Love & War

Prologue: This is supposed to be the part of a story that gets added in when the story makes no sense. However, the story probably won't make any sense anyway - but that's okay! I just want this paragraph to explain one thing: in the world that I had to adapt to, we were conditioned as we rose through the college. Once I had progressed to my final year, I had learnt a lot of harsh truths. In this year, our cohort had to take on the roles of our previous mentors. And we had a... unique way teaching others around us.

I was awoken from my slumber aroundabouts 2 in the morning. I heard running, hushed voices and laughter. Something ran past my room, followed by three others.

Quickly, I made my way to The Islander's room. It was obvious what was going on.

"Quick, get up!" I whispered loudly to The Islander as I tried to rouse him from his deep sleep. "The goddamn natives have gone wild! Some imbecile has introduced them to gold tops and it's anarchy out there!". (Note: "the natives" refers to any other groups of people who engaged in the same activities as myself, but were not within my immediate friend circle, oftentimes younger than me.)

My paranoia and eccentricity was not dulled by the fact that I was coming off the cusp of a large weekend (it being a Sunday night). No, if anything it was heightened. I was in almost a fitful state.


"My god man, can't you understand the solution to this madness? If we are to ever sort this mess we need to be on the same level as these apes! Get the god-damned mushrooms out of the freezer and roll up a reefer, it's time to teach these buffoons a lesson!" I yelled, rousing The Islander and steeling him for the night ahead.

And so an hour later, there we were. In the thick of it. Sneaking like wanted men through the halls, searching for these natives. We soon came to find them outside - on the school ovals, giggling at nothing. Goddamn animals.


"Ho yuss" was the call I made as I approached. Their wide eyes flickered towards me, pupils the size of dinnerplates, taking in the figures of me and The Islander as we strode into view. Soon, we began dishing out some of our own substances that we had stockpiled for such occasions. See, our point of view is that if someone's going to dabble in these sorts of things then they need to know the extremes of what they're involved in.

They had to go to hell and back just to see the view.


So we gave them reefer, to relax them - also adding a sense of paranoia for inexperienced users. More mushrooms, for we were already tripping pretty hard and hey - we wanted these boys to have a "good" time.

As a coup de grâce, we gave them amphetamines. Not much, about half of a really effective dose, but with these inexperienced drug users who were already bent out of their minds on mushrooms and reefer, it was like giving cocaine to a goldfish - it was too stupid to consider. However the deed was done, and it was time to see it all play out.


Well, if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that I don't like mixing stimulants with psychedelics. It makes you edgy, why do you need speed to stay awake if you're heads bursting with psychedelics? Also, at the end of the trip it's almost impossible to sleep - much harder than if you just smoked a few spliffs and went to bed. But perhaps the most dastardly effect of all is that it makes you brutally aware of your trip - it slaps you in the face and makes you think "what the goddamned hell is going on here? This can't be real!", and the mirage of (un)reality is shattered.

We could see it already. The natives were jittery, keen to leave the open expanses of outdoors for somewhere a bit more sheltered. Of course, light would come in time, heralding a new school week.

Sure as hell was turning out to be a Silly Sunday. Lord knows what these loathsome beasts would do to one another within a confined area.

After the natives left, me and The Islander had a cigarette at the bench. Pleasantly tripping, The Islander wondered aloud "what do you think will become of them, the natives?"

"Well you see my island friend, that's up to them now."

Tripping, of the bad variety.

Psilocybe Cubensis. A psychoactive mushroom, oftentimes found growing out of cow manure. Contains the chemicals Psilocybin, which metabolises to Psilocin in the body and loves to act on the serotonin receptors in the brain. Often called "magic mushrooms". Now, of all places to locate a large paddock of cows, with opportune growing potential for these fungi, why the hell did they put it at the back of a large all-boys boarding school? I don't know, but me and my mates sure were appreciative. Maybe at times a bit too appreciative.

Let's talk about my bad trip.

Now, it was the first or second night back in boarding. Grade 10 I think. I had returned from holidays with my first psychoactive experience fresh in memory. As far as I knew, these mushrooms brought only boundless joy and euphoria to an individual, and no bad could come from their repeated and frequent use.

Boy, was I about to learn the lesson of a lifetime.

My friend "The Bird" had been harvesting mushrooms that day, and as the afternoon came he approached me with five or six large golden-top mushrooms. I was eager to begin tripping, and downed them as fast as I could. You see, I was yet to learn the golden rule of psychoactives: set & setting.
Set refers to your mindset. With psychoactives being a mood enhancer, one quickly learns the right mindset for tripping. If one is in a good mood, they will be in a better one, if one is in a bad mood, then will be in a worse one. Easy to understand, yeah?
Anyways, setting refers to where you actually are. Usually to trip you want a nice relaxed atmosphere, with not too many people around and nothing to stress you out. Therefore, a person can have a fun or relaxing trip.
Well uh, my set and setting wasn't the best. My set: just gotten to school, slightly homesick, worried that I was going to get caught on mushrooms. Setting: in a dormitory, with supervisors and rules ever-present.

Uh-Oh.


Within half an hour of eating the mushrooms, I was tripping balls. Sitting in the dining hall, all I could see was my spaghetti twirling around on my plate, like a bunch of worms fighting for territory in the earth. Drinking green cordial made me imagine of slime, dripping down my throat like the sloppy excrement of a Steven Spielberg creation. Pudding, chocolate mousse. Need I say what that reminded me of?
Once I finished dinner, I practically ran to our smoking spot, with the ground swaying beneath me like some sort of nightmarish roller coaster. Upon lighting a cigarette, I could imagine every individual molecule of poison and tar making it's way into my lungs and bloodstream, coagulating and forming pits of cancerous cells in my body.

This wasn't going well.


When I returned to the dorm, I realised I had a roll call. Jesus Christ, I thought to myself, this was fucking brutal. A mindfuck on a scale that I couldn't even comprehend anymore. Sitting down in the common room, the floor rushed up to meet my face. An eerie orange hue appeared to coat everyone around me, like a bad fake tan, reminiscent of the Jersey Shore cast. But I was still my normal colour, what was happening to me?

The worst was yet to come.


Sitting in my room during the allocated study period, I pulled myself together. A bit. I decided to do my homework, where I had to write a detailed description of what a ritual is. Let's just say, I found my schoolbook outside my window the next day with the words "A ritual is a certain set of practice-fuuuuuuuck this brooo, I'm tripping balls fuck this." with several "sad faces" and weird Escher-esque drawings underneath. Last time I try homework on shrooms.

After study, I raced out again for another cigarette. By this point in time I was convinced that I was the last sane person on the planet after a semi-apocalyptic situation where evil spirits had found their way into people's heads and turned them into zombies. Everyone was my enemy, so I had to move in the shadows to avoid detection. Once I got back to my bed I hid underneath the covers for about 3 hours in order to protect my brain.

If you've never had a bad trip, it's impossible to imagine what it's like. It's like every bad feeling you've ever experienced, any amount of grief, anger or loss, comes back and is concentrated into a few hours in your brain. The terror is indescribable. While trying to hide myself under the covers of my bed from the evil spirits flying around my room, this was going on in my brain. Eventually, I decided I needed another cigarette.
Walking through the dorm with just the eerie glow of the emergency exit lights showing you the way is a very strange experience while you're tripping. The whole time I was walking, I was calm and in control. But suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as if I could sense someone or something watching me. I turned around and looked along the corridor, and saw a... thing, a shadow, a spirit, whatever you want to cal it - racing towards me. I stood there in shock while it just raced into me, and as it hit me all I could feel was cold. And with the cold came sadness, a wave of emotions racing over me like the shadowy blackness of whatever it was I had seen. So I continued on out to the verandah and rolled a cigarette.

And while I smoked, I cried. I cried and I cried, for everything and anything I'd ever done wrong. For the people I'd hurt, deliberately or not, I cried. Until there was not a tear left, I cried.
It's an odd experience, crying on a whim like that. But the next morning when I woke up, I knew I wasn't the same, but I definitely felt better. I felt like I had acquired some form of greater knowledge, maybe not in academic terms, but in life terms. After that night, I knew more about myself than I had ever imagined.

The nights

The nights are prime-time. At night, the fun happens.

At a boarding school, you are under constant supervision. However at night, most people tend to fall asleep right? And thus, the night becomes your biggest friend.

There's the sex, drugs and drinking that make up the reasons for you to stay up, sneak out and turn into a menace to society. But also, there's something else. You're in control, you're doing what you want, nobody is telling you what to do! And so that's why you go out, you go to the parties, drink rum with the boys on the oval, smoke pot at the shack, get laid in the school hall, and cause havoc in other dorms. You're in control.

So story time. There was this one night, a Tuesday if I remember correctly. I had gone to bed, head pleasantly buzzing due to certain chemicals stimulating the CB1 and CB2 receptors in my brain, and I had pleasingly embraced the tender arms of slumber. 

That was until about midnight, when a mate (we'll call him G), came and roused me, tempting my sleepy brain with pilfered rum, beer, vodka and leafy greens. Of course, being the level-headed fellow I was, I promptly jumped out of bed in order to sate my curiosity regarding the whereabouts of more.

Soon enough, the source was revealed. A group of my good friends had pilfered several cartons of alcoholic beverages from somewhere (the location shall remain nameless), and had promptly decided that a half built house on the cross country track, located immediately adjacent to the school grounds, was the place best suited to consume these. In addition, another friend had made a trip in order to pick up some "leafy greens" (if you know what I mean).

And so eventually, a semi-large cohort of friends were there. These included: "G", "Yeah Man", "The Bird", "Eli", "Andy", "Jaw" and myself. In time, "The Chaser" joined us, upon returning to the dormitory after a late night sex session and finding me absent from my room. If memory serves me correctly, the night consisted of us getting catastrophically intoxicated, notoriously weird and just generally rowdy. With the group consuming well over 6 cartons of alcohol and fifty dollars worth of high-grade leafy greens, a complication must be imminent, right?

You betcha.

Around four o'clock in the morning, G was overcome by intoxication. On the newly laid carpet in a half-built house, his body decided it was time to reject the contents of his stomach (which had a pretty, fluorescent red tint to it, the aftermath of one to many red Vodka Cruisers. Obviously he needed a good night's sleep if he was to be awake and ready to go to school in four hours, so The Chaser and Andy were commissioned to take him to bed, while the rest of us went our separate ways, our night quietly drawn to an end.

Overall, much fun was had, and the week after was spent completing a rigorous community service program, getting rid of the leftover alcohol in the most efficient manner, if you know what I mean. 

What this is really about.

I don’t really know why I started this blog, or what it’s about...  I guess I want to tell my story. To be honest, I’m kind of a bit confused where to start. I mean, the most logical place to start would be to be at the beginning, right? Maybe when I first stepped foot in boarding school, and walked in to the double room and laid my eyes in the raised bed and desk underneath, coupled with a cupboard? It’s hard to explain that feeling when you first walk in. It’s like... a sudden realisation. A sudden realisation that wow, this is your new home. Your parents weren’t bullshitting – they really would send you to boarding school if you fucked up again. Then they leave, and give you your goodbyes. You can hear your dad talking to you, trying to give you some advice on living away from home, but you aren’t listening because you can see your mum crying behind her sunglasses. You know she’s trying to stay strong so that you’re not embarrassed, but all you want to do is hug her and tell her you’re going to straighten yourself out. Because despite everything that’s happened, you’re not going to let her down again. But of course, in time you do. You fuck up again. You have to make those phone calls again and just accept the fact that you’re a fuck up. A grand fuck up, maybe, but a fuck up none the less.

So yeah, that’s what this blog is about. A fuck up. A fuck up who called a bluff and realised too soon that they sure as hell weren’t bluffing. A fuck up’s stories about fucking up. Occasionally you fuck up and get caught, but hey, live and learn.

Just try not to fuck up.

A memorable passage;

As an atheist, I was surprised to find a bit of meaningful scripture, but this one really strikes home when you're in an environment like that.

John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

(New testament - New International Version)

Schedules;

Grades 9-11


6:30 am - Wake up -> get dressed (in school uniform) -> go and have some breakfast

7:30 am - Morning jobs (sweep corridors, clean tables, take bins out etc.)

8:20 am - First class starts

10:15-10:45 am - Morning tea

12:25-1:15 pm - Lunch

3:00 pm - School finishes

5:45 pm - Dinner

7:00-8:00 Study

9:00 - Bed

NB - If you're a smoker, put smoke breaks in between each of these.


This is the schedule that you are expected to live by, day after day.

A brief overview.

So really, I'm just starting off with this whole blogging thing.
During high school, I was enrolled at an all-boys boarding school. During my time there, friends of mine and I got up to a fair bit of "mischief". I think I'll just use this blog as a tool to put these stories that I have out there, without really compromising me or anyone involved.

Please note: the likelihood of these stories being completely accurate is extremely low. Most of these stories contain events that I, as a good student and lawful citizen would never even consider doing.

But hey, believe what you want.