tea with a lot of caffeine

Authors Note, added 2007: Later on in this entry, you’ll read about a drug I took as a teenager. While you may read this and think it’s cool, Angel’s Trumpet contains several highly potent alkaloids that, if taken in too great an amount, can kill you. If you’re considering trying this, or any other entheogenic, plant as a recreational drug, I suggest you do some research. “Angel’s Trumpet” (scientifically known as Brugmansia, and sometimes confused with its close relative Datura) can, and has, killed people before! I would never try this drug again, even in well-metered doses.

I taught myself my own typing method. I mean, I took typing in middle school for like a year – you know, where you learn to use the “home keys,” and all your fingers and junk. I never could get my pinkies to behave, so I developed some kind of hunt-and-peck scheme that has evolved into me being able to type relatively fast without needing to look at the keys. I only use the 1st two fingers on my right hand, and the 1st three on my left. I have about a 5 keystroke to 3 backspace progress ratio. I don’t know what that is in words per second, but it must suck pretty bad.

I’ve been keeping up writing to Frank. I actually sent him some excerpts from the under-construction “Cast of Characters” page. Wow, that’s the first time I’ve actually linked that page without masking it. That must mean I’m getting more confident that it’s nearly ready to go. I only need a few more pictures and hyperlinks and it will be completely finished. Anyway, I copied my section, as well as his and our folks’ into the latest letter – hopefully he’ll get a kick out of it. If it’s your first time reading the page, please forgive me for it’s incompleteness.

The Strokes show is tonight, should be a good time – but a late night. I hooked the FCG up to a timer yesterday, so that she comes on from 7pm to 9pm each night, whether we’re home or not. At least that way the neighborhood can appreciate the sweetness that she is. I don’t know what to write.

I guess it was about 4 or 5 in the afternoon and we had been talking about this all day at school. The other day a friend of my friend had prepared the Angel Trumpet tea by boiling the flowers and plant parts in water. I have no idea how much was boiled, or for how long. The resulting white liquid was poured off into an empty wine bottle. The stuff didn’t really have a smell, but it looked mucous-like, so not appetizing enough to drink straight from the bottle. We decided to mix it with some Sunny Delight. Sunny Delight is very syrupy to begin with, and I think the tea was also somewhat syrupy – so the resulting drink was disgustingly sweet and extremely thick. I filled a medium sized glass about a quarter full with the tea, and the rest with Sunny Delight (I wasn’t sure how much to take, but figured that would be enough to judge for later attempts). Downed the whole glass and a little leftover from my friend’s glass.

Next, it was off to the football game. I felt nothing at all for the entire first half. Around halftime I began to feel very tired, and eventually laid down on the bleachers. I may have fallen asleep, but I am not sure – it seemed like a long time that I was “sleeping,” but it probably only lasted about 10 minutes at the most. When I finally sat up, the tea was starting to work.

Things from this point on are fuzzy at best. I can recall events from this point and a few hours later, but after that I have NO recollection of anything – and rely on others’ accounts of how I was acting, mixed with fleeting memories, fragments.

Immediately I felt “high.” Stoned more like it, although not as mellow. At first very “bouncy,” like having too much caffeine. Soon, I began to experience hallucinations. Small things at first, way off in the distance. The glint of the field lights off the marching band instruments across the field became “dancing stars.” Already things are beginning to get hazy in my memory. The game ended with me still experiencing small visuals and chattering away, talking non-stop about everything I saw.

In the car on the way home, I continued talking. I was now seeing hallucinations on a grander scale, and beginning to interact with them, i.e. holding pens that did not exist, grasping for butterflies that weren’t there.

Once out of the car and at home, my motor skills and balance began to fade. I tripped over a baby-gate blocking the hallway entrance and fell face first into the carpet. At this point the carpet began swirling up around me, and I was sinking fast into it – continuing to fall downward completely surrounded by carpet. Only my telling myself that it isn’t possible to swim in carpet made me get up, and I was still trying to play this off in front of my parents.

Kind of faint here, but I remember sitting in my room with my friends and them trying to convince me to shut up and stop acting so conspicuous. I recall going into the living room with a cassette tape and trying to insert it in the wall and press the imaginary play button. At this point I realized there was no tape player. It would play out like this for most of my memorable portions of the trip – me doing something, and then sadly realizing that it is all a hallucination, not real.

By this point, my parents have called poison control and I am back in my room. No more coordination, can’t tie my own shoes – but I have to go to the hospital they say. Someone ties them for me.

Remember singing loudly and yelling as we leave the house and get in the car to go to the hospital. Parents telling me to be quiet, but I am not really listening, or can’t really stop. No recollection of the drive to the hospital. Next memory I am in the parking lot with Kyle, asking him if he feels this, did he drink enough, why he is not tripping like this?

Fast forward to the last memory that I can place in a timeline. Next memories are all blurred together in time, and fragmented. I can place them in two groups, “hospital” and “home.” I remember getting the little hospital bracelet, and looking at my mother cry. I remember seeing my mom cry a lot that night, and feeling so bad.

It is somewhere at this point that I realize I am no longer in control of my actions/thoughts. I have become a non-active participant in whatever the drug decides to do with me. I recall feeling frustrated, thinking how I should be acting, but then acting the exact opposite. No chance I could play it off. My mind could think how to act, but it could not follow through.

I remember sitting in a room with my dad, and the lady asking me questions about things. What’s my name, what year is it, who is president. I got most of it wrong, saying it was sometime in the 70’s and that Reagan was still president. Strange thing was that I thought I was right, my mind did not tell me I was wrong. Coming close to the peaking hours of my trip. The woman asked her questions, and it seemed like an eternity happened between each word she spoke, so I assumed she had stopped – and kept getting up to leave. My dad would grab my arm and tell me that she was not finished, I kept asking why she was taking so long then.

No more memories that make sense. Aware of doctors talking about the drug test results, aware that I was in one room for a while then switched to another. Bed had high metal rails on either side. Remember mom and dad sitting on chairs in the room, mom crying – dad looking like dad. Recall writing a letter to Robin, and dropping the pen only to have it melt into the rails on the bed – then realizing there was no pen or letter.

Had to take a pee test at some point. Remember flowers on the wallpaper. Remember being VERY thirsty, and begging dad for some water from the fountain – he said there was no fountain. But I insisted I saw the fountain by the flower wallpaper. Remember being given some type of container to pee into – my mind turned it into a large gallon container like milk comes in, and I somehow thought that I was supposed to fill only the handle portion. Remember a doctor saying “This is water.” I must have filled the thing with water – don’t know how I ever did give any pee – but obviously I did, most likely with dad’s help – poor dad.

Total loss of memory here. Don’t know how long. I’ve been told stories of how I acted, but I don’t remember directly so I’ll leave them out. I am still at the hospital and I hear people talking about stomach pumping and other things.

Next memory is at home, it’s still night – but I have no idea what time it is. They must have thought I was coming down enough to go home. My mom and dad let me go in the room and go to sleep, but I don’t think I slept.

I remember so many hallucinations at this point. I considered the “peak” to be the hours that I can’t recall at all. And this to be then slightly coming down side of the trip, but it is at this point that I have the most hallucinations (or perhaps it’s only that I can recall them all at this point).

I see my cat sleeping on the bean bag, she has had a litter of kittens and she is licking them clean – they are newly born. I think this is actually a memory from childhood when my cat actually did have kittens at the foot of my bed while I slept. I climb off the top bunk to go pet the new kittens. But when I touch them, they explode and shower the room with confetti – which makes me sad for killing them.

I remember roaming the house thinking Kyle was still there, and that his mom was coming to pick him up. I remember going outside and saying goodbye to him as he left. I think I was outside, I am not sure. I remember opening the freezer and seeing a frozen face screaming at me. I remember doing pull-ups on my bunk bed.

At one point I tried to make a phone call but realized I didn’t have the phone. So I figured that the phone had somehow “melted” into my hand. I proceeded to map out where the numbers would be on my palm and try to “dial” someone with my hand.

No more memories until morning. Don’t know if I ever slept or not.

In the morning I am still hallucinating, but I now realize that the things I see are tricks of my mind. Now I have become a little more in touch with reality. I remember eating a bowl of cereal and talking to someone on the phone, with my head cocked to keep the phone crooked at my ear like you do when you’re using your hands and can’t hold the phone. The phone dropped into my bowl of cereal, and I jumped – realizing there was no cereal or phone.

Remember not wanting mom and dad to find the remainder of the tea in the wine bottle, and surely not wanting to take any more – so I stuck it in the front of my pants and went outside, against my parents warnings. I think they sent my brother into the yard to watch me. I only walked to the corner of the street and poured the milky liquid in the grass, dropping the bottle and walking back home. Hallucinations continued as I saw my dog, flying with wings, swooping around overhead.

Sometime in the morning the police came, and asked me questions – did I want to press charges against JJ – no, of course not – I willingly took the stuff. I was pretty composed at that point, but could not stop my mouth from asking about the people with “stars on their head” that I saw in the back of his cruiser. I think the “stars” from the football game the night before had been ingrained in my trip as a reoccurring theme. At the hospital I saw little “gnome” people on the ceiling with stars rotating and spinning above their heads.

The rest of Saturday is blur. Nothing really to remember. The drug was wearing off. At some point my father and I went to visit Kristina in the hospital, she had her tonsils out or something. I was almost normal, but everyone and everything seemed to be covered in a think coating of green slime. This hallucination was persistent the whole time I was at the hospital visiting Kristina. I really don’t have full memory of the day, pieces are missing and out of order.

I think the trip was gone completely by early Monday morning. A near three day trip, with hallucinations that were so real I could not distinguish them from reality. I was immersed in another world, and could not get out – even if I had realized there was an “out.”

Never, never try this drug.

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Also written on this day...

• near enough midnight - 2018
• better pinch yourself! - 2010
• stick to blocks - 2008
• wall to wall - 2005
• the groovy barn - 2004
• eminent domain - 2004