Like many others before me, I found in drugs the excitement, unpredictability and weirdness that I am missing in the real world. Being in the spectrum can be quite challenging and rigid, and I need weird in my life.
I crave weird and unusual in the same way and with the same intensity other people crave balance and routine.
In defense of drugs I would say that most human endeavors end up in oblivion anyway.
The difference would be in terms of the timeframe between pleasure and pain: an overdose of fentanyl would be lethal almost immediately whilst cannabinoids, LSD and mushrooms are not considered to be fatal due to their toxicity, and you are likely to survive an overdose.
You can get so detached from reality that you might jump off a balcony believing you can fly. It has happened before. That is why you have a “trip sitter” around.
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Why do we do drugs? Why do we drink? Why do we engage in reckless actions that are self-destructive?
Is it boredom? Is it chasing new thrills? Is it an act of rebellion against the establishment? Is it to mask the pain, the failure, the monotony of living?
I wish I had the answers.
My first experience with drugs was in the context of the military school I was sent to by Mr. Fascist. I managed to obtain a vial of some tiny little tables of “Luminal” – a barbiturate.
I got the vial from a friend who was epileptic and traded it for a couple of packs of Marlboro reds. Bartering medicine that can save you for cigarettes that might kill you seems like a pretty bad deal to me.
With nothing else to do I swallowed the 5 pills in the vial.
For a few hours my world became very slow. Like pouring-thick-ketchup slow. And I liked it very much. The usual barrage of inputs of the outside world was suddenly not so annoying anymore and I felt at ease.
My friend had told me what to expect out of this novel experience and he confided that he had been using it recreationally for a couple of years. Since his prescription came through, his parents would buy an extra bottle or two just in case he missed or lost his medication.
My friend was a bit of a dealer in the body of a 15 year-old in a military high school.
That first experience was great. I still remember it fondly today.
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My first experience with cannabis was with another friend, Andy.
For a couple of years this guy was my closest friend. We went out to the same places, listened to the same music, participated in double dates and even, travelled to various parts of Venezuela by taking turns at the steering wheel. We both loved cars and adventure.
He was my first contact with marijuana.
By the time I was turning 19, he confided in me that he had started to smoke pot in his teens.
I did not partake for the first few months -out of the naive guilt that many kids have around drugs. Even though he was a great friend, others shunned him. Rumour had it that Andy was into drugs, and in those times of “Reagan’s War on Drugs” and in a semi-capitalist Venezuela, being a pothead was not appreciated.
One Easter holiday -sitting in the beach- I accepted to try a blunt he was smoking. And almost immediately things got really interesting. Colours and sounds became deeper and more meaningful. Sensations became more enjoyable and almost overwhelmingly pleasurable. All senses of my body bloomed like desert plants after the first rain of the season.
The seawater felt delicious on my skin and the clear sky was an admirable background of cobalt over my head. The sounds and voices of other holiday makers were coming in bursts that I could discern very clearly. Music sounded very odd and a bit out of key -some backup melodies were louder than usual, and some instruments sounded deeper and with textures and envelopes that are not normally heard.
Andy was looking at me with a massive grin and a beer in his hand, with an expression that I could interpret as happy to have shared this experience.
That Sunday afternoon was one of the most pleasurable and wondrous memories of my young self and I am forever grateful to have lived it.
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My worst experience, and one of the few times where I have achieved ego death, was with Ms. Ace. She did not partake fully -as she has always had this extraordinary sense of self-preservation. There was expensive vodka, and a few lines of a drug of the family of MDA.
I blacked out. I entered another realm. I spoke in tongues. I became too vulnerable to be part of the world. I did embarrass myself fully in her presence, and in fact, her image was one of the most striking memories of that awfully bad trip to the edge of consciousness.
In the blackest black, Ms. Ace was a shining beacon of hope. Her steady hands would get me to a safe port.
I felt so grateful to her when I regained consciousness that I wept.
In her sternest voice she said to me,
“Mr. Random. You must promise me that this cannot ever happen again”.
And with that, my worst drug experience was acknowledged and closed to scrutiny.