drugs
In a bar on a Saturday night in Oakland, a friend whose opinion I trust very highly tells me that if I don't try acid while in Canada, just because I'm scared, I'm an idiot. I think it's then and there that I decide I will probably try it; I don't have any demons that I can imagine coming to haunt me and make me have a horrible trip, but to be quite honest, if there is something to be discovered about myself, I'd like to know it. Besides, my friend says with confidence, it would take an overwhelming amount of the drug to really change my brain chemistry beyond repair.
In my friend's cabin in Canada, friends arrive in a flourish, I don't know any of them, but they are eager to see me, friendly and all insisting that I rebook my flight so that I can stay on the island with them for a few more days; they have just arrived, and I am already preparing to leave. Someone mentions doing the acid, the main event, that evening, and just like that, it is decided. A few hours after they have arrived, they have settled in, and I walk into the center room of the cabin, where everyone is huddled around with their fingers and tongues out, receiving, gently, harmless looking little drops. In a few seconds of indecision, I suddenly realize that this is something that must happen, something that I so badly want to happen. Someone I have barely just met, one of the brothers with piercing blue eyes, seems to be the expert, he is doling out differently-sized drops to everyone. "I want the tiniest drop imaginable," I announce to the room more than to just him, "I'm someone who has never done a psychedelic in her life, and I don't want to overdo it." He places a tiny drop of what looks like water onto my pinky finger; for a moment I watch it bob there, innocent, innocuous, dripping with potential. I place it onto the center of my tongue, wait before swallowing. I turn to my friend whose cabin it is--"do I just keep it there? Do I swallow?" She laughs, and I allow my mouth to fall back to its natural rhythm. My heart beats a bit faster for a few beats, but I feel as ready as I ever have.
Before it kicks in, we decide to take a walk around the island. Everyone has just arrived, after all, and they want to see where they will be tripping for the next ten hours or so. I feel a little drunk, but that's because I've been drinking all day, not because of the acid.
It's hard to tell when the trip really starts, walking across rocks and around mud and through dripping trees with a bunch of strangers. But all of a sudden, the sun feels warm, and I'm lying in bright green moss and surrounded by bright light, and I am happy. Not euphoric, really, but filled up, comfortably full. The moss is soft, like a fluffy shag carpet, and I want it to touch every single part of my exposed body. One of the new people comes over to me and asks if I am alright. I snap out of it, sit up, and pull twigs from my hair. I take a sip of my drink, glad to be there, and focused. "Oh yeah, I'm fine." I say. "I really don't feel that crazy."
We walk back at some point, but the next thing I remember is being on the dock, suddenly just being there, as if without context. It is the exact right place to be, sitting there, watching the water and the sky. Honey Harbor, this particular place in Canada, on a sunny day always looks like a landscape that Monet would have painted, but today, tripping on acid, it feels like being inside a painting. Like someone filtered out the hard parts of my vision, ran a paintbrush over the water and the sky to make them endlessly soft, melted them together like different colored icings on a cake. The water is sparkling, gently.
It's kind of unfair, really, that the most beautiful sunset of my entire week in Honey Harbor occurred while I was tripping on acid for the first time. For several hours, we stand on the dock, I play my music and exclaim each time a new song comes on that I love the music, and every ten seconds someone insists that everyone should look right here, right where they are currently looking, because it is the most beautiful thing they've ever seen. I hear everything at once, but not in an unpleasant way; it seems like each person's voice is layered overtop of another, the sound comes in gentle waves, one fading away as another laps against my ears. Half of the group is up by the cottage, a few hundred yards away, and I hear their laughter as if it is right next to me, can sense their own semi-euphoria as it runs parallel to my own.
It was a few days before the summer solstice, so it makes sense that the sunset seemed to last forever, each minute revealing another shade of pink or purple, gentle and spread slowly across the sky, like paint in a bowl of water.
It's the night of a full moon, and I don't feel like doing anything but dancing. There are certain things that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to get a picture of, and the moon on this night, is one of those things.
People have asked me since I've gotten back home to California, what did I see? And the answer is, I didn't see much of anything, except for what was already there. Being on acid, it didn't feel like walking next to a big purple monster, it felt like looking at the normal world through a kaleidoscope. It felt like colors bled into each other, like the natural world was softer, more natural. It felt like cycling through experiences, like each hour brought forth the beginning of the same trip, and I was happy to feel it each time. Don't you know what it feels like--to want to relive the same feeling over and over again, because as your body gets used to it you start to notice smaller things, hidden things, about the way that it feels?
I was most afraid that I was going to think, incessantly, about my ex. I didn't want my mind to go to that place of sadness, not when there was something else at the control panel. And yet, I didn't think of him once, except to remember how irrelevant he was to my current situation. He didn't know anything about this place, about these people, about the things that I was seeing. I've never felt such clarity, such peace, at least not about him, not about that.
That's the way that the world works, isn't it? You try things, and try people, and sometimes you get to hold onto things, but most of the time the world spins and the days keep coming and going, whether you are awake for them or not.
In my friend's cabin in Canada, friends arrive in a flourish, I don't know any of them, but they are eager to see me, friendly and all insisting that I rebook my flight so that I can stay on the island with them for a few more days; they have just arrived, and I am already preparing to leave. Someone mentions doing the acid, the main event, that evening, and just like that, it is decided. A few hours after they have arrived, they have settled in, and I walk into the center room of the cabin, where everyone is huddled around with their fingers and tongues out, receiving, gently, harmless looking little drops. In a few seconds of indecision, I suddenly realize that this is something that must happen, something that I so badly want to happen. Someone I have barely just met, one of the brothers with piercing blue eyes, seems to be the expert, he is doling out differently-sized drops to everyone. "I want the tiniest drop imaginable," I announce to the room more than to just him, "I'm someone who has never done a psychedelic in her life, and I don't want to overdo it." He places a tiny drop of what looks like water onto my pinky finger; for a moment I watch it bob there, innocent, innocuous, dripping with potential. I place it onto the center of my tongue, wait before swallowing. I turn to my friend whose cabin it is--"do I just keep it there? Do I swallow?" She laughs, and I allow my mouth to fall back to its natural rhythm. My heart beats a bit faster for a few beats, but I feel as ready as I ever have.
Before it kicks in, we decide to take a walk around the island. Everyone has just arrived, after all, and they want to see where they will be tripping for the next ten hours or so. I feel a little drunk, but that's because I've been drinking all day, not because of the acid.
It's hard to tell when the trip really starts, walking across rocks and around mud and through dripping trees with a bunch of strangers. But all of a sudden, the sun feels warm, and I'm lying in bright green moss and surrounded by bright light, and I am happy. Not euphoric, really, but filled up, comfortably full. The moss is soft, like a fluffy shag carpet, and I want it to touch every single part of my exposed body. One of the new people comes over to me and asks if I am alright. I snap out of it, sit up, and pull twigs from my hair. I take a sip of my drink, glad to be there, and focused. "Oh yeah, I'm fine." I say. "I really don't feel that crazy."
We walk back at some point, but the next thing I remember is being on the dock, suddenly just being there, as if without context. It is the exact right place to be, sitting there, watching the water and the sky. Honey Harbor, this particular place in Canada, on a sunny day always looks like a landscape that Monet would have painted, but today, tripping on acid, it feels like being inside a painting. Like someone filtered out the hard parts of my vision, ran a paintbrush over the water and the sky to make them endlessly soft, melted them together like different colored icings on a cake. The water is sparkling, gently.
It's kind of unfair, really, that the most beautiful sunset of my entire week in Honey Harbor occurred while I was tripping on acid for the first time. For several hours, we stand on the dock, I play my music and exclaim each time a new song comes on that I love the music, and every ten seconds someone insists that everyone should look right here, right where they are currently looking, because it is the most beautiful thing they've ever seen. I hear everything at once, but not in an unpleasant way; it seems like each person's voice is layered overtop of another, the sound comes in gentle waves, one fading away as another laps against my ears. Half of the group is up by the cottage, a few hundred yards away, and I hear their laughter as if it is right next to me, can sense their own semi-euphoria as it runs parallel to my own.
It was a few days before the summer solstice, so it makes sense that the sunset seemed to last forever, each minute revealing another shade of pink or purple, gentle and spread slowly across the sky, like paint in a bowl of water.
It's the night of a full moon, and I don't feel like doing anything but dancing. There are certain things that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to get a picture of, and the moon on this night, is one of those things.
People have asked me since I've gotten back home to California, what did I see? And the answer is, I didn't see much of anything, except for what was already there. Being on acid, it didn't feel like walking next to a big purple monster, it felt like looking at the normal world through a kaleidoscope. It felt like colors bled into each other, like the natural world was softer, more natural. It felt like cycling through experiences, like each hour brought forth the beginning of the same trip, and I was happy to feel it each time. Don't you know what it feels like--to want to relive the same feeling over and over again, because as your body gets used to it you start to notice smaller things, hidden things, about the way that it feels?
I was most afraid that I was going to think, incessantly, about my ex. I didn't want my mind to go to that place of sadness, not when there was something else at the control panel. And yet, I didn't think of him once, except to remember how irrelevant he was to my current situation. He didn't know anything about this place, about these people, about the things that I was seeing. I've never felt such clarity, such peace, at least not about him, not about that.
That's the way that the world works, isn't it? You try things, and try people, and sometimes you get to hold onto things, but most of the time the world spins and the days keep coming and going, whether you are awake for them or not.
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