I have done acid twice in my life, the first time is far more interesting. To protect the parties involved, I will use fake names. These are their actual names because no one knows my real name is Edward, and it doesn’t fucking matter, for all you know my name could be David, and the names may or may not be fake. It’s the internet. Who gives a shit?
I was hanging out with my friend James, who was a loser in high school, and currently, is still a loser. He’s trying to ‘make it’ as a comic book artist, not realizing that he is a shitty comic book artist, and that no one gives a shit about his art because it’s shitty. He’s currently living with his mother until he ‘makes it’. Imagine Forrest Gump if he were a self important asshole, that’s the kind of kid James is. Myself, being at the time a teenager with no self esteem, felt I was relegated to hanging out with the self important Forrest Gumps of my school, so James and I were ‘friends’. In reality, I was hanging out with him so I wouldn’t feel like a total god damned loser for having no friends, so I stuck with him and his clique of unimpressive self important Forrest Gumps. In hindsight, the kids without friends who I distanced myself from were actually pretty god damned cool. Martin, Greg, I’m sorry. Together, we could have been the trio of losers who hung out together and did all the stupid, but mildly interesting shit that trios of losers do in high school. College was a lot better for me. I went to a technical school. It wasn’t a trio of losers who did stupid but mildly interesting shit, it was a herd of losers who did stupid but mildly interesting shit.
During my high school days however, I chose to hang out with the Forrest Gump asshole and others like him. James was, and still is a piece of shit. We used to do drugs, him more so than me. We seldom did anything other than smoke cannabis, however on one occasion, he had gotten his hands on some acid. We were driving along the freeway, going under a bridge. All 6’4″ of me crammed in the back seat of whatever two door piece of shit he said he was going to ‘tune’ for ‘racing’. The person in the passengers whose identity I can never recall, turned to me, the girth of my ogre like frame not so carefully origami’d into the backseat of whatever piece of shit James was driving, and said ‘hey man, want to try some acid?’. My answer was yes, I would soon wish it was no. I don’t remember how much acid they gave me, however I was later told it was a lot for someone who has never done acid. Shortly after I taken the hit, the gentleman in the passenger seat turned to me and said ‘hey man, can you feel it yet?’. It was only a short time prior (I think) that it had kicked in. I remember my response very clearly, which was ‘Motherfucker I can’t not feel it’.
My memory of the events that followed and the duration of these events is fuzzy. The first incident that royally fucked with me was when we were taking an on ramp, this being a fairly innocuous activity for a Caucasian Shrek sardined into the backseat of a two door car. However, it’s less common when you’re tripping motherfucking balls. At some point during this on ramp excursion, I started to lose my fucking mind. In my head, the on ramp was infinite, it was going on forever, it was never going to stop. I thought we had been on the on ramp for years, literal years. During the 30 seconds that passed by in the external reality, my internal reality told me we had been on it for years. The number forty stuck in my brain, I don’t know why it was forty years, but my mind told me it was. My brain thought it, and my body were on an on ramp for forty years. While my thirty seconds of screaming might have been amusing to those in the cars, the forty years in my head was fucking terrifying.
The interlude in the story comes when we stopped at a convenience store, I think it was a 7-11 because I remember they had left the door open when they went inside, and I saw a red, green, and yellow sign, which are the colours commonly found at a 7-11. The seat in front of me had been reclined forward so I could get out if I pleased. I put one leg outside of the car, and my leg was long, very long, alarmingly long, and very large at the end. This frightened me. I was seeing the world as if through a very wide angle lens, think 6mm. Everything was warping around me. I quickly pulled my leg back in, and I don’t remember what happened after that, until…
Now, I’m not sure if this happened, but in my head, you better fucking believe it did. I don’t know if I really was squatting in the bathroom stall at Meijer, terrified out of my mind. I don’t know if anyone saw a seventeen year old sea of humanity quivering in the corner of this bathroom, but mentally, I was there. In my mind, Chris Cornell was in the bathroom, throwing dead crows at me while I squatted in the corner and cowered. He had a limitless supply of dead crows, whenever one left his hand, another would appear in it’s place. With both hands, he kept throwing dead crows at me. In my mind, this went on for an infinite amount of time. He was never going to stop throwing dead crows at me. This was going to go on forever, and I had the thought ‘I am going to die while Chris Cornell throws dead crows at me’.
I don’t remember how long or when that episode happened. The next thing I remember I was at James’ house, sitting on the floor of his mothers living room (his mother was gone, fortunately), rocking back and forth next to a recliner in which he was sitting. MTV2 was on the TV, and on it they were playing a hip hop song of the early aughts. I don’t know how long I was sitting on my butt, rocking back and forth, but I do know that I kept saying ‘Hey man, I keep getting the feeling of deja vu’. I don’t know the intervals with which I was saying it, or for how long I was saying it, all I know is I was doing it. This was toward the end of my trip. The next thing I remember I was awake in my bed, fortunately sober.
I’m glad I tried acid, if only for the fucked up things it did to my sense of time. During that day or half day where I was tripping my balls off, forty years, followed by an infinite of time had passed. It has forever changed my perspective of the flow of time. I can’t recommend it, but I won’t tell you to not do it.
