I’m positive this one is going to offend some people, but you know what? I don’t care. I’m not here to tiptoe, and quite frankly some of what I’m about to say appalls me to, so get in line and join the club. I’m here to proclaim the Truth of God’s redemption in my life, and if you can’t handle it, you can’t handle Truth. Grace, love, and redemption are all crucial to my story – I wouldn’t be able to tell it on such a public scale if God had not rescued me from it. So if by now it’s not clear to you that my drug experience is only meaningful because of God, then you haven’t been listening. I’m just gonna tell it like it happened, no embellishments. Drugs do nothing but cloud and corrupt, but that doesn’t mean God disappears. Jesus was in my heart, and He was there that day even as I stepped into the sin of acid in a horribly misguided attempt to witness to a dear friend.
First, let me tell you about the first time I took acid. Two single-dropped tabs, in a safe environment. It lasted about 9 hours. During this trip, I decided that acid should be called “gloop” because it felt lke the entire world was this blanket of hugs that wanted to envelop me in its fold. I actually found myself unable to speak, and embraced it for a little bit, but then rebelled. I dug my feet in because I knew my ability to describe was central to what makes me ME. I wasn’t going to let the “gloop” absorb me. There is something very distinctly “other” about acid. Call it a presence, an entity, a force, but the world wants to wrap you up, not because you’re you, but because you’re food. You lose your individuality on acid, and I refused to let that happen. It’s like the world was made up of trillions of little worm-like worldlings all homogenously glooped together and wanting me to join. I refused. Oh, I still tripped, but I would not lose myself.
See, what shrooms do is make you feel far far away. Everything is a planet, and you are a rocket ship. The longer you stare at a concept or an object, the huger it becomes as your rocket ship descends to the surface of the planet to explore, until the object/concept is all around your mind’s eye and it loses its meaning as a whole because you are only analyzing parts. Shrooms take you up close to one thing at a time. Acid tries to make you one with everything. They are both dehumanizing, because to function as distinct individuals, we need to be able to be close to each other, and we need to be distinct to be able to help. I preferred the shrooms high because the power over words felt more natural, but in truth they are both virulently dehumanizing.
Eventually, though, it didn’t much matter whether it was shrooms, acid, or ecstasy. I got high when I could and how I could. After my first acid trip I told Dalton and Rocky about my issues with it, claiming I probably wouldn’t do it again. Ha. Yeah, right. Even though Jesus never left me, I was indulging in sin, and its very nature enslaves you. You can’t control it. You most certainly believe you can. I know many people who at this very moment indulge in acid, shrooms, and ecstasy recreationally under the impression they control it. They wouldn’t do it if it felt out of control. Yet that is what is so insidious about drugs and sin – it gives you the feeling of control while it gleefully pulls all your strings.
That fateful weekend arrived. One of my friends was visiting town. We’ll call her Karen. She had heard all about my escapades and wanted to try tripping as well. Being a pagan, she was in tune with her spiritual side, so she wanted a spiritual experience, and I told her acid would probably be best for that, but my usual hard drugs dealer, whom we’ll call Alice, didn’t have it so we might have to settle on shrooms. I told Karen that I was going to pray to Jesus for acid. For the record, it’s not compassionate at all to pray sin into someone’s life, but at the time I was so deluded I thought it was.
Alice texted me to say she had acid, two days before Karen’s arrival, and I told Karen it was the answer to prayer. Jesus was going to show Himself to her that weekend. About a week before she came, I was sitting on a bench outside of the supermarket, waiting for a text from my weed dealer. A guy named Adrian came up to me and we started chatting, and for some reason I gave him my number. I found out later he was a bipolar schizophrenic transsexual on anti-psychotic medication. We’ll come back to that.
On Friday night, Rocky and Karen and I partied into the wee hours of the morning, high on weed and adderall and drink. Adderall (or Ritalin), is ADD prescription medication – synthetic methamphetamines. It too is a go-anywhere drug. It’s perfect for pulling all-nighters, for one pill will give you a kind of controllable hyper energy for a good five or six hours. Adderall and weed do not mix too well, though, as their effects are polar opposite, so we kept our drinking to a minimum. Around 3 or 4 AM, Rocky decided to crash at Dalton’s because she had been driving all day, drank way too much caffeine on the way, and was starting to feel sick. We dropped her off and I got to spend some alone time with Karen.
So there we were on the side of the road in Rocky’s van, smoking some weed, when Adrian happened to text me. He had already texted me some rather strange things, and for the most part I had been ignoring them. With Karen by my side he started texting me about his sex life, asking me if I liked sex, and then talking about the powers he had in Lucifer. I texted him back to bring it on, because my God was biggger than any god he had. Karen warned me that I should just cut it off, because he sounded dangerous. She offered to call up some friendly spirits to protect me. I told her that was very thoughtful, but I didn’t need it. Jesus had my back. Keep that in mind – a transsexual pagan called on the spirit of Lucifer to attack me. I believe in demons, and the idea that I was so callous about it gives me the chills. I had no real idea what I was toying with, but I knew one thing that made all the difference: Jesus was with me.
Over the course of the next couple of hours, until just about 6 AM, we made our way to a diner for breakfast and a coffee shop for coffee, conversing about spirituality all the way. It was good conversation and the goodness continued all the way up until the acid hit, and then it became combative. After the dawnbreak but before the sun was all the way up in the sky, when it was still cool and a tad chilly, we took a nature hike out to Bateman Island in what we’ll call “Town Number One” and dropped the acid there. It is a large island connected by a thin strip of Earth to the mainland.
Since it was early morning on a Saturday, we were pretty much alone, until we ran into this old lady about a half hour before the acid hit us. She gave us a half-hour lecture on all the weeds that were choking out the healthy plant life on the island. They were everywhere but they were not natural. She was essentially the only one doing this job, but it was endless hopeless work, because she had no help. She called herself something right out of an acid trip: “The Wild Lady of Batman Island.” A cub scout troop she had shown around a few years back had read the sign and said, “Wow! You work on Batman Island!?” God was trying to use this random old lady’s lecture to talk to me. “I am here, trying to pull out all these weeds out of your life, but you aren’t doing anything. I want your help. You need to be doing something.”
Shortly before the Wild Lady of Batman Island, Karen and I came upon a shrew in the middle of the path. It had a broken neck and was pathetically scurrying around in endless circles. Emotions run high on a trip, so this was almost devastating to us, strangely profound. This tiny animal was suffering. It would die sooner or later, but its life was essentially over. Karen would not kill it, so I grabbed a rock and let it drop-squash onto the body, hurrying away, refusing to think about what I had just done. Later that night I felt bad for killing the shrew, because it was unnatural, but THAT was the lesson. Mercy is not natural. Compassion is unnatural, and that would have been a perfect tangent to talk to Karen about God, but I missed it. That was the problem with the whole day in a nutshell. God did do things, did speak to me, and I spoke to Him, but I missed so much.
Every single thing about that day was special because of God. The trip only stifled the special. I could have sent such a better message to Karen had I been sober, but nope. I made it explicitly clear to her, about an hour into our trip, that my God was outside the universe, and therefore utterly different from her God, who was the universe. I thought this made it clear what I believed, so my message was not muddled. But oh how it was! Oh how I missed SO MUCH! I was twisted and wrong, because though showing God to her was truly my goal, the way I went about it made it all about ME. I’d show her God, but I’d do it MY way. “Step aside, God, allow me and the acid to handle this.” I learned the hard way that that’s NOT how it works. Witnessing by using sin is a terrible idea.
The muddled message was exemplified perfectly later that day, at an Asian restaurant that me, Rocky, Dalton, and Karen went to. After the meal we opened our fortune cookies, and I felt warm glowing confirmation of my mission when I read my fortune. “God will give you strength.” I had been non-stop babbling about God’s power to anyone who would listen all day, and when I read that fortune out loud everybody laughed in shock. Dalton said to me, “You’re lying, it doesn’t say that.” Rocky was disbelieving. “Wait. Are you being serious?” So I passed it around so they could see for themselves. Dalton and Rocky’s fortunes were also fairly accurate to who they were, though neither of theirs mentioned God. That may be the only time I’ve ever seen God mentioned in a fortune cookie.
Karen’s was essentially gibberish, some token fortune cookie saying that was extremely confusing. Karen said in a hopeless, lost, sad voice, “I don’t get it.” I thought it was God trying to show her she was wrong, but I was way off. It was God trying to tell me, “You claim this weekend is for her, but it’s confusing her. She can’t see me. How can she? You are not being me to her.” My fortune and my trip got me all cocksure that I was on the right path, but how could I be? My experiences were only confirming something I already believed anyway. I was using the trip selfishly, protecting my psyche from the inherently selfish nature of my witness by using Karen as a cover.
Back to BatemanIsland. From our ten-tab acid blotter we each took 3, leaving four left – two for Dalton, two for Rocky. Around ten AM we began to head back to Dalton’s to pick up Rocky. To get there, we had to walk against the flow of traffic across a very busy road-bridge that arched across the highway, with no sidewalk and less than five feet between us and the zooming cars. It’s a scary enough walk sober, but we were tripping pretty hard. I was certainly tripping harder than I ever had before, but as we crossed I told Karen, “We’re not gonna die. I know this because God won’t let us die, until we get a chance to see His love. He’s going to show Himself to you, Karen. This weekend is all for you.” She retorted, “I know we’re not gonna die, we’re just on three tabs of acid.” I said, “I know, but still, we’re gonna be okay. Trust me.”
The day unfolded like a dream. I had work the next day so I wanted to get to bed at a decent time. If I had calculated the acid right, we would come down from our trip around 6 or 7 PM. Around 2, Dalton got off work, we went to the Asian restaurant, and came back to his house to hang for a little bit as we contemplated our next move. While at Dalton’s house, he asked me to promise him that I would not trip for two weeks. My benders were becoming worrisome even to my tripping friends. I looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you crazy? There’s no way I can promise that. This is too much fun.”
Eventually we all decided to go to Hunter’s house, the designated party basement, since his parents were well aware of him smoking weed and drinking etc. We had four tabs left, but Hunter wanted some too. Anything less than two tabs is a waste of acid, so we had a problem. I texted Alice to see if she could get us some more acid, cursing myself for not planning better. While in the backseat of Dalton’s truck, on our way to “Town Number Two” so we could be prepared in case Alice texted us back, I pulled out the pill bottle that contained my leftover weed and the remaining acid tabs. Out loud I said to Dalton, Karen, and Rocky, “Well, Jesus, these don’t look like loaves of bread or fish to me, but if it be Your will, multiply them.” Nobody said anything, probably because they were worried I had lost my mind. I texted Hunter at that point to pray to Jesus for some acid, as added insurance.
We waited for almost two hours for a word back from Alice. I began to pray that God would not let us get the acid from the dealer, so that His miracle would be that much greater. Karen was also interested in prolonging her high, which was scheduled to end fairly soon. When no word was received back from Alice, we drove, defeated, back to Hunter’s house and received the first quirk of the evening: Layla, Hunter’s mom, was home. She always worked the night shift at the hospital, but they had called her and told her they didn’t need her. She was baffled and couldn’t’ recall the last time that had happened. Looking back now, I have no doubt God caused that for our protection. It will make sense later. Layla needed to be there that night. God was calling in His spiritual warriors for the battle ahead.
Layla was not aware that we were on acid, though. So into Hunter’s basement we went, breaking out the bong to smoke some weed. By then it was about 8 or 9 PM. Karen and I had been tripping for over 12 hours, which confused me, but acid is somewhat unpredictable, so I shrugged it off. I pulled out the remaining acid tabs and said to Dalton, Rocky, and Hunter that two of them could trip, but not three. There simply wasn’t enough acid. It felt like a defeat. Hunter then asked me if the tabs were single-dropped.
Bam. It hit me. Alice had told me they were double-dropped, but until that moment I had completely forgotten. Karen and I were cruising high on six hits of acid, twice what we thought we were. The trip across the road-bridge reeled in my mind. It had been twice as dangerous as we thought it was. This also meant that there was the perfect amount for Hunter, Rocky, and Dalton. I was floored. The prayer had been answered before I even prayed it. The acid was multiplied. Everyone had plenty. I told them all exactly what I believe happened, and of course nobody believed me. So I told Karen that God was going to bring the acid rain. Who knew how much longer our trip would last, and she was still curious about getting more. I told her her weekend was not yet done. God still had things to show her.
I kept reminding Karen that God was going to bring the acid rain. So I texted all my friends, even the transsexual Adrian, to find access to acid. Didja get that? I asked God to get acid for me from a self-proclaimed agent of Lucifer. Two of my best friends, we’ll call them John and Janine, were a couple. John texted me back eventually that he might be able to get me some acid, but he had to pick up Janine from a friend’s house first. I gave him directions to Hunter’s house and within the hour he and Janine arrived.
“Did you bring the rain?” I asked, hoping for the acid. “No, but I brought the sunshine!” Janine replied. Turned out she had been at a friend’s house happening to help with dishes, and had just so happened to get some free weed out of the deal. In the stoner culture, free weed NEVER happens. Her response was yet more confirmation that God was still with me. He was, but I still did not realize how much the trip was muddling my message. In addition to the sunshine, it turned out Janine knew Hunter, and none of us had known of the mutual acquaintance until that night. The coincidences were piling up too quickly. Already I had witnessed over 10 weirdly appropriate coincidences, and there were plenty more to come.
Shortly after their arrival we were all outside to watch the meteor shower and smoke some cigarettes. Yes, meteor shower. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Rain, not quite acid, but a dazzling array of beauty. I told Karen it was for her, all for her. By this point everyone was fairly certain I was insane. I was stepping on toes and getting on nerves because I refused to shut up about Jesus. It got even weirder. John still wanted acid, so I prayed to Jesus for it.
Karen and I had originally begun our spiritual conversation discussing how in the Old Testament Elijah called down a pillar of fire from heaven to show God’s superiority to the other deities. After I confirmed with John how much he wanted, I decided to text Adrian again, the transsexual, despite Karen’s warnings against him. I didn’t care. So I stood in front of everybody and held my phone skyward. All eyes were on me. I pointed at Karen. “Karen, you need to see this. The acid is for John, but THIS is for you.” With a mighty stomp I jerked my hand back down. “I call down a pillar of holy fire!” BAM. Less than two seconds later Adrian texted back that he could get acid. I shoved the phone in Karen’s face without a word. Her look was incredulous. She was speechless. So was I.
We needed money, though, and none of us had any. Adrian texted me he would accept $20 worth of weed as payment, and it clicked – that’s what the sunshine was for. But Janine didn’t want acid, and I knew I couldn’t ask her to give up what she worked for. So I prayed for another multiplication miracle. I told John, “I am GOING to find that weed for you.” I searched high and low. Nobody would donate, and my own weed consisted of not even a $5 nug. I meticulously separated out everybody else’s weed and picked up any spare weed I could find that was unaccounted for….and $15 of weed appeared out of nowhere.
I called attention to myself and pleaded with Karen. Hunter tried to interrupt me, to calm me down, for he, Dalton, Rocky, John, and Janine were all stone silent in shock at my behavior. Hunter said that every story seems like it’s worth telling while on acid, but I told him to, “STOP. Just listen. Some stories are worth telling. Karen, you need to hear this. This is all for you. Do you see this weed? EVERYBODY’s weed is accounted for, I checked thoroughly, you all watched me. So for the first time in the history of acid trips, I can be quite serious when I tell you I have no idea where this weed came from.” Dead silence. You could cut the tension with a knife. I felt choked up, embarrassed and pathetic, but strangely strong. I almost cried. I asked Karen if she heard me. “I did, I’m just kind of shocked that you called me out like that,” she said. “Well,” I said, “you needed to hear it.” Then I dashed off to join John and Janine.
This was around midnight, and I was still quite high on acid. Very much so. Six drops will do that to you. We dropped off Janine and headed to Adrian’s house, got lost in the process, drove around back streets in “Town Number Two” for a good twenty minutes because of one wrong turn. The entire time I felt absolutely perfectly peaceful. Though we were literally going into the belly of the beast, meeting up with an agent of the enemy, I had no fear. I have NO doubt that that was because of Jesus. Finally we met up with Adrian, on Blue street, which for some reason felt significant to me. We gave him the baggie of weed, he handed John a folded up $1 bill. John slipped it in his wallet and I told Adrian, “Hey, you’re a blessing.” He and his friend laughed. “Yeah, you too, man.” Off we drove.
As we drove back I found myelf needing to take the wheel because John needed to search for the acid. I was still tripping hardcore, yet I didn’t even have to think about it to basically drive better than John was, with the wheel in my hand. At that point I was basically non-stop praying. When John gave up his search and decided to look for it later, I realized: I had been tricked. There was no acid. Adrian duped me, and I didn’t have the heart or the courage to tell John.
When John dropped me off, I made sure to tell Karen and the others that I was pretty sure I’d been tricked, which I figured was only right. In claiming to show Karen God’s love I deliberately ignored her advice and treated her poorly. God was trying to show her His love, and I screwed it up royally. Not only that, I had called on a self-proclaimed servant of Lucifer and claimed it was God’s will. But I still didn’t get it! How oblivious can one man be? VERY. A lesson stands out, though, despite everything. You CANNOT be afraid of how silly you look as a Christian. Do what’s right, even in the midst of sin – and proclaiming Jesus’s name in the middle of an acid trip was the right thing to do. I never abandoned God even as my drugful nature took me down strange and sacreligous paths. And he never abandoned me.
Next, we extinguished the lights in Hunter’s basement and lit incense sticks in the dark to etch glowing patterns in the black, like sparklers without the sparks. As “The Beatles” Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds played in the background, I lay on the floor, merely taking in all the pretty colors. I told them to form letters. Hunter formed the L, Dalton the U, Rocky the C, but Karen quickly abandoned her Y. I looked at the words. “LUC.” Something clicked. My very good friend Luke, fellow tripper and a Mormon, had been unable to meet Karen, and she was leaving the next day, a Sunday. But when I saw the incense etchings I said to her, “Luke. This means you will meet Luke before you leave.” It felt silly to say so, because Luke ALWAYS had family gatherings on Sundays – he could never hang out then. Nevertheless it felt like a prophecy, so I spoke it to Karen like one.
After the incense, we were all coming down from our acid highs. We snorted some coke. I wasn’t impressed, but I did two lines anyway, because I told myself it was the first and only time I was going to toy with it. This was around 3 AM, so with that final burst of energy I went out onto the balcony and stared at the meteor shower as I smoked a couple of cigarettes. I needed contemplation.
Something had changed in me. My friends all noticed it, knew it, and they all thought I was crazy. But as I sat there, I knew beyond knowing that Jesus had never left my side. All day long I had carried my Bible with me, and gained great comfort from its words. If I could change the past, I would give up the acid completely and stay sober as my friends tripped. God can witness to them while they’re tripping, and he tried to witness while I was tripping, but I muddled it up horribly. I did learn some valuable lessons that stick with me, such as the fact that we can’t be afraid of how silly we look when we proclaim Jesus’s name, even in the midst of an acid trip. I also learned, through the multiplication “miracles” that prayer is prayer, and God works forwards and backwards in Time, fine-tuning the Universe to reach each of his creatures in just the right way.
I trudged back down to the basement to watch “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” with the gang, finally “getting it” more than I ever had before, being just about as high as Johnny Depp. Well, not really. But we were both on acid. As I sat in a cushy chair, Bible in lap, zoning out to Depp’s weird expressions, I passed out around 4 AM. I woke up at 10 AM. An hour late for work. I freaked. It felt like the end of the world, like my entire faith was shattered. Was the entire previous night meaningless? Was it all just part of the trip? Saturday was amazing, but clouded. That Sunday, God would show me what He could accomplish as I was sober and show me how useless and pointless the drugs were. It is its own story, free from the influence of drugs, so stay tuned as I relate the mind-boggling nature of that drug-free, God-filled day in the next installment. Much love to all.
Pop Culture Shocked 