Aaron and I had discussed working with an uncommon spiritual catalyst called 2C-E. At the party that night, we opened a bag, cut the white powder into small lines, and offered it around. Somebody asked what it was, and I said it was a synthetic psychedelic in the same chemical family as mescaline. A guy with long curly hair shouted from across the room, “2C-E is not mescaline!” I was stunned at his psychedelic bravado but rushed to agree with him and point out a second time that this chemical was not mescaline, just related to it. Jews began to crowd around the lines of powder. Aaron stepped forward, volunteering his nostril and a rolled-up dollar bill. He bent over the book, snorted a line, winced, and then sneezed the crystals into a cloud around the table—the most Jewish drug blooper imaginable.