A continuation...
Let us call that kid, "Pete," Pete was an upper middle class kid living in New Jersey, about an hour and a half south of Manhattan. I took a ball of that Afghan hash and maybe 50 pieces of Rosicrucian Blotter. The party was huge but Pete wasn't much in the partying way. His best friend, some say his lover, had been killed by a hit and run driver while driving through the Pine Barrens, a massive pine forest covering many thousands of hectares in Southern New Jersey. The burial had just been the previous day. Yet, Pete SEEMED as if he was handling it OK.
I broke out the hash, these surburban kids were nuts. To them, hash was something you hear about, but rarely, if ever, see, and IF you DO see it, it is that awful blonde or green shit that seems to make its way only to America. People at that time bought into all kinds of myths, like "Opiated Hash" for example. Hash producers would never put opium in or on their product because hash is much more expencive in such places, it would be like a cannabis seller mixing tobacco in with his bud, it would cut the price. Naturally, good hash is a cream inside, hard but pliable on the outside, and because of oxidation, that pliable outside turns black. With a creamy tan to red inside and black gummy outside it is easy for naïve people to imagine that in places where hash costs at least two times more than opium, a manufacturer would cut his own product.
So we smoked a few bowls, and without exception, noone could pull three times, they were floored. Around 1AM the party began thinning out, and now, it was all guys. I whipped out the Blotter and tore off pieces to anybody who asked. Pete asked for two pieces. Now, two pieces isn't a lot of LSD, maybe 200 microgrammes, IF it was even THAT much. We were having a grand time but then Pete insisted on riding his bicycle to the hiway ro buy cigarettes. His slightly younger brother, let us call him Phil, was adamently against the idea but in the end, he let Pete go with two other guys, all on bicycles.
The sun was breaking on the horizon, four hours later, and we were all getting worried because the three of them hadn't returned. Just as we were about to leave and search, the two guys that had gone with Pete returned and were clearly alarmed. When they had calmed down enough to explain what had happened they told us that Pete had suddenly veered off and rode across the hiway. By the time they could make their way to the other side of a six lane hiway Pete was gone, he had vanished.
Now we were all bugging the fuck out, especially me, the asshole who had handed out LSD like it was fucken Skittles. When you trip on LSD you can easily get super paranoid that everyone is loking at you, but in this case a few WERE and it wasn't a friendly look. Finally, just before 7AM, we decided to all go to the hiway and search. Opening the front door of the house I jumped back, Pete was standing a milimeter from the door, staring like a fucken zombie, and his shiny bike was tied, I swear, into a pretzel shape. WHOA. So now I'm truly paranoid, skirting a bad trip but Pete is far, far worse. He stares only at me. "Raki, bless you, I am the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." He said it in an eerie, emotionless monotone with those wide, pie shaped zombie eyes.
I looked to his brother Phil, Phil was laughing, maybe relieved that his brother was physically fine, or perhaps it was simply the acid doing the "feeling." When Pete kept on with the Jesus shtick though, Phil sobered up pretty fast, "Shit, my mom'll be home in 3 fucken hours and Pete is Mother fucken Theresa!" My first thought, I'm ashamed to say, was to rush back to Brooklyn, grab my passport and hop my skanky ass aboard the first plane to Israel. I pictured their mum, a nurse, coming home, pressuring them for details, and them telling how I passed out dozens of hits of LSD. New Jersey, to New Yorkers, is West Bubble Fuck. In the city possesion of heroin is a misdemeanour, in Jersey? 4 years in prison. Still, I dindnt leave until Phil pushed the last of us out the front door in a paniced state.
Three years later I pull into a strip mall in that same town, to use the loo. I park my father's car, walk towards a donut store, and who do I see? Pete! I swear, this is what he said, smiling slightly, "Raki, I bless you, only through me can you get to heaven." WHOA. I forgot about the pee and got the fuck out of there and in fact I turned right around and returned to the city.
Some of my mates in Israel told me he was probably pulling my chain but I wasn't convinced. Now, after finishing my almost 7 years of Active Duty in the army, I came to the US to make my fortune. I ended up in the drug game, all things that I will eventually discuss in my Blog, but the point being, in this entry, I caught a bullshit arrest in that same New Jersey County as the police there were aiming for my uncle, and I got caught up in the sweep. I'm in that Country Jail for 7 months before getting shipped to a state prison. One day, a new inmate walks into the cell (cells being giant cages with almost 100 men). Who should it be but Pete. I was nervous of course but convinced myself that my mates' advice had been correct, that Pete wasn't really nuts. He sees me and right away its the Jesus spiel!!! WHOA. I'm trying to reason with him but finally I said fuck it and grabbed his Charge Sheet.
That trip had sent him into a Psychotic Break and when he finally finished spiralling they diagnosed him as a Paranoid Schizophrenic. He had been placed in a flat with other mentally ill adults but one day, obeying those voices that only Pete could hear, he grabbed a steak knofe and stabbed a roomate seven times, thinking he was an emissary of Satan.
Of course I had given acid away freely but in my own defence, in those days there was no internet, Harm Reduction was merely a glimmer in a couple of forward thinking peoples' eyes. We only knew what other users told us and if you read Drug Forums, even today 90% of users who even bother to search, are still stumbling around blindly. Now that I'm in Middle Age I think often of Phil and wonder if perhaps, I hadn't been so glib that evening, he too would have grandchildren and a life of accomplishments. The rational thinker in me knows, or rather "believes," that acid only magnifies extant conditions but in truth that is only a theory. I still respect LSD, but feel that only adults, mentally as well as physically, should ever consider using it.
Let us call that kid, "Pete," Pete was an upper middle class kid living in New Jersey, about an hour and a half south of Manhattan. I took a ball of that Afghan hash and maybe 50 pieces of Rosicrucian Blotter. The party was huge but Pete wasn't much in the partying way. His best friend, some say his lover, had been killed by a hit and run driver while driving through the Pine Barrens, a massive pine forest covering many thousands of hectares in Southern New Jersey. The burial had just been the previous day. Yet, Pete SEEMED as if he was handling it OK.
I broke out the hash, these surburban kids were nuts. To them, hash was something you hear about, but rarely, if ever, see, and IF you DO see it, it is that awful blonde or green shit that seems to make its way only to America. People at that time bought into all kinds of myths, like "Opiated Hash" for example. Hash producers would never put opium in or on their product because hash is much more expencive in such places, it would be like a cannabis seller mixing tobacco in with his bud, it would cut the price. Naturally, good hash is a cream inside, hard but pliable on the outside, and because of oxidation, that pliable outside turns black. With a creamy tan to red inside and black gummy outside it is easy for naïve people to imagine that in places where hash costs at least two times more than opium, a manufacturer would cut his own product.
So we smoked a few bowls, and without exception, noone could pull three times, they were floored. Around 1AM the party began thinning out, and now, it was all guys. I whipped out the Blotter and tore off pieces to anybody who asked. Pete asked for two pieces. Now, two pieces isn't a lot of LSD, maybe 200 microgrammes, IF it was even THAT much. We were having a grand time but then Pete insisted on riding his bicycle to the hiway ro buy cigarettes. His slightly younger brother, let us call him Phil, was adamently against the idea but in the end, he let Pete go with two other guys, all on bicycles.
The sun was breaking on the horizon, four hours later, and we were all getting worried because the three of them hadn't returned. Just as we were about to leave and search, the two guys that had gone with Pete returned and were clearly alarmed. When they had calmed down enough to explain what had happened they told us that Pete had suddenly veered off and rode across the hiway. By the time they could make their way to the other side of a six lane hiway Pete was gone, he had vanished.
Now we were all bugging the fuck out, especially me, the asshole who had handed out LSD like it was fucken Skittles. When you trip on LSD you can easily get super paranoid that everyone is loking at you, but in this case a few WERE and it wasn't a friendly look. Finally, just before 7AM, we decided to all go to the hiway and search. Opening the front door of the house I jumped back, Pete was standing a milimeter from the door, staring like a fucken zombie, and his shiny bike was tied, I swear, into a pretzel shape. WHOA. So now I'm truly paranoid, skirting a bad trip but Pete is far, far worse. He stares only at me. "Raki, bless you, I am the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." He said it in an eerie, emotionless monotone with those wide, pie shaped zombie eyes.
I looked to his brother Phil, Phil was laughing, maybe relieved that his brother was physically fine, or perhaps it was simply the acid doing the "feeling." When Pete kept on with the Jesus shtick though, Phil sobered up pretty fast, "Shit, my mom'll be home in 3 fucken hours and Pete is Mother fucken Theresa!" My first thought, I'm ashamed to say, was to rush back to Brooklyn, grab my passport and hop my skanky ass aboard the first plane to Israel. I pictured their mum, a nurse, coming home, pressuring them for details, and them telling how I passed out dozens of hits of LSD. New Jersey, to New Yorkers, is West Bubble Fuck. In the city possesion of heroin is a misdemeanour, in Jersey? 4 years in prison. Still, I dindnt leave until Phil pushed the last of us out the front door in a paniced state.
Three years later I pull into a strip mall in that same town, to use the loo. I park my father's car, walk towards a donut store, and who do I see? Pete! I swear, this is what he said, smiling slightly, "Raki, I bless you, only through me can you get to heaven." WHOA. I forgot about the pee and got the fuck out of there and in fact I turned right around and returned to the city.
Some of my mates in Israel told me he was probably pulling my chain but I wasn't convinced. Now, after finishing my almost 7 years of Active Duty in the army, I came to the US to make my fortune. I ended up in the drug game, all things that I will eventually discuss in my Blog, but the point being, in this entry, I caught a bullshit arrest in that same New Jersey County as the police there were aiming for my uncle, and I got caught up in the sweep. I'm in that Country Jail for 7 months before getting shipped to a state prison. One day, a new inmate walks into the cell (cells being giant cages with almost 100 men). Who should it be but Pete. I was nervous of course but convinced myself that my mates' advice had been correct, that Pete wasn't really nuts. He sees me and right away its the Jesus spiel!!! WHOA. I'm trying to reason with him but finally I said fuck it and grabbed his Charge Sheet.
That trip had sent him into a Psychotic Break and when he finally finished spiralling they diagnosed him as a Paranoid Schizophrenic. He had been placed in a flat with other mentally ill adults but one day, obeying those voices that only Pete could hear, he grabbed a steak knofe and stabbed a roomate seven times, thinking he was an emissary of Satan.
Of course I had given acid away freely but in my own defence, in those days there was no internet, Harm Reduction was merely a glimmer in a couple of forward thinking peoples' eyes. We only knew what other users told us and if you read Drug Forums, even today 90% of users who even bother to search, are still stumbling around blindly. Now that I'm in Middle Age I think often of Phil and wonder if perhaps, I hadn't been so glib that evening, he too would have grandchildren and a life of accomplishments. The rational thinker in me knows, or rather "believes," that acid only magnifies extant conditions but in truth that is only a theory. I still respect LSD, but feel that only adults, mentally as well as physically, should ever consider using it.
