Category : Stories

Sub Category : Comedy

This is a true story: 


"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness…"
—Rita Mae Brown


I looked at my three best friends and saw they were normal… 




     “Eat up,” my buddy, Teddy, announced. 
     My group of friends had been waiting on Drew, who was another one of our good friends, to show up at my house. He was our normal pot dealer but the guy he’d get it from had come across a batch of phenomenal mushrooms. This wasn’t why we called him, however. Drew was a good guy who always had a shiny, new, fast car, and never did us wrong. Not to mention, always had an exciting, action-packed story of him running from the cops, being chased miles, and getting away after leading the squad car in pursuit into a ditch where it flew in the air, flipping upside down. Even if his stories were lies, everyone still enjoyed them. But he wasn’t lying earlier today when he’d said he had a surprise for us. 
      We all knew the surprise would be free mushrooms or fantastic weed. However, what no one else had known, I was hoping for the latter. I had heard many scary stories of bad trips. “As if living a real nightmare” is what someone had written on Erowid, a website forum for every drug you could imagine. To say I was nervous would be like burning down somebody’s house and saying you had a disagreement. 
      It was a late Saturday afternoon when the four of us heard music coming from outside. Teddy loved jam bands and hip-hop, but most of all, he loved what his uncle called “that damn African music”—most people who aren’t redneck racists would call it Reggae. All our heads turned to the huge window in my bedroom when we heard the faint sounds of Eek-A-Mouse, followed by a door shut. 
      “Eat up, gentlemen,” he said after tossing a gallon-sized Ziploc bag full of giant golden caps and blue stems the blue super-sized stems. Each of us stared at the bag, waiting for someone to begin. It would not be me, I had glued myself to the fence post I sat on. 
      “J, your house, you wanna do the honors?” Teddy asked, and suddenly, all eyes were on me. 
      The prior knowledge from many experiences similar to this told me to decide quick before I look like a pussy. People had called me many things throughout my teenage years—loser, faggot, bitch, queer. None of them ever struck a nerve, except for one. If someone called me a “pussy,” it meant I was too afraid of doing something. One could get me to do anything if they chose the proper word, but after I did whatever it was, that person found a spot on my shit list. 
      I reached into the giant bag and pinched a piece from the middle. My hand came out with a massive golden-orange cap I could wrap around a half-dollar. I grabbed a handful of stems, each with a bluish tint to them. Everybody dug in slowly, analyzing each piece, if it was worthy enough to be eaten. 
      My gaze never left the pile in front of me. I needed complete concentration to mash together the dry, earthy staleness that kept getting stuck in my teeth. Especially while the sound of my friends gagging echoed in my head. The only way to get them down was with a blue Gatorade. 
      I wish I knew how much I had eaten that night. It took a lot of guts and time to convince myself of giving hallucinogens another try, but when I did, I enjoyed my trips. For, those times, I knew not to eat as much as I had on that night of pure insanity with my four other buddies. 


(To Be Continued… )