In the spirit of positivity and because I just had a lot of fun with them, for Mo and Stace, here is what I remember of the Hardest Trip Ever.
In 2008 some friends and I travelled to Port Elizabeth (The highest per capita drug use city in SA btw) in order to embark upon a mescaline trip.
Our friend Si had some homies who grew peyote cacti and were about to harvest the next crop, which was ripe after a 7 year growth period. This may seem like a long investment in order to get off your tits, but really- what else is there to do in PE? Numbers? Is that still a thing?
At this point, I knew that mescaline had been consumed by both Hunter S. Thompson and Native American shamans, the former to provide my inspiration and the latter to find their spirit animals. Sounded crazy. And amazing. And craymazing. I have tripped before, but never so much that I could not determine reality from fantasy, unless you count that one night I spent with Natalie Portman. Sigh.
We got to a great place on the lagoon just outside St Francis, with about 12 beds in 3 dormlike rooms with a tree outside and jumping access into the lagoon on the front yard. Boom. Also, a massive bong and a Kat laboratory in the shower. Double boom.
We got settled in, I decided to sleep in the back of the open combi, and we got started. The Cactus King, a ginger with a handlebar moustache and a Masters Degree in Biochemistry (hence the Kat lab), gave us a cupful of pureed cactus, warned us it was bitter, and told us that about twenty minutes later we would be nauseous for about 2 hours. Not so much fun. But we came all this way. Only one choice really.
We choked back the pulp, which was both the most bitter and organic tasting stuff I have ever tasted- a bit like living snot mixed with vinegar and a bar of soap, and then spent the next ten minutes eating marmite off the spoon, drinking straight black coffee and eating gherkins to try and get rid of the taste. This was about as effective as drowning an elephant by throwing damp sponges at it
Just as we overcame the bitterness, the nausea hit and I had to lie down to keep from chundering- doesn’t this sound wonderful so far?
Anyways, after an hour, I was over the impending vomit and asked what would happen if I did not wait and ride out the next hour.
“If you throw up now you’ll trip even harder as the mescaline gets absorbed all the way up your oesophagus” I was told.
Sweet deal.
I went to the bathroom, threw up thoroughly, and as I lifted my head I saw the stem of the fake daisy on the cistern start to twitch. Time to strap in and enjoy the ride, I could tell this was going to be… different.
After venturing back into the awesome sunshine of the Eastern Cape I took a seat next to my friend and told him that I already felt better- until I started sinking into the ground. It felt like the ground had the consistency of marshmallows and that I was ‘stuck’ in it, not unpleasantly, but more like the embrace of a mother welcoming her son home. My friend G said he felt the same thing, so I lay down next to him and just went with it. The ground slowly gave me its hug as the clouds spat forth multi-coloured triangles and hexagons. G said that for him, everything seemed to be based around the number 3, so clearly the triangles and hexagons were something we were sharing. How special.
Shortly after the trip began in earnest, Action Man Dave came around with mini toasties he had made- whilst tripping on mescaline. This man was clearly something special. If I had known who Bear Grylls was in 2008, then Dave would have had to be the Hunter S. Thompson reimagining of Mr Grylls- the same physique, the same constant calls to action and of course, the same recipe for the toasties (citation needed)
Dave said he was going to paddle across the lagoon to pump some prawns to use as bait for when he wanted to fish later (I know, how the fuck do you do these things whilst tripping right?), so I volunteered to join him.
I asked if it was safe to swim, upon which I was told it was so ‘clichéd’ to go swimming on mescaline. Of course, being my first time, nothing was clichéd, so I got up, ran to the edge of the grass and dived in- only thinking mid-air “How deep is this actually?”
Theres a lesson here.
Luckily, the lagoon was plenty deep enough, and as I hit the water, I had the closest thing to a religious epiphany I have ever experienced.
Like a total hippie, I felt like I understood EXACTLY how the universe was put together, that it was all made of energy and I was part of it. I knew my place, my impact and my direction- it was amazing. Then I remembered I had to breathe.
Spluttering to the surface, I emerged to an extremely entertained ginger moustache right up in my grill, which I promptly threw up on. Now THAT was really special.
LUckily, Dave/Bear (DaveBear?) was there to defuse the situation- and the bomb Hans Gruber placed in the Nakatomi Corp building. Little known fact.
Dave and I paddled across the lagoon on a paddleboard and started pumping prawns, which sounds disgusting but is actually boring as fuck- especially when you are tripping. Even more so when you are tripping all of the balls. ALL OF THEM.
The swim back across the lagoon now seemed like a venture once more into the breach, and by this point I was having difficulty discerning what was real and what wasnt, which is quite unusual for me- nonetheless DaveBear did what any rational person would do when confronted with someone in my state: He put me in a Position of Responsibility.
Handing me a bucket full of pumped prawns- which are really shrimp who have undergone pumping, he put me on the paddleboard and pushed me in the general direction of home.
Within 2 minutes, I had lost all sense of urgency, direction and was being talked to in serious tones by the shrimp, who were deriding both my choice if swimwear and my choices in life. I found all of this nothing short of hilarious, and can only imagine what I looked like to the people who pulled up next to me in their speedboat.
“Are you ok?” The man (I think) asked
“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!” I replied
“Do you know you’re drifting out to sea?”
…
“Can I get a lift?”
To be continued…
Revolutionary Throwback 