The
First Time I Got High
Woody Tauke
1538 words
Woody Tauke
1538 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. The fear of them and their collective fate
kept me safe, and I used it as a shield.
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), which 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 survivor’s guilt
of the past 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 old 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, it was never my
fault. Nor am I the same as them,
regardless our past together. The fear
of their fate, and the terror of the future that kept me safe for so long, is
no longer necessary. 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 fear
and connections to the past. I will keep
reflecting on this 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.
Franklin Outline:
Complication: Fear
constrains Woody.
Development: Woody loses friends.
Development: Woody loses friends.
Woody feels survivor guilt.
Woody battles self.
Resolution:
Woody releases fear.
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