The terrifying sounds of my own life pounding desperately against my ear drums from inside. The sense that my life force was ebbing away from my body and heading to the stratosphere. The sheer terror of being. Of being a being. Of living. Alive felt like pure horror. Depression would have seemed bliss in comparison. The room felt a quarter of the size and there could be no stopping the walls from growing ever closer until they consumed my being. It felt like nothingness would follow. A void that I’d live through fully aware. Taunted by the spacial reality of my own hell.
You see, the LSD had turned on me. It was twisting me inside out.
What a good friend it had started out to be.
It was Mooney and Norman who encouraged me. They’d tripped a couple of times already. Surely this must be the next logical step for me in my progression. My raising awareness. Taking consciousness to a new height. Discovery of self and answers to age old questions about the nature of the universe. I was on my way to great times and answers to life's mysteries. Enlightenment.
I was sixteen years old.
Trippin'.
It was less than a year since I’d first gotten drunk. I hadn’t yet gotten stoned. I was a virgin. I was a junior in high school. I was about to have my mind blown for the cost of one hit of acid -- $1. One dollar to expand my brain. I would never be the same.
The three of us went up to Tilden Park atop and among the Berkeley Hills. A wooded area would be ideal, I was told confidently. Mooney and Norman so confident.
Dropped the acid. It would take about an hour for it to “come on.”
Where was I first where was I last how do you conquer a brain so fast. Rolling hills, rolling trees, moving flowers and stationary bees. Suddenly I was watching myself from afar. As if. Gone then back. This was trippin’. Whole new concept to perception. Wild weird and wonderful mix with whole grain natural adolescent confusion. A profusion of thought coming from deeper recesses of my mind. Loss of control. It had been given to the drug which told me where to go. Freedom from the conventional thinking, slavery to the Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. But I did not care.
The world of my dad’s Oldsmobile, little league, record players, grandma’s peanut butter cookies, cub scouts, Gomer Pyle and even on out of whack mother seemed decent, silly, arcane and so fucking square. I was in the world of understanding I had left common Earth-bound thinking and was in another universe. Floating through the thoughts and ideas and conceptions only accessible to mind expanders.
And it was fun.
Oh I was having fun. Rolling down a grassy hill, tumbling and squealing was the most -- the -- most fun. Fun. Wow. I’d ever. Had. Wonderful this was all of it and
I walked and talked we said so much that was so profound as we watched the colors and experienced this -- man. We walked through a picnic site where a family was picnicking. “I’m back” I said with amazement. For my brain had gone elsewhere for a bit and had returned just as I passed by these people. They stared at me in wonder as I continued: “I was gone but now I’m back.”
Squares! Straight people who didn’t trip who weren’t so cool as we were. We were the coolest people on Earth. Est. Most. Superlatives. Now I teach them now to my foreign students. Comparatives and superlatives. How I lived them -- then. Comparing always myself with the norm and being the superlative most. LSD was making me even more fucking arrogant because I was no smarter and cooler than the rest of the world. So far out.
So really really really really really really really really really far. Far fucking out. Man.
The trip was a pure joy and Mooney and Norman and I were kings of our worlds. And when I came down it was a gentle peaceful landing. Thank you tour guides, thank you for taking me on this trip. My first. Memorable like you wouldn’t understand the word memorable ever again because you had a new way of looking at the world. Zowie. High!
Now it all made sense. We were part of something bigger. This huge collective consciousness that was all intertwined and wrapped up in one huge psychedelic sense of otherness. We were beyond the squares the Nixons the suits the dead end middle class and business people. We were really on to something special. Had access, the key to really understanding things like what that monolith was in 2001. We were riding high. Young and in love with life and for peace and rock music and ending all war. The world didn’t have to be black and white (Leave it to Beaver -- you’re out!) there were colors man. So many and they could dance and swirl and so could we. Dropping acid was the way to get out by getting inside our own brains and seeing how they related to the universe...or some shit like that.
Man we were going to have fun.
And the truth of course was that I had no fucking idea what was going on, just that I wanted to be part of it and be able to keep doing what I wanted to, especially if it meant not really having to work hard at things except maybe playing soccer which I was really so good at and dug doing because of that and I was going to be a superstar and it was cool to play soccer because it wasn’t a sport for the squares or the Nixons or the suits but a European South American kind of thing that the squares didn’t really dig but it was so much cooler than baseball and football and basketball (which by the way I still dug but that was a separate issue although I’m not sure how I couldn’t think of all that shit at once you know plus there was still a bunch of that shit on TV that I liked to watch though I’d admit to few that I did). So I was part of something but my own person who’d do his own thing high. High. Hi.
Bleeding orange and rapid fire raspberry and digging the tools of the decadent likeness of the sapphire wonderings of later people and dances of rebellion and sticking those purple guitar notes into the darkness and creating the light and the bright and the out of the sight and I could and would and should and there was wood and carpet and larger and lime and fuck the slime of the establishment and no war in Vietnam or any place and me me me me me me I was the one. Let’s all have fun and if you don’t follow our grooviness then you’re part of the problem and the enemy unless you’re like my Dad or another Finn or a soccer player or one of my favorite athletes but not if you’re like a conservative. Blasting the rhymes and stopping the crimes against us. Privilege. Wap! Smash and grab the perfection of this wonderful being of beingness and I understand it all or at least how to get there. Another hit of acid. Okay?
But then there was the bad trip. Baaaaaaad indeed. Oh my, brain fly but crash this time. Couldn't cry about it. Too much terror for that. Now the loss of control was a loss of being me. I didn't like, didn't trust this world of ugly trippin'. Oh, I'd been warned. But that would be something that happened to other people. Not me, man. Those first trips were so mellow, so fine, so fun. Run. Jump. Hump. Who'd have thought it could go so wrooooooooooonnnnnnggg.
But I got out of it. Came down, at last. Normal again. Me again. The straight me. Would I dare try this again? Hmmmmmmmm. Maybe, I mean, why not. I couldn't have TWO bad trips. Certainly not in a row. I persevered. Trippy. Hippie.
Right on.
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