A Trip in the Desert, A Trip to the Mall:

Everyone has a drug story. This is mine.

Brian had some mushrooms in his freezer.

Psychedelic mushrooms. You know what I’m talking about: magic mushrooms, ‘shrooms, fantastic sams, choo-choo buttons, rainbow raisins, uncle jonny’s gumdrops, hover disk charlies, chatty chewbombs, banana leather, crumble bums, hermit’s delight, brown-clowns, fire in the wheelhouse, clean dry laundry, the list goes on and on.

They were stored in a General Foods International Coffees tin. He wasn’t sure how long he’d had them, but he said we should eat them. It would be fun. He was well versed in hallucinogenic drugs. A former straight-edge guy in college, he was now a veteran of mind expansion.

It was the summer of 1992. I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’d moved there after completing an acting internship at a regional theater in Springfield, Massachusetts. Home to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and crippling depression. I’d spent the winter drinking at a bowling alley bar straight out of a David Lynch film. Night after night, I’d watch the same, rotund blind woman exit the bathroom delivering a chain of surprisingly loud popping sounds from her mouth. This set off a call and response with her companion, a withered man in a green felt hat slurp-sipping multiple shot glasses of Baileys. From his seat at the bar, his return “pops” would slowly guide her back to her stool. It was a genius system, and a crushing reminder of life’s brutality. I once drank next to a man who in molasses-slow increments gently passed out into a paper plate of corned beef hash. It was a bleak time, so come spring, I decided to go out west, to the place of my birth. New Mexico. Albuquerque. The Land of Enchantment.

Brian was a good friend of mine from college in Virginia. He’d decided to move to Albuquerque in part because I’d introduced him to some friends who lived there. Now he was studying photography at the University of New Mexico and dating a woman who’d just recently separated from her angry Irish husband. They weren’t living together, so at his suggestion and her kind invitation, I moved in with her. She lived in a little house across the street from a park. Just her, her dog Mookie, and seven birds. I severely underestimated how loud birds could get, especially at dawn, when the sun would peek its head into their cages. The largest bird, an African Gray Parrot, named Wilma would cry out “Meow! Meow! Meow!” continually, at the top of her little bird lungs, waking me up with her best cat impression. I learned to sleep comfortably with earplugs that summer.

Now, as hard as it may be to believe, I’m not a person who gobbles hallucinogenic mushrooms on a regular basis. I’ve lived a primarily fear-based life. I used to think I shouldn’t take hallucinogens because my imagination is too vivid, but I’ve since realized I was flattering myself, and now believe that’s just a generous coverup for the fact that I was afraid. I mean having a vivid imagination is probably a reason a person should indulge in hallucinogens, but I come from fear-based stock. Who knows how far back the quaking, heart-palpitating lineage traces? The alarm center in my brain works overtime. I’d had a lot of experience with pot, and while most of the time it was fun, there were a few occasions where it didn’t sit well with me. Once on a double date in tenth grade I did too many bong hits in the car before going to see the movie “Irreconcilable Differences” and then freaked out and tried to crawl into my date’s lap. My buddy had to take me to the lobby and calm me down by playing the arcade game “Moon Patrol.” Clearly, I was not a cool customer when it came to drugs, or “maintaining” while under the influence. I suffered from the dreaded “I’m going to be this way forever!”-syndrome. So, the thought of psychedelics was scary to me.

But that particular summer day I straddled the wild fear stallion and held tight the reins. I had the day off from my job at Cost Plus World Market, where I worked the coffee counter (and once called in sick by telling my boss that I had fallen down a well), so I thought it would be a good day for an adventure. The mountains were a half-hour’s drive! There was no Basketball Hall of Fame in sight!

We took off in the late morning in my grandfather’s light blue Pontiac Grand Prix, a giant ship of a car, and started our drive toward the Sandia Mountains. Brian took out the coffee tin as soon as we were on the road and held it out to me as I drove. I took a mushroom cap, and a large stem, placed them in my mouth and began chewing up the bitter, corky, earthy pieces. Swallowing them down as fast as I could.

I’ve always wondered if I have a fast metabolism, or if the power of my imagination is such that it just seems that way, but regardless, within fifteen minutes I started to feel different. There was a Tinee Giant convenience store near the base of the mountains, and I decided to pull in so that I could take care of some business. One thing I wasn’t hallucinating was the strong laxative effect of the mushrooms. I rushed into the convenience store bathroom. A few minutes later, as I was washing my hands, I noticed my reflection in the mirror. Everything looked a little more… intense? I had sweat stains on my T-shirt, and it was like suddenly I had never encountered sweat stains before. They were fascinating. I left the bathroom and told Brian that maybe he’d better drive the rest of the way.

We bought some orange juice to drink because it was supposed to “boost” the effect, or “speed up the process” or something of the sort. I don’t think I needed it. By the time we parked at the base of the mountains I was definitely feeling something. We got out of the car and begin hiking up a trail and I was astounded at how GREEN and BROWN everything was, thinking “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD THIS IS NOT LIKE SMOKING POT.” Brian was feeling nothing yet. Slower metabolism, cooler head, he was just enjoying the hike.

I stopped in a grove to pee and stood transfixed as the trees around me quivered with life. They were absolutely alive, and I could see them moving, hear them breathing. It was all so very beautiful; brown earth, green pine, blue sky; but all so very VERY INTENSE, and I began to panic.

“Hey, man,” I croaked to Brian, when I stepped back on the trail, “what if I have a bad trip? I don’t wanna have a bad trip.”

“You’re not going to have a bad trip, man. I’m right here with you. Everything’s going to be fine.”

We walked a little further. I felt out of control. I wanted to go back. Back to the car. Back in time. Untake the mushrooms. I didn’t want to do this anymore. It was too much. It had filled me to the brim, and I began to overflow.

“Hey, man,” I said, “are you feeling anything? I’m really feeling this. Man, I don’t wanna have a bad trip. I don’t wanna have a bad trip, man!” I whined.

“It’s all right, man. You’re going to be fine. You’ll get used to it,” said Brian.

“Oh, man. This was a bad idea,” I said, rubbing my palms on my thighs and bouncing up and down. “I think I better make myself throw up. Should I make myself throw up?”

“If you want to, go ahead.”

I stuck my finger down my throat and tried to throw up. Nothing much came up. I did another little palm rubbing dance, bouncing up and down. It was embarrassing. I imagined every tree straining to look away.

“Oh, man! Oh man! I don’t know, man. I gambled and I lost, man! I GAMBLED AND I LOST!”

I was close to tears.

“Dude!” Brian said firmly. “I promise you, you’re okay. You’re going to be okay. Just try to calm down.”

I took a breath, and tried to focus, but it was like there was too much to look at all at once.

“I think I need to go back to the car. Can we go back to the car?” I asked.

“Sure. We can go back to the car,” said Brian.

“I think I have to run, man. Can we run back to the car?”

“I’m not running back to the car, man,” said Brian.

What I didn’t realize is that we’d been hiking for at least a good thirty minutes at this point. So, it’s not like it was a quick jog back to the car.

Then Brian became a small boy. I knew he was Brian, but in his Boston Red Sox cap and shorts he was a small boy leading me back to the car. I was following this same small boy when we came across two men in a clearing. One was hunched over the other, who sat on an overturned tree holding his ankle. As we got closer the one holding his ankle looked up at us wincing and said, “Have you seen a ranger?” My brain snapped at this, the reality of it was too complex. I believe that’s the moment I started to run, trundling like a big baby towards the car.

When I got to the car, I couldn’t believe how METAL it was. IT WAS SOOOOO METAL. Look at this machine. A transportation miracle. MADE OF METAL. A lowrider pulled up next to us and some Mexicans got out. To me they looked like sweeping characterizations of cholo culture. Broad chests, sleeveless ribbed undershirts, khaki pants, hairnets. They were big, spray-painted caricatures, graffiti on the side of a building. It was hard to stop staring.

I got in the car. Brian caught up and got in the driver’s seat. He started to drive down from the base of the mountain, and this is when he looked at me and said with a grin, “I’m definitely starting to feel it now.” I was in his hands completely.

Brian glided the car through the neighborhoods of the heights section of Albuquerque. I thought, “Okay, it’s cool. I’ll just close my eyes and try to get some sleep. Just relax and sleep this off.” Shutting my eyes was like diving into an extremely loud kaleidoscope, so I quickly abandoned that idea. We drove around some more and watched people doing neighborhood things. A guy was mowing his lawn, and the sight of him tending his little patch of earth on this gigantic planet was like watching a mathematical equation come to life. Numbers squared to the Nth degree.

I’m not sure how we made our next decision, honestly. It seems so blasphemous in retrospect, that we left behind that beautiful mountain landscape to do what we did next. We went to the mall.

We parked and made the slow walk from the lot to the entrance. As we walked, we passed lots of people, adults and children, families together. There was such a distinct difference between the young and old. The adults that passed looked like they’d been molded from wax and then smudged ever so slightly, their features a dull blur. The children on the other hand were bright, shining, their faces crystal clear.

Once inside, we found ourselves in a large sporting goods store perched over something called the “Worm Bar.” We dug our hands into a large selection of rubber fishing lures arrayed in various neon colors. It was like a salad bar, but for worms! Some of my panic began to melt away, and real wonderment set in. We visited the restroom, and I caught our reflections in the mirror. We resembled some race of dusty hill people. My hair was both plastered to my head, and stuck up in strange angles, as if someone asked all cowlicks present to please stand.

Then we were in the electronics store, watching fascinated as a sweaty little plum of a salesman tried to convince a sour-looking cowboy to buy a gigantic television. The desperation in his eyes was palpable as he pointed to the screen, where the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” was dunking our country’s way to victory.

It was then I had an epiphany.

“Dude! Dude!” I said to Brian, pulling him away from the sad spectacle of consumerism.

“Listen, man,” I said, “people work at their jobs… five days a week they work hard at their jobs so that they can collect these pieces of money. Then they come here on the weekend and trade in these money pieces for things that they’re supposed to ENJOY. It’s the MALL EXPERIENCE.”

My mind was blown. I needed to have a “mall experience.” I had some money pieces on me. I could do this!

“Come on,” I said, and led the way over to the Orange Julius, and the lone teen working behind the counter.

I briefed Brian before I took action.

“Okay. I’m going to order a cup of that Julius. Then I’m going to trade her some of these money pieces for it. Then we get to have it. It will be ours.”

Brian nodded.

I ordered a pineapple Julius from the girl who was talking on the phone, its cord stretched between the wall and the cash register. I’m not even sure we spoke. I think I pointed, she turned on a blender, slopped it into a cup, I handed her the money pieces and we walked away. Now all that was left was to enjoy it. We both took a small sip, then I placed it gently in the trashcan.

Our last stop before leaving was the organ store. This was when malls still had organ stores. Do malls still have organ stores? It seems unlikely. There was a guy playing the organ inside. A guy dressed in a crazy, showy tuxedo with big giant glasses and a Liberace air about him. We stood there a while just watching and listening. It was like, amidst all this madness, a special private concert had been arranged just for us. One played by a man that looked like he represented our psyches perfectly. If ever there was the embodiment of hallucination, it was this guy.

And then we were driving away. Away from the mall, away from the mountains, but still in thrall of the mushrooms. The rest of the day glided by fairly blissfully. I’d love to tell you that day excised my fear and sent me forth into the world with a newfound love for psychonautics, but sadly it was the last time I took mushrooms. But in the scheme of things, it was a day well spent, and I don’t regret it for a minute.