Chapter 2: How This Happened

 

I fully intended to get really smashed at my final party with my friends.  I reasoned that if I got smashed just one more time before I left town, I would be able to look back later and be able to say I was finally done with all of the substances.  In the future, I wanted to associate the substances with the environment I was living in at the time and use the memory to prevent myself from returning to it.  Besides, it was just one more time...

 

I was hanging out at one of my friend's homes because his parents were vacationing in Aruba.  The group of us observed a tradition of sorts.  The tradition was actually an unwritten law requiring members of our group to each offer up the house when our parents left their homes to us alone.  We would use the golden opportunity to party. House parties were always the best!

 

My friend's parents timing couldn't have been better!  The house was one of the larger of the single story brick homes in an area near factories and near the projects.  The houses in the neighborhood were small, but this house had a large addition that was fixed up as a party room.  There was a pool table, a bar, and an extremely powerful sound system.  There were many comfortable chairs and plenty of floor space if someone needed a place to crash.  We started partying in the early afternoon.

 

Toward the evening, the high I had from alcohol and weed was beginning to get boring.  I really wanted the night to be special so I decided I would buy something to spice the pot up a bit.  I knew who to talk to if I needed any type of illegal drug and arranged for that friend to get me what really could have been anything.  It might have been heroin, crystal, crack cocaine or PCP for all I know.

 

I must pause here and say that I do not endorse substance abuse in any form.  What I did with the substances detracted from who I was, as well as delayed the potential of the person I was to become in the future.  I also for certain don't recommend that anyone attempt to recreate what happened to me by doing what I did.  I was lucky to make it back to here from where I went and I am uncertain how that luck will hold for anyone else.  There is no way everyone can win when they gamble!  I feel the odds on a gamble like the one I took would be sky high.

 

My dealer friend came back and gave me a rock of what I thought was some kind of cocaine.  I didn't really know anything about the stuff. I thought it was a form of coke that you had to crush up.  He told me to wait until he came back before I did anything with it.  I decided to go ahead and disregard what he said.  I crushed about half of it and snorted it.  Then I gave the rest to my friends.  The friend that got the rock for me came back, smelled what we were smoking, and asked to see it.  When he saw what was left, he asked me where the rest was.  I told him I snorted it.

 

My friend had a very worried look on his face.  He told me that I screwed up big time because that stuff was not supposed to be snorted like coke. He reminded me that he had told me to wait. He said I snorted enough to kill me and I would be lucky if I lived through it.  Of course, I blew that off completely.  I even laughed at him!  I felt that I was experienced enough with drugs that I would be OK and told my friend that.  Hell, I was an invincible teen.  Nothing could hurt me!  My friend didn't believe me at all.

 

Right after that, my friends and I went outside to hang out on the porch and drink some more beers.  I could see my parents sitting on their porch from where we were.  They were less than fifty yards away.  I thought it was pretty funny that there I was, higher than a kite, and they had no idea where I was, what I was doing, or even what I was planning to do!  I felt higher than I ever felt in my life and finally thought I felt I was happy at last.  I was enjoying myself.  It didn't take very long though until I had to sit down because I had trouble standing up.  I thought if I sat down that I would be OK and that sitting down under my own power was more attractive than falling down.  I sat on the cement porch for a minute.  Suddenly, sitting on the cement wasn't working anymore.  I started to get a bit scared then because that my friend had told me I would probably die.  I was starting to get very dizzy, like I was going to lose consciousness.

 

I lay down on the grass to use the stability of the earth in an effort to maintain my slim hold on reality.  I knew I had to do that in order to be able to stay connected enough to ever come back down from this particular high.  Being close to the ground was extremely comforting to me, as if I was being held by my mom.  The spinning stopped and I faded off into a calm, wonderful sleep.  The sleep felt like I was in a cool breeze through a peaceful blackness.

The next thing I remember was riding in my friend's car.  My friends were all there with me.  I tried to talk to them during the ride but they didn't seem to hear me and I couldn't fully understand what they said.  I was only receiving bits and pieces of what they were saying and they couldn't hear what I said at all.  We rode around the block and passed directly in front of my childhood home.  I remember seeing my parents on the porch and me thinking to duck down in the car.  I didn't want my parents to see me like that because then they would know what I didn't want them to know. I remembered that I had done some kind of pretty powerful drug and would get caught for sure if I went home.  They would surely punish me if they found out about it. 

 

I thought we drove the way up north in the old blue 74 Chevy Impala 4 door, crossing the Mackinaw Bridge and then turning around to come all the way back to Metro Detroit again.  As we traveled, the countryside seemed to me to be in distress.  It was like the land was missing something and wasn't quite how it was supposed to be.  It wasn't anything I could really see. It was more something that I felt.  We rode around my neighborhood past my childhood home again.  I saw my parents still sitting on the porch and wondered why they were still there after the long trip I had taken.

 

As we rode around my neighborhood, I felt a strange attraction to the trees.  I could see and feel their strength.  I actually saw and felt their roots reaching deep into the ground.  I appreciated how they were able to connect with the planet and contribute to it as much or more than what they took from it.  I was awed that they seemed to be able to withstand the changes of the seasons and grow in spite of the influences of humans in general.

 

I saw some little fairy-like looking beings in and around every tree.  They looked like the fairies one might see in fairy tale books.  They were male, female, young and old and were as diverse in appearance and demeanor as we are.  When I looked directly at them, I think they sensed it, then quickly turned away to melt back into the leaves.  If I turned my head, or even blinked, they would be gone without a trace.

 

One of those beings didn't turn away though.  He looked me directly in my eyes and smiled a huge, loving smile that hit me directly in the heart.  He was about a foot tall, much bigger and older than the others of his kind.  He wore very bright colored clothing and from his smile I knew he was positive.  I watched him as we drove away.  I wondered why he didn't vanish when I looked at him like the others did.

 

I don't really remember returning to the house and the party.  I told my friends about the car ride after the experience and they told me that the only place I went was to the chair they carried me to after I passed out on the porch.  My friends didn't even want to talk about that night to me at all and still haven't to this day.

 

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