Rummage around long enough in the grab-bag of memories and you’ll find something strange. This one, a party in college where everyone was in costumes and on LSD: a guy named Don with a sheet of acid dressed like Captain America but with long, goofy hair. Don later breaking down in the privacy of someone’s bedroom confiding in us, sobbing, looking pathetic somehow squinting through his eye mask with that cheap cape. The things you remember, 30+ years ago. Someone was always breaking down at some point it seemed; I always did on psilocybin. It’s like the drug worked the lining of my psyche and sometimes burned a hole through the finish, revealing some underlying thing I couldn’t see. Then it got to where I had to question why I was doing it if it always ended in tears. Or like with horror films, if I just didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

I loved the idea of dabbling with mushrooms again despite all that but feared 1) I’d open another crack in my brain, and 2) I’d relapse on alcohol and/or other drugs. It was better to just put all that behind you and focus on getting off to natural things, like going to Dairy Queen. The posters they had were psychedelic in their own regard if you looked at them right. Anything was. It just required imagination.

That party was the first time I bonded with my college chum Mike, and we ended the night back at his place (actually the morning), the first time I heard Miles Davis. Sketches of Spain. (Thank you Mike.) Years later at Dawn’s family reunion playing that record over lunch and being asked not gently by Dawn’s sister-in-law, Bill can we please play something else. And basically losing control of the aux after that. You can tell people who have done acid from those who haven’t.

That night was also the first time I heard the White Album end to end. In the bedroom with crying Captain America when the song Bungalow Bill came on and everyone looking at me during the chorus, singing “hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill, Bungalow Bill.” The way the songs jump cut to different scenes of Mike and me leaving the party for a walk across the golf course, an imagined run-in with the cops outside a public laundromat, the creepy lesbians we encountered later, why their lesbianism seemed oddly threatening to our suburban boy upbringing, the violent paintings in their house and dead plants with up lighting that exaggerated the jagged leaves and made creepy shadows. Mike and I literally ran out of there, went back to his place for a Bloody Mary and bong hit, the Miles Davis.

Was tempted to take more NyQuil but feared maybe it was bad to overdo that stuff. Though I like the abstract way images fan out in that drug-induced sleep, feels like the random pattern of cards drawn in the Tarot, like it must mean something if you just knew how to interpret it right.

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose

Tags: humor, Memoir