[Note: This story involves the true and honest recollections of someone who dabbled in various consciousness-altering substances during his formative years. If you’re easily offended by amusing tales of drug-induced idiocy, then you might prefer to stop reading NOW.

I’m writing this because it’s a part of my life. It’s over, I haven’t done drugs in years (unless you count booze, which is a totally legal drug), and I want to write about it. I realize that this is probably a bit of a risk, but I feel that this is perfectly justifiable. People, good people, get wrapped up in things that others might consider unsavory. These things happen. I hope you can read this without judging, as it’s really just meant to be an entertaining look into the idiotic life of a stupid teenager.

Who was me.]

Drugs are a weird thing.

I would never suggest that anybody else try them, and have actually spent a considerable amount of time giving people lectures on why they’re stupid (the drugs – not the people – although I’m happy and always prepared to speak from considerable personal experience on why people are stupid)..

Note, however, that I don’t lecture from a holier-than-thou-I’ve-never-done-them-but-I’m-going-to-act-like-I-know-everything-about-them moral stance, but rather from an oh-the-foolish-foolish-things-I’ve-done-please-tell-me-the-film-didn’t-come-out position.

That said, I made some silly decisions in my youth, and I might as well talk about them. Otherwise, they’ll just go to waste, and then count for absolutely nothing.

But, before I begin my flapper flapping, here’s something I’ll tell you from a preachy position: Never do ecstasy. I’ve never done it, and I never will. I have a lot of friends who, when trying it, were under the impression that it didn’t do any brain damage (or much, anyway), when, in fact, it does plenty. That was one of the few things I learned in college that really mattered. That stuff is poison.

Pot, mushrooms, LSD… They don’t actually do any (permanent) brain damage when used lightly and only on occasion. They aren’t the Evils some self-righteous people consider them to be, but they also aren’t going to do you any favors.

Such as one spring day in the mid 90s…

When I was about sixteen years old, I had a “crew.” It was a group of like-minded individuals with whom I spent a great deal of time.

By “like-minded,” I am of course referring to the love affair we all had with pot/reefer/doobage/the demon-weed. We didn’t know anything else about each other, and certainly didn’t waste time caring about the fact. The things that bind teenagers tend to be shallow and superficial. Church groups, strange orgy clubs, heroin... That kind of thing.

On its own, pot is a very benign substance. Unlike alcohol, which will have you shaving your head and wagging your genitals before midnight, pot pretty much just makes you tired, hungry, grumpy, and stupid(er). It also gives you bad breath, seems to be a source of bad personal hygiene, and costs a ridiculous amount of money, but you could really say that about anything. I guess.

Or not.

Whatever.

The thing that you have to realize, though, is that pot isn’t always served up on its own. It can look perfectly normal, but be “laced” with anything from PCP to turpentine. This usually takes you by surprise, as you were really just expecting to sit around and laugh stupidly at cartoons on MTV while arguing with your friends about who gets to eat the last Dorito, but instead found yourself wanting to punch a hole through a car door with your head. That’s not so cool.

This is one reason why I like the FDA. Sure, the organization has had its problems, but no matter what horrible things might happen to your liver, heart, kidneys, and whatever else as a result of taking an FDA-approved drug, you can rest assured that Pfizer, for example, did not lace your Zoloft with crack.

But, as I was saying, it happens with pot. Some dealer, in a very strange effort to be “kind,” will sometimes take it upon himself to contribute to your marijuana the particulate matter of a foreign mind-altering substance: You can’t see it, you can’t taste it, and you can’t smell it. But it’s there.

And you don’t find out until it’s a bit too late.

A group of us had gone camping down on the Oregon coast. It was me and the aforementioned “crew.”

The previous night had been a spree of drunken tomfoolery involving several elephant-paralyzing doses of booze, boxes of illegal fireworks, and probably a lot of bad decisions about who (or what) looked attractive at the time in question.

We all emerged from our tents that day in a bit of a daze. Nobody knew what time it was, and nobody cared. It had rained at some point, although nobody had the mental wherewithal to recall when it might have happened. The only telltale signs were the wet ground, the sodden footprints, the boot tracks in our tents, and, more disturbingly, in our sleeping bags. Sometimes it’s good to not remember what happened the night before.

The one thing we could all agree on was that food would be nice. However, our bellies were burning and aching from the lowest-bidder-vodka abuse cast against them the previous night, and merely the suggestion of digestion sent some among our group into a fit of the dry-heaves, with poor Neil getting hit the worst. Neil was personally responsible for drinking half of the supplied alcohol by himself during the night’s reveries, and you could see it in his eyes (also, rather unfortunately, on his shirt).

But, before I continue with the story, here’s something you should know about stoners: They will go to great lengths to try to convince themselves and the world that what they’re doing is not a drug, but something akin to an herbal medicine or spiritual experience catalyst. Every stoner is armed to the lungs with encyclopedic knowledge of marijuana’s finer non-intoxicating qualities.

Unfortunately, 99% of what stoners believe is fabricated among the group. Here’s how it works:

——————————————————————

[Setting: Stoners gathered around a hooka, sitting on beanbags, discussing life and the universe. At least they think that’s what they’re doing.]

Stoner Dave: Duuuuuuuuuude… I bet that, like, pot, like, makes you smarter in math.

Stoner Jason: Totally. That’s heavy, man.

——————————————————————

[Setting: A completely different party. Stoner Jason is there, and he’s discussing life and the universe with a different group.]

Stoner Jason: Duuuuuuuuuuude… I heard that, like, pot, like, makes you smarter in math.

Stoner Mike: Totally. That’s heavy, man.

——————————————————————

[Setting: Stoner Mike is now hanging out at yet another party, discussing life and the universe with Stoner Dave, who we met at the first party.]

Stoner Mike: Duuuuuuuuuuuuude… Scientists learned that, like, pot, like, makes you smarter in math.

Stoner Dave: Dude! I thought so!

——————————————————————

Do you see what’s happened?

Stoner Dave made something up on the spot and communicated it to Stoner Jason. Stoner Jason then went and reported the rumor as something closer to fact. Stoner Mike, who is completely unable to engage his drug-caked skeptical faculties, has accepted this news as fact. Then, at the last party, Stoner Mike has put a little twist on the rumor and delivered as fact to Stoner Dave, the guy who originated the story.

And, now that Stoner Dave feels vindicated in his belief about pot and math, he’s going to spread the glorious word far and wide, until it eventually becomes part of a Dave Mathews song.

This is where Stoner Lore comes from, and it has been the source of millions of ridiculous rumors over the years about the magical and mystical qualities of a plant that really just gives you lung cancer and makes you stupid.

It’s not all wrong, though. Mixed in with this desert of little lies is one granule of sand that isn’t total crap.

Pot does help with nausea. If you’re feeling sick to your stomach, then a few hits of the doobage will settle things down. Carl Sagan, who suffered from bone marrow cancer, was an advocate of dope for this reason.

So, what does the group of hungover and hungry Neanderthal males do upon waking when they really want to eat?

Of course! They get really stoned.

And that’s what we did.

But, something was odd. I remember looking at the pot and thinking that it looked “weak.” It was scraggly and anemic, having the qualities of a bit of dried desert brush, and not the lush, wet, green appearance that I was used to. For this reason, I assumed that I would have to smoke a little extra in order to achieve the state of intoxication I was after (oh, I forgot: To relieve the nausea. Yeah. That’s right).

What a mistake that was.

When I released the smoke from my lungs, it poured from my various facial orifii in a thick cloud that obscured my head like ashes spewing from the mouth of Mount Etna. I was basically on fire.

Within minutes, I knew that the dope was doctored. We were about a mile from our car, and were hiking up through the forest to get to it. During this walk, I became acutely aware of a “bobbing” sensation that wasn’t usually present. It felt like I was falling hundreds of feet with each step, only miraculously reconnecting my feet with the ground beneath them. That was odd.

Then, the real weirdness started.

I swallowed, as I often do, when the collection of spit in my mouth became a nuisance. You know how spit builds up and you eventually have to swallow it, right? Well, that’s what I did.

But, when I did it, I could feel, and even somehow “see,” every last muscle involved in the process. Every little gland, every little cell that contributed to the mass of flesh that constituted my throat, every little wet spot, every dry spot, and everything in between: I could feel it all, at precisely the same time, as it slid, as it contracted, as it relaxed, and it freaked me out. It was such a strange sensation, actually, that it resulted in a strong head rush which led to what felt like a brief period of unconsciousness. I mean, it felt like I had fainted.

What’s worse is that I got this feeling every time I swallowed, and this resulted in a fear of swallowing. I started spitting instead of swallowing, but only with minor success, as my body inevitably effected a swallow whether I wanted it to happen or not. Let me tell you: Being afraid of swallowing your own spit is no way to spend an afternoon at the beach.

When we got to the car, I was relieved. I felt vulnerable with my newfound swallow-fear, and knew that this was not an opportune time to come face-to-face with a bear or something. I just needed to sit down and try to find some calm.

I don’t remember much about the drive except that I was definitely off in la-la land. I had turned “inward,” focusing on my thoughts to the exclusion of the world around me. This is a bad state to be in when mind-boggingly whacked because you aren’t thinking straight, you aren’t in control of what you’re thinking, and you still have no choice but to think it.

I was aware of how completely nuts I felt, and was trying to figure out what had caused it. I knew that the pot was laced with something, but I wanted to know what it was that I had put into my body. Like most people, I tended to ignore the ingredients list on the food products I purchased, but I was dying for something similar that would have shed some light on what had happened to our pot.

In the absence of any sensible train of thought, and while completely out of my mind, I came to the conclusion that the pot had been laced with LSD, and that someone was trying to poison us with it - that this had been an intentional thing.

Have I mentioned yet that stoners tend to be really paranoid? I haven’t? Well, they are. Something about the drug makes you think that the whole world is watching you, judging, and plotting.

And there I was: Convinced that someone, somewhere, had been watching, had judged, and then plotted to poison us with a huge quantity of LSD from which we would never “come down.” I thought I was stuck in this state, and that I would never know sobriety again.

The thoughts continued to snowball, building on that initial (fallacious) premise, and my eyes became shifty and suspicious of everything. I had no idea what else this terrible person might have done, or to what lengths he might have gone, to infect our bodies with this substance. I wasn’t exactly maintaining.

After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at a McDonald's and got in line to order our grub. The whole time, all I could think was this:

They know! All these people are watching us, and they know… But do they know know, or do they just know? Is he here? Has he put anything in the food? Those people are looking at me… Why are they looking at me? What do they want? Are they trying to tell me something? Is this code for “don’t order the Big Mac?” Has he poisoned the Big Macs? Is that what they’re trying to tell me? That must be what they’re trying to say – he’s poisoned the Big Macs. That dirty rat. Well, I’ll show him – I’ll just get a regular burger with extra mustard. If I get it with extra mustard, then they’ll have to make the burger especially for me, which means that I won’t get a burger from the stock of already LSD-laced burgers that our unseen aggressor wants us to eat. Plus, I like extra mustard. I must remember to thank those people for the warning. I owe them my life. They are saints. Do they know how they have served king and country today? Yes. I must thank them. But not here – not now. When the time is right, I will know.

It was a nonstop flurry of crazy thoughts, and it was only my extensive training in the art of stoned-food-ordering that allowing me to collect myself enough to place an order for two regular hamburgers with extra mustard. Satisfied that I had sidestepped the trap, I waited for my food, feeling a little calm for the first time in about an hour.

When we all had our trays, we went and sat down in the corner, out of the way, where we could eat, hopefully undisturbed, and without the interference of meddling sobers.

The only thing getting in the way was that, although the other people in the establishment didn’t disturb us, my own thoughts were ramping up for another round of scare-the-paranoid-stoner.

I ate one hamburger without incident, but my mind was out of control again by the second. I was chewing on a piece of burger when I hit something hard. Something that shouldn’t have been there. Something… poisonous?

Crap! Those people were working for him! They knew the whole time, and that’s why they told me the Big Macs were poisoned. It’s because the Big Macs weren’t poisoned – the hamburgers with extra mustard were. They must have been waiting for me, waiting for that sign. They probably knew from my file that I liked extra mustard on my hamburgers, and so waited for the order to come through before stuffing a hard capsule containing LSD into my burger. This is it. They won. I’m screwed. Now, the best I can do is try to minimize the damage. From what I’ve already consumed, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life thinking I’m a coconut, but that’s better than thinking that I’m a shower. I have to spit this food out. I have to do it, and I have to do it now. This isn’t a game. I’ve got to get it out!

And so it happened: Right there, in full view of everybody in the restaurant, mid-bite, I spat a large lump of partially masticated hamburger up onto my tray and stared at it for a moment, wondering if I could find the capsule of LSD that had been placed inside of it.

It must have come as a bit of a surprise to the rest of my friends, all engaged in a nice little conversation about flowers or something, when this happened. They stopped eating in the way the piano stops playing in a saloon where a large and undesirable criminal has just swung through the swinging doors. The McDonald's merry-go-round stopped. Cars in the drive-through outside sat in neutral. Employees paused from the perpetual punching of orders into their registers. Birds stopped singing. Wall Street took an impromptu five-minute break. All eyes were on me.

And my lump of hamburger in the early stages of digestion.

There are some things in life that you can’t explain to people.

You just can’t.