just so I could have someone to talk to. I wanted to look up random people in the phone book to call. I was only able to stop myself from going off the deep end by writing poetry - crappy, stonerific poetry that sums up my existence for that one night rather well. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

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I feel bad for waking you, because you're in your wakey world while I'm over here.

Every so often I forget how I feel, but my shadow seems to remember.

Music is in the lines of this page as the words dance and vibrate off it. I pity those who can't see.

You look so careless. Am I writing this for myself? So imposing. Am I tired? Are my muscles weak? Is my speech beautiful if no one else can read it?

I'm fragile. If this pen were to run out, I would be lost . FROZEN. I understand time as a theory. It keeps me here and explains how long. But it doesn't change reality.

You should be awake. SOMEONE SHOULD BE AWAKE. No pen=no voice, lost...And you're so far away. I know I'd be in trouble if mom walked out, but I couldn't save myself.

I want you to live with me. To smile. But you're flat. You should probably be making sure I can still breath...

Light is my home=life=questions? How can a house be so empty? How can existance lie beyond this page? What if I'm pushing the boundaries? What if there is no more? Lines would be just lines without anyone to dictate their truth.

I'm sure my body is tired, but I'm so AWAKE in so many different ways I wish I could tell you.

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My fragile little world crumbled and paranoia set in the moment the lights turned off in my room. I called Tyler before he even made it to the end of the driveway, inconsolable. I became convinced that my pop-lid garbage can would try to eat me, so I took of the lid and hid it under my bed. Pro tip: don't put things that scare you under your bed when you're in the middle of a bad trip. I almost immediately hopped out of be and turned all the lights back on. I attempted to watch television until sleep finally caught up to me.

The hours between 3am and 7am are a blur. I must have thought they lasted eons. In that time I somehow managed to track down Tyler's dealer and beg for sleeping pills. They asked me how much I had taken and was informed that I wouldn't be receiving anything from them - that I was lucky I was alive. It was that night I discovered that I might be uncurably stupid, but I'm also surprisingly resilient.

When I finally came down, the room appeared to be some sort of bizarre Alice in Wonderland replica of itself, but I didn't care anymore. I was too tired. My muscles gave out and I slept in that position on my bed for 15 hours. Surprisingly, no one bothered me, including Tyler. He quietly threw the drugs away a few days later.