Tag: drugs

Did I ever tell you about the time I sold Heroin?

Jack and Mike called me one night, and asked if I was interested in coming to the diner with them. I don’t remember what I had been doing that day, but I was tired and planning on heading to bed early. Maybe I had just eaten and was full. Whatever the excuse, I begged off and went to bed. Some time later, before I had fallen asleep, I got a call from Jack, who was in the diner’s bathroom. He explained that the people at the booth next to them had begun to suspect that Jack was a heroin addict, and he’d started going along with it and playing it up. He said he was going to return from the bathroom with his sleeve unbuttoned and wrinkled, having just been rolled up. He wanted me to be the finishing touch to the act, by coming down and posing as his dealer.

This was enough to get me out of bed, and forgo any sleep that I might have needed. I made sure to park in sight of their table, and went inside. I went to their table, and after the type of brief and awkward conversation that is unique to drug deals, we went out to my truck, leaving Mike in the booth. In the truck we talked normally, but continued to pantomime doing something behind the dashboard. Jack made sure to flash a little cash. After a minute or so, Jack left to go back to his food, and I drove back home to go to bed.

I really love that we made someone’s night a little surreal.

I’m not Magic

WP by Matisyahu
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/matisyahu2006-02-05.flac16/matisyahu2006-02-05d1t07_64kb.mp3]

Ever since about Junior year of High School, people have assumed I smoked pot, or did some other drugs. I think it’s largely because of my laid-back attitude, and my more non-standard goals. And the fact that I listen to a lot of jambands doesn’t help me any. I’ve had people ask me on many, many occasions if I smoke, but more often people just assume it. When they get to know me better, and find out that I don’t smoke, drink, or do any drugs at all, they’re surprised. Its weird.

I’m not magic. I don’t do drugs in secret and my brain doesn’t naturally produce THC. There are a bunch of other reasons people come up with to figure out why I am the way I am. A lot of people suggest that I get a contact high at shows I go to. I’m pretty sure I haven’t, but if I have, it is incredibly overrated, and inferior to many of the highs I get everyday in life. There is nothing uniquely different about me that makes me the way I am, except for my worldview.

I think a lot of people make up those excuses for me because if they were true, then there is something magic about me that is completely unattainable for everyone else. I’m not magic, and anyone can see the world the way I do, if they try. I know people who don’t do drugs who think similarly to me. It isn’t unattainable, and I don’t want to be an excuse for people to use drugs anymore. I’m not going to stop anyone, but I’m not going to let them bullshit themselves either.

The Morning After

All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07

Recreational Chemistry by moe. w/Warren Haynes
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/moe1999-08-04.eac.flac16/moe1999-08-04d1t06_64kb.mp3]

Sunday morning I woke up around 8. I somehow managed to ignore the blistering heat of my tent for an hour longer than I had on previous days. So when I got up and out of my tent people were already awake. Melissa was up, but I think she went back to her tent shortly after to go back to sleep. Charles was hanging out of the tent halfway, so he could get equal parts cool temperature and privacy while he slept.

One thing that surprised me was the amount of people packing up that early in the morning. They knew there was music that night, right? Silly people, going back to their lives. I guarantee you that Monday morning was the hardest morning they had all year.

I was sitting around the table eating my breakfast with the two others who were up when we hear “Doses! Doses for breakfast!” A guy was heading towards the center of the crossroads selling his wares. At that time, he only had acid and shrooms. None of the folks at our site bought anything, but he decided that he liked us, or at least liked out shade, and stayed for a while.

This guy’s name was Hopper. He said he’d been up since Friday on acid (and I assume various other drugs…you’d need more than that to go for three days straight). “Doses! Doses and mushrooms! Doses for breakfast!” He had a shitload of acid for sale, all kept in these little Trojan condom boxes (they had a booth handing out single-serving samples). The mushrooms went fast, but he replenished his supply as other people passed by with stuff for sale. But he never ran out of acid. When we commented on this he told us “Enough to kill a baby.” We laugh, but he quickly tells us, “No, really. I’m trying to finance an abortion.” Apparently he got his 17 year old fuck-buddy (not girlfriend, he made the distinction) pregnant, and her mom would freak if she knew. Hopper is absolutely ridiculous.

As attractive girls walked by, he’d call out “If I follow you home will you keep me?” or “Hey! Would you like a snuggle-buddy?” The latter got a maybe. When a mounted policeman came through the crossroads, Hopper stopped selling so overtly, but he called out “Hey! I really like your horse!” and “I wish I was into bestiality!” going over to pet it. I should mention that as he left to go pet the horse or sell some drugs, he left about $400 worth of acid on our table. Eventually, the other guys at our site caved in and bought some from him (it was $5 a hit; half the price of most dealers). A few minutes later one came over and asked Hopper,
“Do they work if you swallow it?”
“No, that you’re supposed to keep it under your tongue.”
“I know, but I accidently swallowed it, will it still work?”
“Not really.”
“Alright, gimme another.”
I never found out if they were bunk or not. I left these folks before it kicked in, but Hopper might be the funniest dude I met all fest.

Personal Responsibility

Walletsworth by Umphrey’s McGee
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/um2007-04-11.flac/UM2007-04-11Set2T03_64kb.mp3]

So its Spring Weekend again here at UConn, which always confuses me. I don’t understand it. At all. Thousands upon thousands of college students from all over arrive to talk, get drunk, and stand around. And maybe pass out.

It could be the whole being on your own, independent for the first time thing that fuels this, but it still confuses me. At its highest point, there were probably ten thousand students in a single location, most of them drunk, some of them high (why must spring weekend correspond with 4/20?). Many, many, many people were falling down or passing out. I suppose they still don’t know their limit, which is funny, because they do this every weekend, you think they would have figured it out by now. Despite that, the majority that were still standing were doing so…but nothing else. There is no real reason to go to this place, except to be in the company of others who are just as drunk. There isn’t any music, there isn’t any dancing, there isn’t much of anything except for standing around and drinking and smoking.
I just can’t understand it.

Anywise, there were lots of police and EMTs around to keep things in order and keep people from dying. And I’m usually all for that. This is one time where I can’t say I feel that way. I can’t help but think that all of this takes away from personal responsibility. It isn’t like the EMTs are saving people from a natural disaster, they’re saving them from something they did to themselves. There is something tremendously wrong with this.

I do understand that it isn’t meant to be enjoyable if you’re sober. Don’t bother correcting me on that. Maybe its something I would need to be drunk to understand. But that would bring me down a long road which leads very far away from this train of thought. I’ll touch on that someday though.

Also, a sidenote: as someone who doesn’t drink or smoke, I think events like this are an excellent example of why pot should be legal. The folks who were drunk were vomiting or pissing on themselves or in the woods. The folks who were high were not. Can someone explain to me why one is legal but not the other?

As I walked back to my dorm, I heard a helicopter in the sky above me, and thought that was strange, because usually helicopters don’t pass overhead at one in the morning. So I thought it was likely a news chopper, because it was very likely that the crowd could be seen from very high up. And when I look up, I see the flashing lights of LifeStar, the helicopter that airlifts people to hospitals because they’re so bad off that an ambulance would be too slow. That means someone drank enough so that they were nearly dead, or someone got into a drunken brawl, and was near dead. Either way, this was a situation they voluntarily put themselves in. I have zero pity. None.
However, as much as I’d like to say, “don’t bother keeping EMTs on call, let those students on the ground be an example to others” I know that college students aren’t smart enough to get the message.

How can the sight of ten thousand people having the time of their lives be so depressing?