People might say marijuana is a “gateway” drug, but I believe cigarettes, tobacco to be far more so of a “gateway” drug.
Tobacco was the first drug I tried. I remember, at age 11 or 12, the first cigarette I smoked; a Marlboro light that I’d stolen from my stepsister. It tasted so smooth, so good, its flavor, and it gave me this euphoric buzz. I loved the smell of tobacco before it was smoked too, the smell of cigarettes in the pack. I’d sniff and breathe in the fragrant pouches, the cigarette packs I’d find while snooping in my stepsister’s room when she wasn’t around.
Smoking cigarettes made me want to try more drugs, too, harder drugs, and seeing so many drugs done in movies, on TV, drugs to me looked so cool… So rock n’ roll…
I’d been smoking cigarettes, regularly, starting at age 13, then took to weed, smoking a joint, on the roof of an abandoned building, with my friend. My friend had gotten the joint off his older brother that night, which, coincidentally, was Halloween. That first time I’d smoked weed, I didn’t feel it, didn’t catch much of a buzz.
(Perhaps it would have been better if I did, because my friend and I went out smashing pumpkins afterwards, and we trashed a Halloween display a little girl had set up, and the little girl watched us destroying it, from her living room window, and was traumatized, ran and told her parents, and somehow they knew we did it.)
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent ((The parents, I guess, must have seen us, or the little girl knew us, and the girl’s parents called our parents, and her parents berated our parents, saying the little girl was having nightmares, night terrors about us kicking and smashing her beloved pumpkin she’d carved, and the girl’s parents threatened to call the police if we again trespassed and attacked their property… If only that weed would have been stronger, maybe none of this would have happened… I wonder if to this day, the girl still has nightmares about that, and if she has a Halloween phobia…)) The second time I smoked weed, the buds were far more potent, I guess, and it hit me like a brick to the face. It was almost as strong as an acid trip. I felt like God and saw wonderful colors, everything silhouetted in neon green lines. It was intense but somehow peaceful. It was chill and beautiful.
I’d had much better experiences with weed than I had with drinking. Weed just mellows me out, though at times does make me lazy, catatonic, and while drinking never made me violent, like it did to others, it did sicken me if I drank too much.
Like the first time I got stinky drunk. There was a Japanese restaurant around the corner from my house, and I’d seen they’d kept stacks of beer, in six packs, and boxes, near an exit door in the back, next to the bathrooms. My young criminal mind, my demons knew it would be quite easy for someone to sneak a six pack from there, either in a backpack or stashing it outside the backdoor.
I chose the latter. I’d gone there with my friend and his parents and had went to the bathroom and afterwards had quickly grabbed a sixer and stashed it outside the backdoor. Then I made up an excuse to leave early, went back behind the restaurant, grabbed the sixer, stole off running like a bandit. I must have been 13
at the time.
Later that night, we, two other friends and I, drank the beers. The beers, Budweiser, cans, were warm, and tasted like piss. As does all Budweiser, in my opinion, but it’s even worse warm.
My friends hated the stuff, gagged, contorted their faces and spit the suds out after only a few sips, then chucked their cans into the garbage and quit imbibing.
But me, I was able to stand the horrific taste and guzzled my can empty, then put the rest to my face and downed the three remaining cans in quick order.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent At first, I didn’t feel anything. I remember us, my friends and I, hanging at this playground, on the swings, talking shit, joking around, smoking menthol cigarettes, which I’d taken a liking to...
Then it hit me, the drunkenness, hard, and, having trouble standing upright, I decided to stumble home, which was only a couple blocks away, so I could lie down and pass out. But before I could make it too far, I felt an acidic burst, a powerful surge in my throat. I clutched my stomach before I keeled and purposely vomited on the front door of the community recreation center I’d been staggering by.
On the short walk home, I must have vomited three or four more times. On the sidewalk. In a front yard or two. Once on a car, I think.
I can’t remember if it rained later that night, but I hope it did, to wash away the puke, or else my neighbors, and a janitor or a city worker had some terrible surprises awaiting them the next day... I can only imagine the contorted looks of horror coloring the faces of the recreation center staff when they arrived to work the next morning, seeing that front door covered in chunky pink puke…
More puke arrived, for me, when I came home, and I upchucked so many times that my stomach emptied. Then I dry-heaved a handful of times until I finally passed out. I learned a lesson from that experience, though, and have since only thrown up (from alcohol) maybe once or twice more and nothing to that extent. I learned that night the power of alcohol, and even if I’ve abused it, I’ve always known my limits with the potion and have always recognized the point in which I’m happily drunk and in no need of more.
Alcohol I’ve done in moderation, but weed I’d smoked voluminously, for many years. I loved how it mellowed me out, relaxed me, helped me sleep. I’m elated that it’s legal in many states. It’s long overdue. It should be legal everywhere, I posit, that beautiful plant…
Acid I’d done a few times and loved, but it lasted too long. At a certain point, I just wanted it to be over. I only had one bad trip, after taking a blend of LSD that was a carbon copy of one of the most powerful batches from the 1960s.
It was even supposedly concocted by an old hippy dude chemist from Cali, a Deadhead, touch of gray, ponytail type. And damn, this stuff was potent. And
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent clean. It wasn’t cut with any strychnine or other impurities. It was uncut, pure LSD.
The first part of my trip on it was amazing. I saw crazy colors and hung out with a group of my friends, having a blast. We were tripping balls and watched the movie “Look Who’s Talking” with the talking babies, and it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. I think one really does have to be tripping on quality LSD to understand that film. Seriously.
But, tragically, I had to return home because I’d gotten Saturday morning detention for skipping school. And I did. I left the comfort of my friend’s warm house and ventured out into the dark, cold night.
On the walk back home, I saw many older people returning from work, all were dressed in suits and ties and trench coats because it was a slightly chilly January evening.
The trench coat people all looked the same. Like part of an organization. The True Trench Coat Mafia. And their cars, the cars on the road, their burning headlights, in the black of night, they all looked the same, looked evil, like the eyes of Florida panthers that’d been infected by nuclear radiation.
When I got back home, I was alone in my room.
It was terrifying, though, being alone, seeing such wild images as I was hallucinating. I was seeing floating discs and orbs, explosions of bright bold neon colors, and everything in the room appeared as if it were melting. The neon green lines, encasing and silhouetting everything were back, and more effulgent than ever. But the most horrifying thing was my blanket. My blanket looked like a dark-faced monster, a demonic octopus that was trying to eat me.
I just lay in my bed, curled into a ball, shivering, hoping the blanket monster wouldn’t eat me. I stayed up most of that night, huddled in a mass of panic, thinking my room, the walls would melt into me, wash me away like a wave. That my blanket really was a monster. And I kept hearing strange voices in languages I didn’t understand but I knew were malicious. Maybe were alien communications.
That maybe the aliens would invade, and I’d be the first to know.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent There was a point in this, when I first got home, too, that I received a telemarketing call from a person selling vacuum cleaners. Enraged, I cursed him out. I thought he could be one of the trench coat people or a nuclear panther and I hurled invective at him.
He yelled back at me, saying he knew where I lived, and so I panicked later that night that the vacuum cleaner man would show up, crawl in through my bedroom window, brandishing a vacuum cleaner like a machine gun. That he’d attack me with the vacuum cleaner, use it to suck away my soul. The telemarketing motherfucker could have been a trench coat vampire or one of the aliens.
I did finally sleep, late late late into the night or early at the asscrack of dawn, I slept, and woke to my mother slapping on my door and screaming my name in a shrill, belligerent voice. She demanded I go to Saturday morning detention and that I be more of a normal human being.
Dragging myself from my bed, I complied, if only to get her to leave me alone, stop hearing her shrill voice, her shrieking of my name and her berating me.
When I got to Saturday morning detention, I was still damn near tripping balls, but had settled down some, was mostly feeling hungover. Alcohol has never given me too much of a hangover, but acid does. The next day after I trip, I have throbbing headaches, body aches, feel like utter shit.
In the Saturday morning detention, in my math classroom, sat four or five other kids. One was a gang member, a crack dealer who’d pulled a gun on my friend and threatened to kill me at one point, though through a mutual friend, we’d patched things up, as I had nothing to do with the beef he had with my friend (that friend I’d fallen out with, too, later, partially because he was a dumbass and partially because he’d gotten violent crack dealers angry with me).
The crack dealer, slouching in his chair, his head thrown back, was casually telling a story of how, at his other school, he and five of his classmates had raped a pretty young female teacher after school. He smiled as he told the story, as if he were proud of it. It disturbed me and the other kids there, visibly disturbed us all, and being so fucked up, if I had a gun, I might have shot him.
I don’t know what happened to that kid. I’m guessing with his trajectory in life, he’s dead or in jail, and he deserves to be.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent The Saturday morning detention, that morning, that night, was a fucking buzzkill, a real downer after what had begun as a tremendous and joyous acid trip.
Though, aside from that unfortunate occasion, my other trips were far better, usually involving friends, sitting around, listening to music, playing video games or watching movies and laughing our asses off…
Mushrooms I had only positive experiences with, had taken a few times, and they’d make me laugh like a lunatic, even harder than LSD, but often they’d make me catatonic, but in a good way, a fun way, shrouding me in a cocoon of tranquility, relaxation. They never gave me a hangover, either.
Once my friend and I, the one who’d smoked my first joint with me, we ate shrooms and sat in the woods, watched nature. We were with a couple other friends, who weren’t tripping, and they left us out there, went to pick up food, and came back to get us, 15 minutes later. It’d seemed, though, like they’d been gone for years, when they returned, and that was okay. We were so happy to see them, hugged them like soldiers returning from war…