The First Time I Got High Draft 2

The First Time I Got High
Woody Tauke
1475 words

Intended Publication: New York Times Magazine

Growing up I had a number of best friends.   As I got older and developed through the many complicated phases of childhood, and adolescence, they entered and left my life with some regularity.  As I changed, they changed, AJ, Michael, Joey, Nick, and Steve.  Despite the many differences they had, I see now one similarity.  They all found sanctuary in partying far earlier than I, and I add as a digression, far earlier than they were ready for.  Now, I use the term partying as a sort of watered down jargon for drug use.  All of the best friends I had growing up started smoking weed long before I did, and that is at least partially, if not wholly, responsible for their individual downfalls.    Whether it was through police intervention, college drop out, or excessive pharmaceutical self-medication we all fell victim to the old gateway cliché.  That is everyone except me.   Watching them drift away from me and eventually into nothingness, at least in terms of my life, was a terrifying process.  Like watching wax figures slowly melt into wire skeletons, mere husks of the friends I once had.  It was never a wholehearted commitment I made to myself, or even a conscious decision, instead, avoiding weed became a principle for me to live by, and the vestiges of my oldest friends guideposts for me; so as I might not lose my way.  Yet in college, once their proverbial ghosts were no longer present in my life, I found myself only looking at the moment, and forgetting my past. 

My freshman year of college a group of friends and I decided to lock ourselves in a door room and eat some weed cookies (edibles [as they are now known to me]).  The function of locking ourselves in was more aesthetic than anything else, and we did eventually leave, but it certainly added to the ambiance of the experience.  In typical 90’s teen movie fashion (insert title here), we had Christmas lights, blankets, and plenty of weird pictures to stare at.  The group of friends I was with were, and are, considerably better versed when it comes to drugs than I, and I’m not sure they necessarily expected to trip out as bad as I did but again, ambiance was important to us.  I don’t remember who went out and actually got the weed cookies, but I paid my five dollars and upon my arrival to my friend Xanders room one was handed to me.  The door was locked.  We laughed, listened to music, and with deep breaths (mine a nervous inhalation) finally ate the cookies, which turned out to be less of cookies and more just cookie dough.  I suppose that could an unspoken, and unbeknownst to me, rule of drug dealing: you do your own baking.  Point being, and hour later we were high as hell. 

I still have video of us on my phone.  I don’t remember taking the clip, but it’s a lot of giggling and us trying to walk in slow motion.  I make a brief cameo at one point, just long enough to laugh myself to tears before turning the camera away from my face again.  I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not, but this was my first experience getting recreationally high (I broke my arm once my sophomore year of high school and they gave me a twilight sedation) and I didn’t have much insight into the experience prior to eating the edible.  Most vividly I remember an incredible force, greater even than the gravity that night (which was suspiciously heavy), that pulled at my mind and body equally.  I know this endless power now only as one word.  I mentioned above not having much knowledge of what being high was like and while I knew that you got the munchies from weed it would have been nice for someone to warn me of their intensity.

  I don’t remember too much of that night, I was abysmally high and a little drunk, but at some point I remember hitting a mental wall and from then one I only had one thought:  I must eat.  It didn’t matter what or how much it cost; I just had to eat.  As I’m sure you guessed, I ordered a shit ton of pizza.  How much pizza can an incredibly high freshman in college order for fifty dollars on a Friday night, you might ask?  Three 36-inch thin crust pizzas which took entirely too long to get to me (albeit time was passing much slower that night).  They were “for the group” ( ;] ) and they cost me $50.  Their arrival wasn’t nearly as glorious as pop culture had led me to believe it would be, and all I can remember doing is chomping.  Now, I use the word chomping with much consideration, because I wasn’t exactly eating the pizza.  I was hardly chewing it and I certainly wasn’t tasting it.  It was just entering my body with some mild consideration for me not choking to death.  I wasn’t even really hungry in the sense that I had thought I was moments before, my mouth hurt from the friction, and I was relatively unaware of the pizza.   I was merely a vortex that could only be satisfied with Gumby’s (formerly Gumby’s, now decidedly less fun Gumba’s).   The pizza vortex never really closed that night, it merely consumed all that it could and got temporarily distracted.  That temporary distraction was an out of body experience for me, and I seemed a guest in my own life.  I watched myself, with complete disregard for my surrounds, unlock and leave that room, walk back down the hill and enter my own dorm, and eventually dorm room. 

Leaving that night was probably all motivated by my unending quest for food, but at the time, I was not thinking nearly that rationally or linearly.  What I found in my freshman year dorm room (my mini fridge) was an unopened, but semi frozen, 36-oz. jar of applesauce.  The night before I had started the 1998 Terrence Malick classic, The Thin Red Line, and so, with my applesauce in hand, I slumped onto my futon and picked up where I left off.  It was distinctly more difficult to follow the second day in, and I, to this day, can’t remember much of that movie.  What I do remember is a scene when the screen goes completely black.  A full blackout, only lit by the backlight on my MacBook.  That night in my dorm room, I caught my self reflected in the Gorilla Glass of my laptop’s screen.  I had the, now all but empty, jar of applesauce resting against my chin, mindlessly shoveling its contents into my mouth, my eyes swollen, red, and half closed, trying to focus on the Vietnam War.  

I have never been able to shake what I saw that night my freshman year of college from my mind; that image of my face, backlit by my computer, and seemingly haunted by all the faces of my childhood friends.  In that moment, the weight of their sacrifice, the reminder of their lost presence in my life, and why I had conducted myself the way I had for so long, came crashing down around me.  The guilt was crippling, for the first time it fell on me and I almost wept.  Instead, as soberly as I could, I closed my computer, and went to sleep.  

Since then I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on myself, my friends, and the bonds we seem to share despite our differences.  I haven’t changed hugely in that time, I still get high every once in a while, and the guilt from my freshman year still comes, sometimes as I’m falling asleep, sometimes the morning after.  It’s not quite as strong as it once was, and while it dwindles I suspect I will always carry it with me (old habits die hard).  What I’ve come to terms with now though, is that while the people that were once closest to me are gone now, it was never my fault.  They made their mistakes, and despite an indefinable bond between us being undeniable, I am a different person and I will make my own.  I still don’t favor getting high, it’s somewhat of a novelty to me now, and I still blame marijuana for a lot of the loss I have faced in my young life, but at least I’m a freer stronger person now, no longer tethered by connections of the past.  I will keep reflecting on the chapter of my life, one brought on by a small skunk smelling herb, for a long time, and maybe someday I’ll give one of the gang a call, maybe not.