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A Bad Trip, a Flashback, a Friendship
We sat facing each other on a mattress that pancaked on a friend’s bedroom floor, our eyes lit by the energy of wordless communication. Then a void opened behind each of us and we fell backward, as if from a cliff, into a permeable darkness. When light returned, everything had been varnished in glass. We walked outside, and each surface, from the tarmac under our feet to the fence-post to the shingles on the house next door sparkled, glistening and untouchable. And horrifyingly unreal. We held hands, afraid the whole world was about to shatter.
My best friend and I were only fourteen years old when we had that bad trip. We entered a hallucination together. Our minds became linked in some way that allowed us to experience the same non-reality.
It was 1971, and psychedelics were readily available to me and affordable. A hit of Mr. Natural or Purple Haze went for two bucks, which I could panhandle in less than an hour on Boston Commons. If I chipped in with friends and bought a whole sheet of blotter acid, it cost even less.
Weed was very cheap then, too, and if you know any old school pot heads, you’re probably sick of hearing about those fat, one-ounce bags of Acapulco Gold they bought for fifteen bucks. But you had to keep smoking it all day if you wanted to stay high. One dose of LSD could keep you high for twelve hours. It was…
