Where Wolf?
Bluelighter
This is a story from the dear, dead days of the 1990’s, when I was a young and reckless college drop-out. Young and bordering on suicidal, to be more accurate – my family had broken apart, college sucked, and it was one of those, to quote STP, ‘too much tripping and my soul’s worn in’ times. I’d left the UK to do a research assistant gig at the Library of Congress, D.C, then eventually drifted to San Francisco, to pursue my interests in LSD, the Dead, and female high-school drop-outs. My folks were so proud.
Xmas ’94, I went back to London for a few weeks, and had no real reason to return to the US, other than a court date on a misdemeanour possession charge, which was dropped, in the end – but it didn’t seem a good idea not to show up and face additional charges. Night before departure back to the US, I went with a few friends to what was then THE club in London, a little weekly festival by the name of Megatripolis, which closed down soon after. Took a pill and a half of some damn fine ecstasy, and spent most of the evening talking to an old friend I hadn’t see in years. Someone sold us a gram of what was supposed to be speed (NOT meth, amphetamine), but it didn’t seem to do much. Club closed around 4am (my plane left at about ten), we stopped off to buy some hash, smoked up, and about four hours later, seeing trails and tracers from the pills and solid, I get on a train for the airport, with a couple of Ativan secreted in my shoe…
And was, of course, immediately taken aside to be searched at the check-in desk: my pupils were the size of dinner plates, and I was having trouble walking straight. But they only checked my bags – and nothing was hidden in them (I wasn’t really taking much of a risk with the Ativan, as you can’t be arrested in the UK for Benzodiazepines.) I took the pills in the departure lounge, as I was feeling increasingly wired and uncomfortable, and they seemed to have no effect.
Until, on the plane, I decided that a Bloody Mary was a good idea – and then got into my duty-free Wild Turkey. All I remember of the trip cross the Atlantic was trying to explain to some guy next to me – in my condition, I may well have been talking to the window – that he looked like someone in the dream I’d just had.
Next thing I know, I’m in a room with two cops at Newark Airport, telling me to take my shoes off. ‘Why?’ I ask them, ‘We found you passed out on the floor…’ they went through my bags again, questioned me – they could tell I’d obviously been doing drugs of some kind, but I blamed it all on booze, they confiscated what was left of my duty-free, and let me go catch my connecting flight to San Francisco. Being totally blitzed by the booze/down cocktail, I was pretty calm about the whole thing.
Which is not to say that I was thinking straight – on arrival in SF, after checking into a Soma youth hostel, I decided, for no obvious reason, to go up to the Haight and look for some meth, Which I found pretty quickly – some girl talking to a homeless hippie led me to her apartment, where a wizened old junkie chick sold me a half gram, and some schmuck hanger-on stole $70 from my wallet. I forgot about the difference between British speed (amphetamine), and American (crystal meth, about six times stronger), and dumped the whole half, after giving away a few lines, into a glass of OJ, and drank that fucker down…
Then I was back on the street, not certain how I’d got there, and some rat-like little Deadhead walks past, saying ‘Doses…’, and I was in no state to say no. We get on a bus, he sold me two hits of blotter for five bucks (them were the days), and being in a speed-induced paranoid state (plus still being on a comedown, jet lagged, sleepless), I secreted them in a bag in my mouth, rode to my stop, and walked towards the hostel…
When a Cop car comes cruising, and slows down to get a look at me…having just been busted, my instinct was to wait until they’d passed me: then swallow the bag and acid, just in case…
By the time I made it back to the Hostel, I knew something was wrong. Every noise I heard filled me with terror, and I KNEW that THEY – the man, death, Satan, all of them – were coming for me. As the meth took hold, EVERY helicopter overhead was spying on me – I accosted several passers-by, demanding of them ‘Are you a cop?’ For some reason, I drifted out to the street, and spent the night wandering up and down the block, watching the sky, waiting for ‘them’ to pounce…it’s a miracle no cops stopped by to drop me in a world of shit: state I was in, I might well have managed to make them shoot me.
By dawn, I was coming down a little bit, and a friend dragged me back into the hostel. I spent hours scrawling gibberish in notebooks, asked a roomie (I was underage) to get me a bottle of Jack – shithead came back with Southern comfort, but booze is booze, and I chugged it down. Sleep was impossible, and I became convinced that THEY were in the building, someplace – ominous knocking sounds kept coming from the door, but there was no-one there when I checked…
By nightfall, the paranoia had receded somewhat…only then, I start tripping afresh. Oh shit – the acid. Somehow, my stomach, which had not seen food in a while, had managed to burn through the plastic bag, and now I was coming up on part of the acid I’d swallowed, after about fifty hours sleepless, in a state of borderline amphetamine psychosis. I managed to cage a few beers out of somebody, went up to my room, and spent about six hours in a state of sheer animal terror, hallucinating skulls and dragons, before my mind finally gave in and let me sleep. Traces of paranoia lingered for a few days – in fact, I’m not sure they ever fully left me – but after a while, I more or less returned to ‘normal.’
That happened back in early ’95 – these days, it would probably kill me. It’s actually amazing that I a) Didn’t get arrested, b) Managed to make my connecting flight, and c) continued doing drugs. But continue I did, if at lower doses, though never again with quite the same transatlantic recklessness.
Xmas ’94, I went back to London for a few weeks, and had no real reason to return to the US, other than a court date on a misdemeanour possession charge, which was dropped, in the end – but it didn’t seem a good idea not to show up and face additional charges. Night before departure back to the US, I went with a few friends to what was then THE club in London, a little weekly festival by the name of Megatripolis, which closed down soon after. Took a pill and a half of some damn fine ecstasy, and spent most of the evening talking to an old friend I hadn’t see in years. Someone sold us a gram of what was supposed to be speed (NOT meth, amphetamine), but it didn’t seem to do much. Club closed around 4am (my plane left at about ten), we stopped off to buy some hash, smoked up, and about four hours later, seeing trails and tracers from the pills and solid, I get on a train for the airport, with a couple of Ativan secreted in my shoe…
And was, of course, immediately taken aside to be searched at the check-in desk: my pupils were the size of dinner plates, and I was having trouble walking straight. But they only checked my bags – and nothing was hidden in them (I wasn’t really taking much of a risk with the Ativan, as you can’t be arrested in the UK for Benzodiazepines.) I took the pills in the departure lounge, as I was feeling increasingly wired and uncomfortable, and they seemed to have no effect.
Until, on the plane, I decided that a Bloody Mary was a good idea – and then got into my duty-free Wild Turkey. All I remember of the trip cross the Atlantic was trying to explain to some guy next to me – in my condition, I may well have been talking to the window – that he looked like someone in the dream I’d just had.
Next thing I know, I’m in a room with two cops at Newark Airport, telling me to take my shoes off. ‘Why?’ I ask them, ‘We found you passed out on the floor…’ they went through my bags again, questioned me – they could tell I’d obviously been doing drugs of some kind, but I blamed it all on booze, they confiscated what was left of my duty-free, and let me go catch my connecting flight to San Francisco. Being totally blitzed by the booze/down cocktail, I was pretty calm about the whole thing.
Which is not to say that I was thinking straight – on arrival in SF, after checking into a Soma youth hostel, I decided, for no obvious reason, to go up to the Haight and look for some meth, Which I found pretty quickly – some girl talking to a homeless hippie led me to her apartment, where a wizened old junkie chick sold me a half gram, and some schmuck hanger-on stole $70 from my wallet. I forgot about the difference between British speed (amphetamine), and American (crystal meth, about six times stronger), and dumped the whole half, after giving away a few lines, into a glass of OJ, and drank that fucker down…
Then I was back on the street, not certain how I’d got there, and some rat-like little Deadhead walks past, saying ‘Doses…’, and I was in no state to say no. We get on a bus, he sold me two hits of blotter for five bucks (them were the days), and being in a speed-induced paranoid state (plus still being on a comedown, jet lagged, sleepless), I secreted them in a bag in my mouth, rode to my stop, and walked towards the hostel…
When a Cop car comes cruising, and slows down to get a look at me…having just been busted, my instinct was to wait until they’d passed me: then swallow the bag and acid, just in case…
By the time I made it back to the Hostel, I knew something was wrong. Every noise I heard filled me with terror, and I KNEW that THEY – the man, death, Satan, all of them – were coming for me. As the meth took hold, EVERY helicopter overhead was spying on me – I accosted several passers-by, demanding of them ‘Are you a cop?’ For some reason, I drifted out to the street, and spent the night wandering up and down the block, watching the sky, waiting for ‘them’ to pounce…it’s a miracle no cops stopped by to drop me in a world of shit: state I was in, I might well have managed to make them shoot me.
By dawn, I was coming down a little bit, and a friend dragged me back into the hostel. I spent hours scrawling gibberish in notebooks, asked a roomie (I was underage) to get me a bottle of Jack – shithead came back with Southern comfort, but booze is booze, and I chugged it down. Sleep was impossible, and I became convinced that THEY were in the building, someplace – ominous knocking sounds kept coming from the door, but there was no-one there when I checked…
By nightfall, the paranoia had receded somewhat…only then, I start tripping afresh. Oh shit – the acid. Somehow, my stomach, which had not seen food in a while, had managed to burn through the plastic bag, and now I was coming up on part of the acid I’d swallowed, after about fifty hours sleepless, in a state of borderline amphetamine psychosis. I managed to cage a few beers out of somebody, went up to my room, and spent about six hours in a state of sheer animal terror, hallucinating skulls and dragons, before my mind finally gave in and let me sleep. Traces of paranoia lingered for a few days – in fact, I’m not sure they ever fully left me – but after a while, I more or less returned to ‘normal.’
That happened back in early ’95 – these days, it would probably kill me. It’s actually amazing that I a) Didn’t get arrested, b) Managed to make my connecting flight, and c) continued doing drugs. But continue I did, if at lower doses, though never again with quite the same transatlantic recklessness.
