Tales from the Lost Semester - Volume 11

Are You Experienced?

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Leave your cares behind
Come with us and find
The pleasures of a journey to the center of the mind

From “Journey to the Center of the Mind” by the Amboy Dukes

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College campuses were designed for tripping.

Think about it for a minute. A college campus is essentially a secluded enclave covering a few square miles. Many of these campuses have been around for years and years, which means they come complete with stately old buildings and grounds, windy cobblestone lanes, and gaslight districts seemingly caught in the past, great for the ever important “visuals”. They are extremely pedestrian-friendly, often with a large, uninterrupted area (i.e. the Quad) that is only accessible by foot (where many of the cool, old buildings sit) – great for roaming about in a stupor. Forget about finding cops on a college campus – these communities seem to police themselves, with actual officers only being called in when needed, and even if they were around, what are they really going to do to you? Since college kids are inherently crazy, no one is even going to look cross-eyed at a group of guys walking around acting extremely goofy and speaking nonsensical dribble. If you’re not feeling particularly social, any living quarters outside of the dorms provide a perfect home base, with TV, stereo and Nintendo to boot. Throw in the seemingly never-ending supply of other stimuli – bars, beer gardens, apartment parties, house parties, video arcades, and movie theaters come to mind – and you have yourself a perfect, self-contained psychedelic playground.

What does this have to do with the Lost Semester? Why everything, of course! For outside of pulling bongs in Room 23, experimenting with psychedelics was my very favorite leisure activity in the Spring of ‘93! Given that it was truly a buyers market, you constantly had your choice of the two heavy hitters – LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. However, given the relative brevity of the overall experience (roughly 6-8 hours of fun compared to acid’s 12-14), as well as how ridiculously easy they were to get your hands on, “shrooms” were definitely our preferred method of hallucinogenic mind expansion. I’d estimate that some combination of members of our little group dabbled in hallucinogens roughly 2-4 times a month, with yours truly being one of the more active participants. Bet you never would have figured that.

And what was not to like? More than anything, it was a bonding experience among friends – a chance for all of us to delve deep inside each other’s psyches, listen to some trippy music, have all sorts of grand visuals and have a generally rip-roaring good time. The whole event, from the confirmation of the participants to the loosely-designed plan of attack, was usually established well in advance – at least a week in many cases. This is because it is essential to have plenty of time to clear your schedule and get yourself in the proper mindset if the experience was to be an enjoyable, worthwhile one. Plus it was a good idea to give Stems and Seeds, our friends at the Nevada House, plenty of time to stock up on merchandise if they were not already holding on to some – can’t make an omelet without eggs, so to speak.

On the designated evening of the festivities (for some reason we rarely day-tripped, although those occasions have proven to be just as pleasant), the participants would gather in one of our rooms, more often than not Room 23 (my drug den of a room) or Room 7 (the other MPB house drug den). When you factor in a) the quantities the goods were sold in with b) the quantity required to achieve the overall desired affect (think “Baby Bear” portions from Goldilocks), you almost always had a group ranging from four to eight in number – a perfect party size for such revelry. The goods were then laid out on a nice, flat surface for proper divvying. For those of the nine of you who have never experienced these frantically fun fungi, they can best be described as brownish-gray in color, extremely dry bordering on flaky, their make-up consisting of both stems (ranging from short and thin to long and fat) and caps (ranging from the size of a nail’s head to that of a half dollar) and they smell like…cow shit. And that’s because that’s where they grow – on cow shit. So yes, I’ve willingly eaten a strange fungus that grew on cattle feces – I am a creature of logic. As the proper experience is all about the dosage, a member of the group would meticulously separate the entire batch into evenly-distributed individual piles. We took great care to make this process as fair as possible – if you put a mid-size cap in one pile, you assigned approximately the same proportion of caps to the others; same thing with stems. Keep in mind that the need for such careful rationing held especially true for caps, as it is well known among experienced trippers that between caps and stems, the caps pack the more potent punch of the two.

So, we have four to eight strikingly similar piles of dried out, shit-smelling fungus. Now comes the tricky part – the actual ingesting of these foul-tasting victuals. There are many ways to go about this with minimal anguish. Some put theirs on pizza, some washed theirs down with beer or juice; I was a peanut butter sandwich man, myself. Then there were those brave souls who took the big plunge and ate them sans flavor-masking. I have done this myself, and it only takes about three hours to pick all the bits of mushroom out of your teeth – not a pleasant flavor-saver. Once this unpleasantness is over, it quickly becomes ramp-up time.

Ah, ramp-up time – 45 of the most exciting, queasy, unsettling, ticklish, giggly, suspenseful and fantastic minutes you’ll ever spend. The minute you down your portion, you know your body is already feeling the effects of the foreign substance you’ve just ingested. More often than not, your stomach instantly sends your brain the message, “What is this shit your boy just dropped in me?” and you may start to feel a bit nauseous. Thankfully, this feeling soon develops into something resembling butterflies in the stomach – a little flitter that tells you your system is digesting the shrooms and unleashing all of the wonderful desired effects. Those first 45 minutes after eating are usually spent glued to your seat, moving only to shift your weight from one butt-cheek to the other. After the butterflies in the stomach fly away, you are experiencing more of a whole-body feeling that falls short of discomfort, but certainly isn’t the most relaxing you’ve ever had. You feel somewhat uneasy in your skin, like you need to get up and move around, stretch, do jumping jacks, whatever – only you have no desire whatsoever to get up. More often than not, you go through a several minute stretch where you are plagued by fits of yawning. You keep in your mind that this is all part of the package, and the payoff is coming soon enough. At this point someone in the group usually recommends ripping a few bongs to “kickstart” the whole process – why the hell not, you ask as you proceed to blow a few ghosts. Maybe you’re sitting around, listening to music, a song you’ve heard a million times before, but somehow you’re hearing it for the first time – the notes don’t quite fall into place the way you remember, but that’s why it seems fun. You start to look around at the rest of your group and you can instantly tell that they are feeling the same things you are. You get flashed a wide-eyed, all-knowing grin that seems to say, “Yeah, I know – holy shit!” You start to glance about the room, and perhaps a poster on the wall catches your eye. So you stare. It never quite looked like that before, you think, as images in the poster seem to become flush with more color, more fluid, more complex. Maybe it’s something you saw on the poster, maybe it’s a noise you heard, maybe it’s a look you got from one of your mates, but you suddenly can’t help thinking “it” is hilarious, so you start to giggle. You’re much more aware of how your throat expands and contracts and the saliva sloshes around in your mouth when you laugh – how weird is that, you think? Suddenly, a feeling comes over you – you just need to stand up, stretch your legs, move around, shake yourself loose…

And then…BAM!

Anyone who’s walked down this path knows what I mean when I say “BAM” – it means ramp-up time is over, and you are now basking in the glory of full-on psychedelia! And I have to admit, it is quite a feeling. It’s an all-out assault on the senses. Sights – the walls breathe, the ground waves, colors explode and vibrate, textures and layers of complexity reveal themselves, items in motion seem to defy the space-time continuum by leaving traces of themselves everywhere they go, and it just all looks so damn GOOD. Sounds – music is richer and fuller, with notes and melodies, nooks and crannies that you’ve never heard before. Echoes and bells and the wind and the rustling leaves and the traffic and people and silence – it all swims inside your head and makes its way into the things you see. And tastes – I’ve never really eaten anything under the influence (hunger is the last thing on your mind), but I can honestly say that beer has NEVER tasted better…

OK, I need to back off just a bit – I’m starting to sound like the reincarnation of Timothy Leary and to be honest, it’s freaking me out a little bit. I don’t want my precious nine readers to get the impression that I’m a fried-out druggie who’d rather swim around in trip-land than be firmly entrenched in reality – quite the contrary. One of the most appealing things about these experiences is that this is exactly what they were – experiences. I would go absolutely crazy if my entire existence was spent in this psychedelic stupor rather than the sane comfort of everyday drudgery. These were certainly times I looked forward to with great anticipation, don’t get me wrong. I’m not even saying that I’d ever completely rule out another go at it. But at the end of the day, it’s a nice world to jump into and leave a few hours later, and surely not somewhere I would want to stay.

Now the pendulum needs to swing back from the cautionary after-school special tone. Let’s just say this – I shroomed quite a few times back in college, and for the most part every single time was a fucking blast. And the Lost Semester certainly saw the “peak” (pun intended) of that activity. I’m sure my cohorts could recall several journeys into the depths of the psyche and they would all say the same thing – great freakin’ times. But that’s because our group had the right attitude, the right approach. As previously mentioned, it is most certainly advisable to ensure the proper state of mind before embarking on such a journey. Just as these foul-smelling little mushrooms could take you to the peaks of enjoyment and whimsy, they could also plunge you into the depths of despair. That’s the thing about these types of drugs – the psychoactive impact is so profound that your mental state becomes amplified to the point where it will most certainly dictate how enjoyable (or intolerable) the next 6-8 hours of your life were going to be. This concept, of course, was of great interest to me considering the ever-expanding fragility of my self-confidence. Looking back, I’d say that there was a chance I may have been teetering on the brink of disaster every time I shroomed– now mind you, I’m not talking about a permanent descent into madness or suicide or anything like that – I was a mess, but I still basically had my shit together. But what I am saying is that it was very likely that I could have been thrust into several hours of some of the most intensely self-conscious, hair-fixing, stammering, lack-of-eye-contact moments of my life. I hated those moments when I was sober or merely stoned. But to have them along with visuals, auditory hallucinations and a constant, swirling mindfuck – let’s just say that would not be the most enjoyable experience.

But the good thing for me is that your state of mind in these situations depends greatly on the company you keep – and I for one was very selective about who I would and would NOT shroom with (and you know who you are). Sure we were all good friends and we all got along, but I can assure you that there were people and situations that put me at ease and those that would have blown my mind beyond repair, and if there’s one thing I did well during the Lost Semester, it was to be very selective about the company I kept, especially during a psychedelic drug episode. Now if you asked my parents, they’d probably wish the one thing I did well was schoolwork, but you can’t please everyone all of the time (and if they’re reading this, I hope you’re enjoying my fictional writing, Mom and Dad!)

Mushroom trips are like snowflakes – no two are exactly alike. Sure, the basic concepts – eat shrooms, giggle, hallucinate, solve the world’s problems, drink lots of beer, have a great time – were consistent, but the scenery and situations often varied greatly. While the various stories and situations are too numerous to fully recount here, I do recall one particular trip that was quite entertaining. One of the sororities on campus was having an annual “crush” party, which involved each girl inviting four guys to a bar they had rented out in order to socialize and drink ridiculously cheap booze. Yes, it’s always fun to willingly attend a party where you know going in that the guy-to-girl ratio will be 4:1, especially when under the influence of hallucinogens. Plus, as I was friends with many of these sorority girls through Emma, who of course was dating Pops at the time, the MPB house in turn had good relations with this sorority, and a large group of us were invited to the party. The shindig was on a Saturday late afternoon, so of course by the Tuesday prior we had made the decision to shroom, selected our group and ensured that the goods would be in our possession in ample time for us to enjoy them to their fullest. I mean, why go there to meet girls when you can trip your balls off instead?

When Saturday afternoon rolled around, we stood around six individual piles of psychedelic mushrooms in Room 7 and proceeded to munch away. Upon eating, we immediately set out for the festivities – for me, the ramp-up process was always much more enjoyable when I had a healthy dose of fresh winter air pumping through my lungs to help me keep my bearings. We soon arrived at the bar, carved out a sizeable hang out area and began drinking. That’s one other thing about shrooms – your resistance to alcohol seems to increase tenfold, with the booze having a leveling effect that kept the whole experience under just the slightest bit of control (plus it helped you sleep once the effects wore off later at night). There we all were, drinking, ramping-up, chatting with the gals and having a good old time…BAM! As the full effects kicked in, I began to get fully into the groove and notice all sorts of cool things swirling around me. For one, neon signs were a wonderful addition to any experience – not only were they great to look at in their own right, but the way they played off of people’s faces gave you the impression their faces were melting – but not in a creepy, scary, Indiana Jones sort of way. However, the other things I noticed were not so pleasant. While enjoyable music is supremely enhanced during a trip, conversely the irritating qualities of bad music become all the more grating. The bar this party was held in (C.O. Daniel’s) was notorious for its horrid music selection (as evidenced by its “Time Warp Tuesdays” that featured all the 80’s music you love to hate). For instance, I can say with great conviction that EVERY time I went in C.O. Daniel’s, I inevitably heard the wretched excuse for a song “Play Guitar” by John “Cougar” Mellencamp, who always has and always will rank on my Top Five list of most hated musical artists of all time. I can also tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that this horrific song becomes downright painful when you are three hours into a mushroom trip. It was all I could do to focus solely on the visuals as I blocked out the music; of course this intense concentration on my hallucinations occurred as I blatantly ignored a girl who was trying to flirt and strike up a conversation with me; I’m guessing she didn’t realize that my pupils were probably as big as frying pans at that point, but what can you do.

The other strange phenomenon (aside from hallucinations, of course) that I always encountered during my trips that occurred inside one of our fine campus bars – I always found people who have been drinking to be fiercely unattractive, almost to the point where I couldn’t bear to look at them without becoming visibly disturbed. I have no idea how it happened, but if one part of my perception was sharpened beyond all others during these experiences, it was my innate tendency to observe drunken people and make careful note of just how unsightly they appeared. It seemed as everyone’s bleary, bloodshot eyes were glazed and half-open, that they all wobbled back and forth as they tried to stand in one spot, and that not one of them could hold a drink without spilling at least a quarter of it on the filthy floor. It was also as if I could look through their eyes into their minds, see their inhibitions lay down their defenses, and watch the slurred words roll out of their mouths along with an inordinate amount of spittle and bad breath squarely into a conversation with another ugly person that they would no doubt either forget or regret by daybreak. It was to the point where the only other people in the bar who looked normal to me (aside from the sober and visibly annoyed employees) were my partners in crime. No matter what the situation, no matter what bad conversation you were trapped in, all it took to regain your sanity was a knowing glance and a shit-eating grin from one of the other trippers. Needless to say, we stuck together in a pretty tight pack in this situation, especially given the aforementioned male-to-female ratio (because as we all know, drunken guys are immensely uglier than drunken girls).

Seeing as we’ve established that I wasn’t a huge fan of our campus bars to begin with, my feelings of dislike and discomfort were grossly magnified when under the influence of psychedelics – if it were up to me, our tripping activities would have primarily consisted of roaming around outside, looking at trees and buildings and holding nonsensical conversations, followed by drinks and pinball at one of the more low-key bars on campus. But here we were, in the middle of the muck and mire that comprised the worst in alcohol abusing fun our campus had to offer. About four hours into the trip, I had certainly had enough. While my friends and I certainly preferred remaining completely in tact as a unit, we also understood that at a certain point it was inevitable for some people to want a change of scenery. I polled my cohorts, and Mayo was quick to agree that it was indeed time to get the fuck out of Dodge. So off we went.

Our first order of business was to get as far away from that bar scene as humanly possible. So we began to walk. And walk. And walk. Pretty soon we were clear on the south end of campus, neither of us with a clue of how much time had just passed or how far we had just walked. As we strolled down one of the campus’s busier thoroughfares, we saw car after car after car driving toward us. It was quite dark at this time, and we were quite fucked up and all we could really see were set after set of headlights flashing upon us and fading away, flashing upon us and fading away. It was as if these headlights were being pointed squarely on us, much like the lights of an interrogation. I wasn’t scared, but my mind started to move in the direction of wondering just how obvious it was to everyone else that I was walking around under the influence of mushrooms. “My goodness,” I thought to myself, “everyone keeps shining these lights right on us. They must have some clue what’s going on here. They must…”

At that point Mayo turned to me, flashed a giant grin and said, “They know.”

I nearly fell on the ground I was laughing so hard – how the hell did he know that I knew that they knew what we knew they knew? “Yes!” I snorted. “They know! They know exactly what we’re up to right now! Holy shit, that’s funny!” I guess in more dire circumstances, the concept of everyone all around us knowing exactly what we were up to would have been great cause for paranoia. But I didn’t really give a shit, nor did Mayo. In fact, we reveled in the fact and as strange as it sounds it made that particular experience all that much more enjoyable (it probably didn’t hurt that we had been drinking, but still). I don’t remember exactly how we wound down from that trip, but something tells me it provided the perfect ending to a perfect time.

And that’s really what it comes back to – the experience, the company, the state of mind. I neither condone nor apologize for those experiences. I do know that I wouldn’t trade them for the world. And if, just if, all of these factors – friends, scenery, attitude – aligned in just the right manner, in just the right way, at just the right time, you had the recipe for the greatest experience you could ever possibly have. Just if…

Until next time…