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."

Yeah man!

So, dear readers, let me tell you a story. This is a story of a friend, we called him "Yeah Man". We called him this because the most memorable thing about him was how he would stand with his arms crossed, bob his head, and say "Yeah man!" when agreeing to something. It was hilarious.

Yeah Man was one of those guys who are so engorged by self-belief, that they feel invincible. An opportunist, he would always be looking for the next form of excitement, ranging from mushroom trips to his personal favourite, Butane. However, he was malleable. A follower. It mattered no though, as this was always the cause of hilarity too. When trying to convince him of something, you could hear his mind changing. His dialogue would go from "Nah man!" to "Maybe man!" and then to "It's possible man!" to "Yeah man!". all the while bobbing his head.


Now, me and my circle of friends knew that Yeah Man lived by the saying "If you're gonna do it, do it big", but one Sunday afternoon was saw "doing it big" get taken to a whole new level.

As the college was Catholic, on a Sunday we would have to travel in buses, en masse, to the local church in order to celebrate Zombie Jesus or something. Normally we would go to the congregation pleasantly buzzed from some fine leafy greens, and Yeah Man had talked of eating magic mushrooms beforehand. We warned him against the idea, citing the risk involved for himself and those around him. However he was adamant that he do it.

So on that particular Sunday, that crazy motherfucker ate 50 Psilocybe Cubensis mushrooms, and went to church.


When I saw him, the first thing I noticed was his face. Drained of all colour, he resembled a store mannequin.
Then his eyes. His pupils, the size of dinner plates. No colour left in his eyes.
Oh, and the bobbing of the head.

My good friend The Bird came to me for advice. As Yeah Man's best friend, he felt obliged to stay by his side, sober, to guide him through the afternoon. But he was worried. He explained to me that Yeah Man was plunged so far deep into a psychoactive pit that he had suffered complete ego loss. He know longer knew of himself, his friend nor family. All he knew was to follow The Bird.

See, nobody knows what happened to Yeah Man at that church service. I didn't wish to associate him in the state that he was in, and neither did anybody else. So he hung around the back, flitting among the edges of the pews, absorbed in his own world. He refuses to say what he learnt from that day, and up until today still doesn't talk about it. But he was changed. He had not only toed the point of no return, he had leaped over it.

Probably while bobbing his head.

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.