As I may have already mentioned, I waited until after graduating high school before experimenting with any illicit drugs. There had been a few instances with alcohol, one of which was pretty major, but overall I waited for the diploma.
The first time I got drunk my parents were out of town, but I don’t remember where they had gone. Regardless, I had the house to myself and I had my own car, but for some reason I had nobody to hang with. I decided to watch a movie and have a frozen pizza; Totino’s of course, still my personal favorite. The movie was one I was looking forward to. I had been a Jim Morrison fan since I started high school in Florida. I loved his live recordings and I had recently finished a book about him. Now I was going to see a portrayal of his life and all his escapades on the screen via the movie “The Doors”, starring Val Kilmner and Meg Ryan. Well, about halfway through the movie good old Jim was drinking from a bottle morning, noon and night. For some reason I became curious about what that would be like, so I paused the movie and went to the liquor cabinet. Not sure why, but I chose Stoly’s vodka, but the bottle was huge, maybe half gallon or whatever. It had a handle! Well, I liked Gatorade then, so I picked up my blue Gatorade and the bottle of vodka and went to the couch to finish the movie. From then on I tried to match Jim drink for drink.
The movie ended or some lapse in reality happened because I found myself outside in the front yard looking at my car. I had the keys on me and I was pretty new to driving, so all the ‘don’t drink and drive’ slogans were fresh in my mind. After staring at my car for a while I laughed at the silliness of me trying to operate that machine in the state that I was in and promptly fell over into the grass.
I woke up the next morning to the smell of my Totino’s pizza. Somehow I had gotten to my bed and somehow I had survived the night. The disgusting mass that was last night’s dinner lay there confronting me with every breath. I tried to move but that meant pain and suffering, so I was faced with a decision that I did not want to make: stay here with my face in vomit or stand up and try to get cleaned up. Honestly, I think that decision took me a while to make, but eventually I took action. Boy was I messed up though. I am glad to say that I do not remember the details of that hangover other than it lasting for three days. Yes, three days. I was supposed to pick up my parents from the airport on the third night and when they got in they called me and said they were ready to be picked up. I told them I was sick, to which they said I was to suck it up and come pick them up. That forced my hand a little, so I had to tell them that I was sick from being drunk and that I was not able to drive because of that. Well, that changed things, and not in my favor. They took a taxi, I lost my car and was grounded for a month or more, which was ultimately a royal pain for my mother because I was taking night classes at the university in Anchorage. We lived in Eagle River. It was a logistical nightmare for her I imagine. It was a half hour drive one way, my classes were about three hours so waiting around was out of the question. So basically, she had to drive me to class, go home, wait an hour then go pick me up again. I felt terrible about it. It was the last time I drank their alcohol.
Second semester of my senior year I moved in with my girlfriend Amyee Scarda. Sorry if I misspelled your name, all I remember was that it had a funny spelling. She lived with her father and younger brother, both named Joseph. Amyee’s parents were divorced and didn’t get along very well because of it. Still, her father worked on the slope, which meant he was gone for two weeks at a time, then home for two weeks. Not a very good schedule for a single parent to keep but it did earn pretty good money. Amyee was a stoner, but I didn’t partake at the time. Her father was, well, maybe I should just tell you what he did instead of labeling him. His job was a clean job, meaning they gave random urine tests and there was no alcohol up there. So, on the plane home he had his two drinks, I never found out what they were, but I’m guessing they were beer. Then, on the way home from the airport he would stop at the grocery store and buy beer and meat. Once he got home, he would clean out the refrigerator, complaining about the nonsense that went on while he was away, then he would fill the refrigerator in its entirety with Rolling Rock bottles. I don’t know how many cases it took, but every shelf, drawer and door shelf was packed with beer. The meat would then go in the freezer and he would begin his binge.
One night I decided to drink Jaggermeister with him. We talked and laughed and drank, and then it became a challenge and I realized he was measuring me with this moment; I was dating his daughter after all. I like to think that I held up alright next to a seasoned alcoholic, but ultimately I ended up face down on the floor not quite unconscious but not able to move. I remember him cursing at me and kicking me in the ass, but I just fell over. Then things changed as he put a blanket over me and carried me to the couch. The next morning came and I found myself producing acidic black orbs and like some kind of dragon with a hairball I spit them out into the toilet in succession, then rested and prayed for the pain and throbbing to leave my head.
Finally school was over. I didn’t walk across the stage because I didn’t care about the school or the people within it. None of them knew me and I knew such a small fraction of them that I felt confident I would not be missed. Amyee was a year behind me, so if things worked out with us then I would get to experience it all anyways.
Speaking of experiences, now that I was out of high school I was open to try whatever came my way, in a sense. I just realized that my first experience was before graduation with another girl named Shania, only the spelling was more eclectic than that. We had flirted with each other through high school but nothing every came of it. I presented her with gifts, such as a miniature table and chair set made out of wire and a small piece of birch bark on which I had painted a candle in a Chianti wine bottle. I had lots of little knick knacks, motorized gizmos that I made into artsy gifts. She seemed to enjoy them thoroughly, but she remained very distant. Until one night, Halloween, she invited me to her place to celebrate and go trick or treating. Now she lived on a mountain in Chugiak so this was sure to be different than the suburbs of Eagle River. I can’t remember what I dressed up as, but I made it to her house and for the first time I was able to see the collection of all of my gifts placed around her room. It was quite a collection, and I was pleased to see the oil painting on birch bark was holding up as well.
The night was a cat and mouse mixture of flirtations and rebukes. We snuggled on the floor to the beginning or end of some movie but we were not alone in the house so she bounced up and dragged me outside; we were going to go trick or treating now apparently. First we had to get down the road that led to her driveway though, nearly three blocks in the late October night in Alaska and the cold was settling in rather quickly. But before I could comment, she produced a long slender implement and flame. Then, without a word, she turned it around and handed me the slender tool and the flame piece. I studied the tool, a very well made but primitive pipe. It was loaded with something and I only assumed it was marijuana. I didn’t really want to take this turn with her, but here I was so I struck the lighter and put the flame to the pipe and inhaled. Nothing really happened. I handed it back to her and she did the same once she finished. I was determined to get some effect from this since I had come this far, so I put the flame to the pipe and drew long and hard on the mouthpiece, then tried to blow smoke but there was none. I was so ignorantly stoned that I put my mouth over the bowl of the pipe and inhaled in an effort to maximize my effect. Later I would learn that sometimes it’s just little things that let you know how messed up you really are.
After high school I started smoking pot on a regular basis, mostly with Amyee but soon I started smoking when she wasn’t around as well. I got a job at an oil change place in Eagle River called Qwick Lube. There I met many other stoners but one in particular named Mike Dillon. We started at the same store, him a month or so ahead of me. He ended up becoming manager and I ended up working the pit, also known as the large hole in the garage floor where all the waste oil and water ended up. It was a nasty job, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mike was just as much a connoisseur of cannabis as my father is of wine, but that story has to wait. There was a dealer who drove around in a blue Dodge pickup truck and it was just the perfect cover for any sales that were made. He would drive up and wait in line just like any other customers, but the employees who were looking would be alerted and orders were made. When the bays were empty, Jasper rolled into the bay and the doors were closed. He was a pretty cool fellow and he sold only the best. Occasionally he would run into mushrooms, but that was pretty rare.
One day I was looking pretty hard to get a hold of some pot and it was Mike who gave me Jasper’s number. Well, I called Jasper and explained who I was and what I was after. He was very mellow and suggested I come over. As it turned out we lived pretty close to each other. Anyways, I went up to the house and was greeted by his mom, who was very nice, and then Jasper came up behind her and invited me in. By in he meant up as we climbed the stairs into what I assumed was his bedroom. There were some reptiles in large glass cages and Jasper suggested I have a seat, which I did. We were seated at a glass table that was pretty low to the floor as I recall. He pulled out a large Tupperware container and opened it, flooding the room with the smell of weed, and then dumped its contents on the table. I was staring at a quarter pound of marijuana for the first time in my life and he began to pick at it and separate it into piles. All I was looking for was a little baggie’s worth, a quarter ounce, but here was this massive mound of green gold. He didn’t offer to smoke with me, but he did chat with me for about a half hour and then sent me home with two sandwich baggies full with the stuff he “couldn’t sell”. It worked just fine for me and my girlfriend.
Another story I’ll never forget: I happened to go over to Brett’s house one day, he was an assistant manager type at Qwik Lube. He lived in a mobile and I was able to see that there was a large number of people there at the time. I knocked and Brett let me in and told me to have a seat on the couch. The couch was more of a furniture system that wrapped around the end of the mobile home in a U shape. I was seated hear the end of the U and very near the door. Brett went back to his seat and went back to work. Apparently he wanted to get really high because he was loading a glass bong that was almost as tall as I am. Much to my surprise though, once he had it loaded he would hand it off to someone and they would inhale really quickly and then immediately lose control of their motor functions. Brett was there to catch the bong and begin loading it again while the person who just inhaled an entire bowl all at once was coughing his lungs out. I swear I had an agenda when I went over there, but I forgot it almost immediately when I went inside. I had been lost in my musings and whatevers that I almost didn’t notice the tip of the bong in my face when Brett handed it to me. Well, I did what everyone else did, I inhaled as much as I could stand and then went into a fit of coughing and lung spasms. Once that was over I leaned back into the couch. No, that’s not right, I melted back into the couch and floated on the cloud that the couch had become. I went in and out of consciousness or awareness, hell I may have fallen asleep at some point. I felt acutely aware that I had peed my pants but still they applauded and cheered when I finally sat up and began talking. I didn’t say much, mostly that I had to leave, but it was good enough for them. I got up shakily and thanked Brett then turned to the door and left. I felt my crotch once I was outside and to my surprise I was completely dry.
So by now Amyee’s father has decided to move out to Palmer, a city North of Eagle River by about a half hour drive, maybe an hour if there’s traffic. I had been given a rotation at Qwik Lube that needed me to work two days a week in Anchorage and two days in Eagle River, so this extra commute was not something I was looking forward to. Still, we made the move and Amyee and I had basically one half of the house to ourselves. I set up some sound system that my parents had handed down to me and I put my drums in the garage. I had trouble sleeping on mattresses back then, so we slept on the floor. Life could have worked here. I had a job, a girlfriend and a place to live. But then I got a call from my mother offering me free college with dorms included. That changed things. I think I had been at that house for maybe two weeks when I had a work buddy meet me at the house with his giant truck one afternoon. Together we loaded up my drums and whatever else I decided I needed that wasn’t nailed or tacked to the wall. That meant me leaving the sound system because there were wires everywhere and it was just too much to deal with anyways. Amyee showed up and instantly freaked out. I told my friend I would be out in a minute and went back in to deal with Amyee. She was a mess, that’s for sure. She wanted me to stay the night just so we could talk about it. But there was no talking about it, my choice had already been made. I hugged her and wished her well and walked back outside. There was her father drinking a beer sitting on the porch looking at me accusingly. “I have to go find myself,” I said to him, to which he replied simply, “I know.”
My friend and I departed and deposited most of my junk into a storage unit in Eagle River. The semester was not going to start for a while, so I was going to have some hard times ahead. I had a 1987 GMC S-15, which is basically a Chevy S-10, both are pickups and I don’t know why the distinction between GMC and Chevy. Anyways, I had acquired a metal top for the back of the truck and had done some work on the truck itself. I installed a three inch body lift to make room for the oversized mud tires. But for the next several months I was going to be living in this truck while I waited for the dorm and school to kick in.
So here’s how it worked: my father was still in the military so I still had access to the gym on base if I needed to take a shower. Otherwise, I worked four ten hour shifts and had a three day weekend. On the days that I had to work I tooled around town until I was tired and then pulled into whichever store I was supposed to work at the next day and slept in the cab in the parking lot. The managers knew to knock on the window to get me up. On my off days I would find a muddy path and go four wheeling down this path until I got bored and then I would pull off the trail, make a fire and cook dinner, hang out for a while and then go to bed in my truck.
So now that the stage has been set, I shall reintroduce Mike Dillon. Mike and his wife Sharice lived in Anchorage. One day at work I asked him if I could borrow his couch for a night, maybe take a shower. He said sure and gave me directions to his place. I showed up a little late to give him a chance to clear things with Sharice and it turned out that she was quite alright with the situation. She had started some chicken in the oven and there was some music going on in the room. Mike was in the beginning stages with his paraphernalia so I knew there would be some bud passed around soon. Mike loaded a bowl and then took a hit and passed it around the room. It lasted a few times and I felt quite stoned just from that. All the while Mike was going on about the particular strand of Cannabis that we were smoking and then he started comparing it to the one we were about to smoke. I should have said no thanks, that I was pleasantly high and needed no further herbage. But I didn’t. Instead, I smoked every time it was passed my way and my eyes crossed a little more each time. My teeth felt like wood, I remember this metallic taste in my mouth and I just could not function. Soon after that the timer went off on the stove and Sharice got up and prepared plates for everyone. I was handed a lump of tan that I assumed was part of a chicken, but for all I cared at that point it could have been a softball. I took a bite, a big one, a big crunchy bite. I chewed with my wooden teeth on this overly crunchy chicken and took another crunchy bite. I smiled at them and said, “It’s crunchy,” like it was a compliment. I don’t know why it never donned on me that I might be eating bones and I am not sure why it never donned on them to tell me either.
Time went on and I was introduced to others who smoked at the anchorage stores. There were several mechanics who were involved and I kind of stumbled upon a room full of them once when I followed a friend from work home, again to stay on his couch. There were a handful of other Qwik Lube employees, some of whom I never would have suspected that they used marijuana. There were some wide eyes when I walked through the door until my friend vouched for me and assured them it was safe. This friend I had followed home, I think I mentioned earlier that I feel the need to refrain from using his name yet I am having trouble coming up with a false one, I suppose that Jim will suffice. I knew Jim to be a bit of a wild card and I had just purchased two bags of fun, a bag of buds and a bag of mushrooms. I sat down with the others and pulled out my bud to share with them but I decided to save my mushrooms for when the crowd had thinned down a bit.
After a while the crowd diminished to a reasonable level and I decided to announce my other holdings. There were some empathetic moments in which people expressed their desire to participate and occasionally shared a story or two about the last time they ‘shroomed’ as it is often called, but it came down to just Jim and I sharing the bag. Surprisingly, a few of the other folks stuck around. It has been my experience that there is such a disconnect between people who are and people who are not tripping that the people who are not tend to just leave. This time the mushrooms were kind to me and there was mostly just a bunch of laughing. Jim and I tried to play a game of pool, but with distorted vision and active hallucinations accuracy was pretty much impossible. Later, his girlfriend came home and Jim and the other guests disappeared leaving me to finish my trip alone. I don’t remember what I did that night when everyone left but I like to think of that night as a good one.
A few weeks later I was in a different circumstance and was having trouble finding buds. Well, I had exhausted my resources but I remembered one of the guys from the night at Jim’s. He was rumored to have contacts that rivaled Jasper in quality but he was very closed mouth about it due to his position at the shop, I think he was an assistant manager or something. Well, one day I went looking for him at the only place I knew to find him: at work. He was in the back of the mechanic shop sitting in a car on a raised lift. Now I know that I speak softly, but I also have sensitive hearing so the two things together sometimes leads to me using inappropriate volume with my voice. There happened to be one or more vehicles running in the other part of the shop and at least one mechanic was revving an engine so it was pretty noisy. I supposed that was a good thing because of the nature of my question but apparently not. I asked him a series of questions regarding finding some marijuana, all of which were answered with a no. I thanked him anyways and then took off. I found myself working there a few days later, some kind of cleaning or whatever, I was no mechanic. I was wearing one of the smocks that they provide to the employees and I went to the office in the mechanic shop for some reason and as I got there this guy, the assistant manager of the shop whom I had just a few days ago asked if he would find or sell me marijuana grabbed my smock and pulled me close to him while he strategically placed a leg behind my legs and then he pushed me backwards. Well, I did not see this coming by any stretch and I went down hard. He had kept a hold of my smock and was now leaning over me staring me in the face. Eventually he let me up and I left him alone. It was a clear display of power both physical and social.
I didn’t really start experimenting with hallucinogens until I moved into the dorms at UAA. I went to college to become an artist and so I enrolled entirely in studio classes right from the start. I had taken a few studio classes while I was still in high school and because they had made an exception for me to get in I had bypassed any prerequisite courses needed to take the upper division classes. I am glad that it worked out that way for the most part because I was able to dive right in to the meat and potatoes of creating artwork. I think back now and wish that I had taken those foundation classes, but also I wonder if I would have gotten bored or frustrated with it had that been my starting point. Well, every one of my classes required a sketchbook to be kept throughout the semester, so I had four or five sketchbooks to keep track of. I have always been terrible at keeping journals or sketchbooks and the requirement made no difference; I was lucky to fill one in a semester. Regardless, I was always in some kind of drawing class and I absolutely loved to draw. I had dreams about it even. When I was having trouble with something I would be visited by a blank sketchpad floating in blackness while I slept. Page after page would be filled and turned revealing the secrets of drawing to me. The first one came when I was in high school. I couldn’t figure out how to shade things and I was supremely frustrated by it. Then I had this dream as I described and it just clicked. My drawings changed forever.
Why the tangent on drawing? Well, when I was at UAA I decided to use hallucinogens as a tool to enhance my skills as an artist. Since painting required so much prep work and clean up and sculpture required the use of dangerous tools that left drawing as my outlet of discovery. I don’t know how I got back into the market after I left my job and was in Anchorage rather than Eagle River, but I did somehow. There were several occasions at the art building in which I was tripping on psilocybic mushrooms. There were woods out behind the building with trails all throughout and once I shared a bag with a colleague named Brandon. I spent some time in the sculpture lab working on a drawing while he was in the painting room trying to paint. When we couldn’t take being alone anymore we would go find each other and eventually we decided to go for a walk in the woods. Well, he must have stopped at a locker because he had all kinds of stuff with him. There was snow on the ground and at some point he disappeared after handing me a ball of string. When he returned I was a complete mess tangled head to toe in this string trying to find an end. He tried to help but we were both helpless to laughter and he decided to lead on down the trail. Then I spotted it; a mark in the snow! Someone had spray-painted a trail in the snow. I got very excited and started following the trail while continuing to fuss with the string. There was an amazing end to the trail. A giant circle with the word ‘here’ painted in the center. When I saw it I giggled and jumped into the center of the circle with a triumphant cry, “Here!”
I was completely lost at that point, but Brandon made his artwork back in the woods so he led us back to the art building. I went back to work on my drawing until one of the students started yelling at me and another kept slamming the door. I figured that was my cue to leave, so I called my old friend Jason and had him come pick me up. I didn’t tell him I was tripping but he must have known something was up because he drove in all the way from Eagle River to get me. Once we hit Eagle River we went to a Blockbuster to get a movie. I had to tell him what was up during the drive, but he said he figured something like that was going on. Well, as we left the store I noticed that we were parked next to a car that belonged to a girl I went to high school with. Her name was Elise and we were in a poetry class together. She always sat next to her boyfriend, but things change, right? Wouldn’t you know it that not a moment after I remarked to Jason about the car Elise showed up and was unlocking her door. Jason must have egged me on because he opened his door and I started calling out to her. She recognized me and we started talking, kind of in an awkward I’m tripping and you’re not sort of way, but something must have gone right because she got into Jason’s Bronco and off we went. Our destination was Wasilla, another town about a half hour or so north of Eagle River. Jason knew of this old Marine bunker out there and we had gone there once before with some guns for target practice and to explore the multileveled bunker in the dark with naught but a flashlight, a shotgun and a nine millimeter. This time we were going out there to do some four wheeling. There was music and for some reason I was very talkative but Elise seemed to be entertained so all was good.
We almost got stuck once and I was scared that I would have to drive to get us out, but we made it and were back on our way to Eagle River. Now a good trip lasts upwards of eight hours and I was getting pretty close to the end. My visions were gone, but my mind was still in a cotton ball haze and I still had a body high. My senses had been regained enough to realize that this very pretty girl had likely gotten into this truck filled with guys for a reason, but I needed to know what that reason was so I asked a very strange question, “Who wants to go back to my place and take a shower with me?” Jason gave a lisp-y response but Elise replied very certainly, “I’ll go with you.” You being the operative word, not both of you, not you guys, just you, me, she wanted to go back to my apartment and have a shower with me. I was stunned, but not enough to keep me from figuring out logistics. Once it was settled Jason came to a halt on the highway, got out of his car and stripped to his boxers as he ran around on the frozen asphalt. I was tempted to join him, but I decided to keep Elise company. When he was finished, Jason got back into the truck and drove us to Blockbuster so she could get her car. Then we were to follow Elise to her place so she could get some things together I presume. Once she came back out I said goodbye to Jason and got into her car to continue my adventure.
We talked and caught up during the drive to my dorm. She drove a Saab, but it was different than the one she had in high school so she corrected me a few times. The poetry class was mentioned and she told me how much she loved my writings, even though I was judged harshly by the instructor. That class was had during my Jim Morrison adoration phase, so my poems were strange esoteric ramblings that hinted at the rhythms of those composed by Jim Morrison. Her car was a manual and for some reason I couldn’t see her leg move or it was too dark to see her foot activating the clutch or something, but I asked her a few times if her car had a clutch. What a silly thing to ask and I wonder now if she thought I was criticizing her driving. Regardless, we made it to the dorms and I escorted her into my apartment and then into my bedroom.
The inspiration for the shower invitation was twofold: one, I hadn’t bathed in days and was in desperate need of a shower, especially if there was to be any sort of intimate contact with a woman, and two, the act of taking a shower with someone completely obliterates the awkward stages of courtship that would otherwise happen in a bedroom with a fairly strange girl on the first night. I suppose she knew this also, or it could have just been that she had really long hair and had already taken a shower that day, but she opted out of the shower thing. I could not, however, so I left her in my room and went to shower. I hadn’t seen myself in some time, at least since the art building before the hike and the string, so seeing myself in the mirror was interesting to say the least. I had this wild look on my face and yes, my pupils were still very large and was that a series of tracers that I just saw? I learned at some point along the way that if you need to test yourself to see if you are still tripping, you probably are.
Elise and I shared a very wonderful night together. I had a painting that was in progress hanging on my wall and at various points throughout the night I would get up from bed and draw on it with my supply of pastels. We kind of dated for a while. I worked crazy long hours in the studio and craved solitude otherwise, but once in a while I would call her and she would come, until I stopped calling her. As I write these words I find myself painfully aware of how lonely I am, of how desperately I want the companionship of a woman and of how frivolous I have been with women in the past.
Speaking of the past, the one bit of insight that I gleaned from Amyee was that I should never ever do acid, that mushrooms were fine but acid would change my life forever. Well, that’s one hell of a warning but when I went looking for mushrooms again and all I found was LSD I took put my money on the table. LSD is cheap, effective and it lasts longer than mushrooms, but there’s no telling what is in the mixture and the high is completely different; a more synthetic version of psilocybin that leaves your brain feeling as though it has been ripped apart when the trip is over.
The first time I tried acid I took one hit of what was supposedly a double dipped batch. I bought several hits and shared them with my roommates. We talked and walked and had visuals galore. At one point some folks came over to smoke some pot with my roommates, I can’t remember if they were informed we were tripping or not, but I was invited to smoke. After several bowls were passed around I connected eyes with the goofiest roommate, whose name I can’t remember, and we laughed as we both realized that the marijuana was doing absolutely nothing for us and we probably had several hours left in the trip. Another walk and the television came on, this is the year that I quit watching television by the way. What a waste of a trip to sit there in front of the television. At some point the tube went off and the group announced that they were going to bed. I couldn’t imagine how they could go to sleep in that state, but I guess they did. So I was left alone to deal with the remnants of an acid trip and the aftermath that was to come. I went on another walk, but this time I went out into the woods behind the dorms. One of the memorable moments of this trip was when I found a bunch of rabbit tracks and decided that I would start ‘chasing bunnies that had already passed.’ When I got back to the dorm I realized that I did not want the trip to end, so I got the guy’s number and called for more. When he didn’t answer I looked at the clock for the first time since I started this trip and discovered the likely reason why he didn’t answer: it was no longer night, it was morning. I lay there face down on the living room floor fretting over the absence of drugs and the already beginning let down from acid. Uncertain if I got any sleep at all, I awoke the next morning feeling utterly broken. My brain throbbed as though something had reached in and stirred it into a pulpy mass and my spine was killing me.
Later on in the semester I met a few guys who were into anthropology. They had an apartment off campus and on my second visit I brought a large bag of mushrooms. This was a relatively unremarkable trip but it serves as a good lead in to the next story. While everyone was preparing to eat some mushrooms one of the guys was telling me how he used to place an entire strip of acid paper into a glass of orange juice, stir it up, drink it and just go about his day. We all sat in the living room, which was serving as someone’s bedroom, and were trying to figure out how to divvy up the bits in the bag. One of the guys decided he wanted to make some tea with his portion and I found an empty tuna fish can, rinsed it out and emptied the bag into the can and passed it around. I think I still had some in the bag and everyone was being very shy about taking their share since I was the only one who paid for them. I guess my point is that I ended up eating a lot more than everyone else and became increasingly confused as the conversation went on. These were anthropology and psych majors and they were talking about statistics and theories that were going way over my head. At one point the anthropology major started sharing this theory that the human races were interbreeding to such an extent that soon everyone would have brown skin. It must have been the way he said it but the comment sounded very racially charged to me so I spoke out, confronting him in a way. Now I had been busying myself with the large tie died sheet tacked up on the wall, so for me to pipe into the conversation at this point must have been a bit alarming. The guy who did the strips of acid and orange juice for breakfast said something to me that was both calming and diverting, so I backed down and let things roll. I don’t know what happened after that, not because I blacked out or anything, but because it was a long time ago and I can’t remember.
I did, however, take the orange juice and acid idea with me. I had only ever done the one hit of acid and I hadn’t thought of doing it during the day while going about everyday events. The next time I ran into LSD, I purchased four or five hits. By this time I had branched out from my purely art routine at UAA and was in an Intro to Philosophy class as well as an Anatomy and Physiology class, both of which met on the same day. The acid came on little squares of paper wrapped in tin foil, so before class I put two squares on my tongue and wrapped the others up. It was very warm outside, but still I put on some ridiculous hat with a brim, sunglasses and a scarf. By the time I got to my philosophy class I was at the peak of my trip. I took my seat and waited for the lecture to begin. The lecture topic for that day was Descartes, which I had read and thoroughly enjoyed, but was in no condition to discuss. I feel certain that the professor knew something was up with me but maybe he didn’t. He spoke with lavish hand gestures that left tracers everywhere they went, sort of like when a sound reverberates or echoes, that’s a good way to describe it, a visual echo. I kept quiet until he mentioned a little pink elephant that lived in the refrigerator. I don’t remember what his point was, but I do know that I piped up with an explanation in the little pink elephant’s defense, “If there is such an extraordinary thing as a little pink elephant living in a refrigerator, surely he has the ability to turn invisible at will to avoid being seen when the door opens.” He looked me and I think he smiled then said, “I’d love to discuss this with you another time, but for right now we need to move on.”
After class I took another hit of acid and wandered around campus until my next class. There was a few hour gap between classes so I believe I took another half hit before class. I showed up late and walked into a dark lecture hall and found a seat at the top left row a few seats away from someone. There was a slide show in progress and the transition from each slide went from the panic of darkness to the brilliance of bright light and imagery. I decided to take notes but ended up focusing more on drawing than on writing, so my notes were relatively ineffective. Needless to say, I left that class early and made my way across campus to the arts building. Once I was back on my own turf I took a chance at looking in the mirror at yet another wild sight. My disturbing portrait was framed neatly by crawling walls and amoebic shapes making their way along the surface of the mirror. I rewrapped my scarf, pulled on my hat and ate another piece of paper then went on my merry way. There is no way for me to recount what happened throughout the rest of that day but I can tell you that my pace of consumption was such that I maintained a peak high for about twelve hours. Now you might be thinking about that eight hour trip I mentioned with mushrooms but that is start to finish with about one to two hours of peak in between. This was twelve hours of nonstop no escaping it insanity. It was delightful, it was intense, it was horrific and it was a blast.
The next time I tripped was near the end of the semester. My drawing instructor had given out the final assignment and I had a great idea and some great reference material. The assignment was to draw a self portrait in the nude. There was not a chance in hell I was drawing myself nude, but I did have some great photos of a very beautiful woman posing naked on the modeling stand. At the time I was also taking an introduction to printmaking class so I pretty much had the codes to get into every studio but the photo lab, and I didn’t need anything there anyways, so this world was my oyster. There was, however, a curfew at the arts building. At 2am the campus police, who happened to be the same as Anchorage police, came by to do a walk through the building to make sure everyone was out. There were great tables in the print lab so I decided to stage my drawing event there. I had a bag of mushrooms, a large piece of drawing paper, a photo and a handful of woodless pencils so I wouldn’t have to sharpen very often. The image was an overhead view of the model in the middle of a sit up so her abs were all bunched up and her legs and arms were at funny angles. My plan was to draw the model and then insert a self portrait in the thigh area and then see where the trip would take me. I started drawing her body and once I felt I had a good start on things I ate the mushrooms. When they kicked in I was nearly finished with the model and just starting to work on my face. I still had to draw the cloth that she was laying on and create some patterned carpet and some other things.
A few hours later and I was nearly done. The print lab was on the third floor and had an excellent view of the parking lot so I saw the police car drive up in front of the building. I had turned off most of the lights, but I figured there was a solid chance of him coming up to check the room. I knew the officer, but I was on drugs on campus after hours. Not a good position to be in when confronted by a policeman. My stuff was sprawled out all over this huge table and I kept working, frantic to finish with the little time I had left. There would be no way to go back into this drawing, so this was it. I must have heard a door or something because I stood up and went into the back room to hide. There was plenty of equipment to hide from, but I decided that it would be best not to confront this cop hiding in a dark room, but rather in plain sight out in the open. He entered the room as I exited the dark back room, so I’m sure I gave him a start. He stopped and started a conversation with me but I went straight to my drawing and started cleaning up. It must have been the nature of the drawing that guided his questions because he started asking me these open ended subjective questions that can and should be very poignant to an artist. For example, “How do you know when it’s finished?” On any given day I could’ve had a long conversation with him about that very thing, but now I was out of my mind on drugs and struggling to clean up my mess. Somehow I passed the inquisition, but then came the physical examination: stairs. There was an elevator, but it was usually reserved for faculty and people with physical impairments so we had three whole flights of stairs to go down. Of course he followed me and of course I misjudged the first step. I felt like I had just stepped onto a springy cloud where things such as weight and gravity had little importance. He did not stop me though, we continued right on outside the front doors of the building where he bid me goodnight as I walked to my truck. Rather than having him follow me out of the parking lot and to the dorms I decided to wait him out while my truck warmed up. Once he left then I took off and went home, thankful that I did not get arrested that night.
I have tripped many times more than the few instances that I have written here, however, the last time I did I remember starting out similarly to the last time; with a piece of nice paper, a handful of woodless pencils and a bag of mushrooms. I ate the mushrooms and started to draw. This time one thing was missing: a reference photo. I was leaving the drawing to my wild imagination during this drug induced occasion. There was some sort of monster developing on the page, horrible and fierce yet cool and imaginative. I was sitting at the dining table in the dorm and with just the kitchen light on and blackness outside I could see my reflection in the window. This monster on the page started spooking me as my hallucinations took life. I needed to get out, but there was no way out now. I still had a good seven hours of what was turning out to be a nightmare. Quickly I ran to my room and found the phone and a number. Surprised that my coherence was at a level that I could still do so, I dialed a friend’s number. It was Natalie, a beautiful woman who had been modeling for us for a while and whom I had become friends with. It was oh so late at night though and my phone call woke her up. In response to her hello I said, “Hi, Natalie, it’s Josh. I just ate a bag of mushrooms and I’m all alone, will you tell me a story?” She started in with an impromptu story about a girl who was asleep and having very nice dreams when suddenly the phone rang and ruined everything. I got the hint, but I was in a real situation here, on the verge of a very bad trip, so I muscled through or finessed the situation and convinced her that I was serious. She was very kind and took a moment to compose herself while dropping serious ‘you owe me’ hints, then she began to formulate a magical tale. I don’t know how long she talked and I listened but I seem to recall it working. Afterward, I went outside for an extended period of time and, since it was winter again, began chasing rabbits that had already passed. I made it to this beautiful clearing in the woods. The world was silent, the sky was this foggy glow from the lights of the city refracting throughout the Anchorage bowl and the trees were swaying in the wind. I have never felt more connected to Earth than I did at that moment. It was like I had some sort of empathetic link to nature. A story popped into my head just then. It was a romantic tragedy that involved a guy who couldn’t talk and a girl he had fallen in love with. They developed a unique relationship but he desperately wanted to tell her how he felt about her. The two kept their separate homes; it was just a walk through the woods to find each other anyways. One day he was walking through the woods and came upon a clearing much like I had just done and saw a rabbit. To this rabbit he smiled and said, “Well hello there.” He was so shocked that he had actually spoken the words but so excited at the same time that he jumped and screamed for joy. But not a sound was made except for him landing in the snow. The tragedy is that he wasted his one opportunity to speak on a rabbit in the forest. The romance is that she was never bothered by his inability to speak, she loved him just the same.
On my way back home I stopped in the parking lot to look at a sign. I was checking to see if the letters would move to gauge whether or not I was tripping. Well, remember what I said: If you’ve recently taken drugs and you’re checking to see if you are tripping, you probably are.
All throughout this time I was smoking marijuana on a regular basis. I don’t know how I afforded it or how I got it, but I did. My hair went to the middle of my back, I wore flannel shirts and Birkenstocks and I was an artist. I guess I fit the part pretty well. Then I moved to Florida to go to art school and things changed. I quit wearing flannel but I kept my hair and my sandals. I guess it was my studio habits that attracted the other students to me. The first semester I was only allowed to take one studio class, that being a drawing class. Well, I was used to doing art all day every day and being graded on it, having it criticized and displayed in the hall as well. How was I supposed to deal with one three hour class twice a week for the entire semester? Well, I’ll tell you how. I became manic and worked in the studio night and day. My routine was to stay up working for three days solid, sleep for a day, then stay up for two days, sleep and repeat. I created over thirty drawings that semester, some 4’x8’, but mostly the standard 24”x36”. All of them took 20 to 40 hours to make.
I kept a sketchbook for the first time that semester. I drew in it and wrote strange things, I even wrote backwards for a while, with a dip pen no less. I am fairly ambidextrous but I wanted to increase the familiarity of holding a pencil or pen in my left hand so I started doing timed sessions in my sketchbook during which I would draw a continuous line with my left hand for the duration of the session. The end result was immaterial, as far as image was concerned, the point was the practice time with my left hand. It may have worked or it may have been a waste of time. I can draw with my left hand but not very well. I can mimic the marks I make with my right and I can draw with both hands simultaneously, the right working on detail while the left fills in areas that need massive amounts of line.
For a while I saw the other students as distractions. They stayed in their studio at night and I stayed in mine. I added a workout routine to my schedule in the studio. Whenever I needed a break from drawing I would go and do fifty or a hundred pushups and sit ups. When that got easy I put my feet up on the table and did pushups at an angle. Between that and having only a bike for transportation I was in pretty good shape physically.
One of the guys from the other studio came and offered me a joint, so I took him up on it. We sat on the concrete wall of the bayou behind the studios and smoked away. I let him talk mostly because he seemed to have a lot to say. I needed to get back to work but he thought that his joint bought him some time with me and his artwork. Reluctantly I conceded to enter the other studio to see what he was working on. His name was Ryan and he was a raver and his artwork showed it. He had a job at some club in Sarasota and his art was all about the trippy world of the club scene. I just couldn’t get into it. I took my artwork too seriously at the time to allow any of this party nonsense into my life. Sure I did drugs, but I thought I was using them as a tool for advancing my skill as an artist. Drawing can be a very isolated and boring exercise and it can be a very slow process. Smoking marijuana afforded me a hyper-focused stupor like trance in which I was able to replicate the same mark thousands of times to build up an image. Meanwhile my imagination wandered around and roamed the collective consciousness picking up random thoughts and ideas to ponder. I was training myself to perform this task called art and this raver was wasting my time. I decided to get back to work before I lost my high, so I said some nice noncommittal things about his work and took my leave.
Ryan was a senior who had decided to take me under his wing, so to speak. He introduced me to many of the other seniors among them was Ralph and Marcy. Ralph made subtle paintings with acrylic paint on raw stretched canvas. The catch was that he almost always ate acid before painting, so he was actually painting his hallucinations, which usually ended up as burst patterns of amoebic shapes painted in highly saturated colors and quite often there was glitter paint involved.
I don’t remember what Marcy did but I ended up at a show that she was in and she was wearing a very sexy backless green satin blouse, jeans, boots and a very stylish cowboy hat. After looking over the artwork I made my way to her and started a conversation with some exceedingly flirtatious dialogue. She replied similarly and then invited me to go out to a bar with her and some other seniors after the opening. I agreed, the opening closed and we gathered and drove off to the bar. Now keep in mind that I am, or was, far from a social butterfly, so the fact that I had talked to a pretty girl that I didn’t really know in a public gathering was pretty far out of my realm of things to do, but there I was. Now, I had discovered some time ago that beer gave me a headache bordering on migraine status, so if I wanted to participate in the drinking at a bar I was left with liquor. What I should have picked up on was how difficult it is to pace yourself when you are drinking shots rather than bottles or mugs of beer. The bar was pretty small. There was a horseshoe shaped bar, a single pool table and a handful of tables along the walls. I started with whiskey, moved to tequila thinking that everyone would join in and then jumped right into a round of Jagermeister for everyone. Nobody wanted any and I couldn’t let it go to waste. By then I wanted to play pool but could barely walk or stand. I stumbled over to the pool table with Marcy right beside me and I fell into the pool table when I arrived. Well, there was a group of people currently occupying the table, a couple of very big guys and their girlfriends. They were not pleased with my interruption and I thought for sure I had a fight on my hands, only in my state it would have been more like an ass kicking than a fight. Marcy managed to fend them off and coerce me back to the table. I decided I was finished and went to take care of my tab but when I found out how much it was I realized I was in a bit of a bind. I had racked up a seventy five dollar tab in a little less than two hours at a bar and now I needed someone to vouch for me while I went to the ATM around the corner.
I paid my bill and then took off out the door on foot. I don’t remember if anyone went after me, but I do know that I ended up walking home. I would like to point out now that the school I was attending is a very wealthy art school with a predominantly white population that was built in the very center of a ghetto in Florida. I was renting a garage converted into an apartment/cottage about three blocks from the school. The bar I was now walking from was probably three or four miles from my cottage and it was damn hot so I had taken my shirt off to boot. The drug dealers of the area rode around on bikes asking anything that moved “Are you straight?” That meant, ‘do you need crack?’ There was usually a swarm of bike riders around this time of night. I guess this was my lucky night because nobody bothered me and I made it home safely.
Fortunately Marcy’s impression of me was not terribly jaded by that first night. We went out again with the same group but I had other things on my mind than drinking, so we cut out early to go to the beach but ended up at my place instead.
By this time I was seeing the school’s psychiatric nurse practitioner, Maria. She was convinced that I was Bipolar and that I was having mixed episodes, meaning I had all the symptoms of mania without being able to enjoy it because of my dark and depressive thoughts and emotions. We had tried a few different medications, Wellbutrin, Abilify, Depakote all to no real benefit. I’ll never forget the first time I tried Prozac. Maria had given me some samples of a starting dose and I waited until nightfall when I was on my way to the studio to take it. By the time I got to the studio I felt like I was floating on a cloud. I stepped inside the huge empty space and spread my arms out like an airplane as I walked around the studio. I felt elated. The warning labels said to avoid alcohol while taking the medication and the side effect chart listed difficulty reaching orgasm among other things. Either I didn’t read the warning label or I chose to ignore it because drink I did and orgasm I did not.
I failed that drawing class with the teacher’s comment that ‘I wasn’t ready to learn’ stuck in my mind forever. Winter break came and I went back home to Alaska, where my parents set me up with a psychiatrist and a therapist to manage my new diagnosis.
The new semester had begun and I was back in a painting class with the same professor that failed me in the drawing class. I don’t remember what other classes I was taking but my situation had been progressing and I was on a steady decline. I had a job as a shop assistant/lab monitor at the wood shop and sculpture lab and as part of my training I asked how to use the wood lathe. It was this huge machine that nobody used so I started using it when I was on duty and also when the shop was officially closed, seeing as how I had the keys. Once I got to a certain level of skill I began making wooden pipes which I would decorate with leather cords, feathers, bones and beads. They were no doubt made for smoking marijuana and word got out that I was making these cool pipes so I started making sales and trades. I met a dealer and traded him a very nice pipe for a very large bag of buds.
One night in February of 2000 I sat at my desk in my little cottage smoking dope and reading frantically. I had punched out the mirror in the bathroom and the shards still lay there in the sink. The place was a mess and so was I. It had been at least a week since I had bathed or changed clothes and I had been hearing strange things in my apartment; voices, radio static? I don’t know what it was but it just added to my stress. I began thinking of kitchen knives and how they would interact with my skin and that’s when I decided to call Maria. It was very late but she answered her phone. I told her that I was thinking about hurting myself. Her response was to give me a choice: “Josh you can either take a cab to meet me at the hospital or have the sheriff come and pick you up.” I chose the cab, but they wouldn’t drive into the neighborhood at this hour so I had to ride my bike to a gas station and catch the cab there. The cab took me to one hospital and we found Maria. She leaned into the car and explained that the hospital was closed and told us to go to a different one and she would meet us there.
I don’t remember who paid for the cab but I have a feeling it was Maria; I was just too out of it at that point. We waited in the Emergency Room for some time and Maria helped me fill out the paperwork. Finally we were led into a small exam room and told to wait. I felt like it was the end of the line for me to be honest, I was scared. I looked at Maria and asked her if she would hold on to something for me. When she nodded yes I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small wooden pipe that had been well used and handed it to her just in the nick of time. She scrambled to put it in her purse as the door opened and someone came in with a big needle ready. I was sweating from the fleece jacket I was wearing and I knew I was going to have to reveal some filthy part of my body to this person and Maria in short order. I asked what was in the shot and she explained that it was Haldol, that it was to calm me down or something like that. She gave me the shot and the next thing I remember is being on the phone with my mother, but I don’t know what we said. Then another time Maria was there and she asked me if I needed anything. All I could think of was tobacco so I told her what kind to get. The next time I saw her she had a handful of cans for me. That gave me an excuse to go outside to the smoking patio, a concrete porch with a wooden fence as the only thing separating me and the other patients from a lush green field of grass and the world beyond. Even though they had been giving me very strong drugs I had been working out for a long time and I was convinced that I could bust through the fence. I’ve always been careful with my hands, so rather than punch the board with my knuckles I hit it with my palm. Now this fence was the kind that has boards both inside and outside so that there is a little bit more of a view. I was hitting a board on the outside from the inside repeatedly thinking surely the nails or screws would give. The other patients scattered as soon as I made first contact. I don’t know what I would have done if I had knocked out that single board, there surely wasn’t enough room for me to fit through the gap.
From then on I was considered a high risk patient and was kept on a separate wing of the unit. The smoking area was much better though, it was easily quadruple the size and with no roof so the sun could shine down on me as I sat there chewing tobacco. The downside was the concrete walls, no breaking through those suckers, but even so I was accompanied by an escort whenever I went out there. I was in that hospital for close to ten days and my memories account for maybe a few hours. I was eating beef stew once, the only meal I remember, when my mouth, tongue and cheeks quit working. I spit out the meat and went to the nurse’s station to pose my complaint. The response was that I was having a reaction to a medication and the solution was to take a new medication, egads! There are some fuzzy memories of being in a doctor’s office talking about things I can’t recall, but overall I find it remarkable how little I know about what went on in that place while I was there.
The doctor decided to Baker Act me, which meant that they could keep me against my will for up to thirty days. My parents weren’t going to have any of that nonsense, so they cancelled their ski trip and came down to bail me out. The last I remember about that situation is walking on the beach barefoot with my family and talking on and on about the architecture of the city. Apparently they decided that Haldol was not just for the initial intake because they kept me on it for the duration of my stay along with a host of other drugs. Man what I would give to see those medical records…
After that hospitalization I realized what a detrimental factor drugs and alcohol were to my mental illness, so I decided to sober up. In February of 2010 I will be ten years sober.
