A Trip- Prologue

A Trip1

Prologue-2

After four hits of acid, reality can be any number of alternate worlds. After four hits of acid, two bowls of hydro, three lines of coke, and a night of whiskey and vodka, there’s only one, my world. 3

I wouldn’t say that I had a bad childhood; it was actually pretty wholesome, growing up as the youngest of five children in an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood. My brothers and sisters weren’t the best of influence though, although I shouldn’t blame them, I chose to do anything I’ve done, whether it be a cold beer or a tab of LSD. 4

In my early teen years I was exposed to what my life would someday become. At thirteen I was brought to a party by my brother, four years older than me. It was early 1969 and the sound of “Light My Fire” was on every radio. It was about thirty people on the roof of an old abandoned building in downtown L.A. At this time in California it was unusual for kids, or even adults for that matter, not to be experimenting with mind-altering drugs. 5

As the party raged on past midnight, I was eventually approached by a man much older than myself, with a full scruffy beard. He offered me a small candy with a dark liquid on it. I gladly accepted it and popped it in my mouth, I later found out it was LSD, acid. Within minutes I was experiencing my first drug trip, I had never imagined what power these drugs could have over me. The music seemed arousing, every movement was strangely enjoyable, and every touch was electrifying. I hadn’t laid down until the sun had arose on the pacific coastline, but as I started to pass out on the gravel of the rooftop, I was pulled out, down five flights of stairs and into an old Chevy, and my brother took me home. 6

In my latter years I would eventually pick up drinking and smoking dope, but the LSD was like the cherry on the ice cream, every microgram I could get my hands on would go straight to my lips. Two of my long time friends, who we will just call John and Jim, would later play a role in my abuse. “John” would drink with me any chance he got, and when you drink with him, you drink to get wasted. I can only recall a few night drinking with him, which I didn’t drink enough according to him (he never remembered the night before). We would take a few bottles of whiskey a night, a bottle of Makers mark to warm up on, and later the Jack, and Crown. “Jim” was a stoner. He would smoke three bowls a night through use of an aluminum can, a gas mask, or whatever he could find. Some nights I would hear music in my head, I would joke and say I was just smoking for artistic influence, but even I knew that was a lie. 7

As I became older, my experiences became a broader and broader list, until I could name the drug after hearing the effects they were experiencing. My musical talent was on a rise too, so my friends and myself decided to form a musical group, whose name I cant recall. We weren’t much of a band, just a few guys that would play a gig at a bar for some free booze. The southern California streets were full of up and coming talented artists, so success in the business was a slim chance. 8

In the summer of ’73 we took a Volkswagon van of the lot of a used car dealership for $300, it resembled a green bar of soap with rusty accents. We packed our musical equipment in the van and set coarse to Texas in hopes of success. Jim would play the bass, getting much inspiration from the popular band Jefferson Airplane. John played the drums, setting a tone for my dark, mysterious riffs on the guitar. After packing everything in, we left the streets of L.A. 9

On the way down the near empty highway Jim told us about Arizona, he said that we should go to the Grand Canyon, because it was one of the most amazing places in America, but I knew him, and knew he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Grand Canyon. I called him out on the obvious lie and he admitted that he really wanted to go for the peyote cactus plant. He said it was what the native Indian smoked when they had visions; John and I were all up for the pit stop so we changed course to Phoenix. 10

When we got into Phoenix, we met some girls at a bar that let us rent a room in their sorority house, because they were short on cash. We moved out things inside the home and were curious about finding what we needed. One blonde girl with a giddy attitude told us where we could find somebody with peyote. We took the poorly written directions and found our way through the ghetto streets of a neighborhood with obvious poverty, and found our man. I spent about $40 on the drug, and we went back to the home. Little did we know the girls already planned a part that night and when we got there it was raging already, half of the house was on ecstasy and the other smoking high-grade dope. I couldn’t locate my friends at the time, and I assumed they were getting to know some girls in their rooms. I was getting a major trip from the combination of LSD, ecstasy, and peyote, and I was already a little disoriented from the bar. I don’t know exactly what was real and what was “my reality” but this went on night after night for a few days, until we got kicked out of the house because I woke everyone up with a bad acid trip. 11

We never made it further than Arizona, the majority of our spending cap was gone on drugs. We were just barely able to make it back to Los Angeles with the little gas that was left in the van. I walked into my house smelling like a brewery, nobody said anything to me, just empty stares. I pulled myself down the hallway to the shower and tried to recover