My first time on drugs

“Right now I have pot in my car”

Ardha (Indonesia) started smoking marijuana at the age of 18; he’s now 24.

The first time I became acquainted with drugs was when I went to secondary school. Some friends invited me to join them, so I tried it during the class break. We smoked marijuana just like a cigarette. It tasted good, made me feel light and almost like I was flying. It made me laugh out loud, and it didn’t give me any stomach problems. So I wanted to smoke it again and again and again.

I usually smoked during the break. Or when I got bored in class, I went outside and hung out in the cafeteria. Some of my friends used to get the products from drug dealers and all of us paid for it together. I was among those students who achieved the highest grades in school, so none of my teachers cared when I returned to the classroom slightly drowsy or fell asleep at my desk. They just thought I was ill. Lucky me, being known as the “good boy”.

When I went to university I smoked even more. I made friends with all kinds of people, some of them even severe drug addicts. I smoked weed almost every day, testing different types: the cheap stuff “ngelem”, as we call it, to the more expensive “giting”. It tastes good, and what I also liked about it is that it increases your appetite. I used to be really skinny and didn’t eat much. That has changed now.

In recent months I’ve smoked less. I’ve had enough of that youthful delinquency and have started thinking about my future. But on occasions like New Year’s Eve or during a vacation on a beach I still enjoy it. Even right now, I still have pot in my car.

Next page (look for the little 'pages' button below!): read how Fitz got high on hashish long before we were even born...

“My first emotion was one of uncontrollable terror”

Fitz (USA) was 18 when he #link:http://www.sniggle.net/Hasheesh/:first tried hashish#. He published his experience in the book 'The Hasheesh Eater’ back in 1857.

I took hashish one evening half an hour after tea, and went to pass the evening at the house of an intimate friend. In music and conversation the time passed pleasantly. The clock struck ten, reminding me that three hours had elapsed since the dose was taken, and as yet not an unusual symptom had appeared.

Ha! What means this sudden thrill? A shock, as of some unimagined vital force, shoots without warning through my entire frame, leaping to my fingers’ ends, piercing my brain, startling me till I almost spring from my chair.

I could not doubt it. I was in the power of the hashish influence. My first emotion was one of uncontrollable terror - a sense of getting something which I had not bargained for. That moment I would have given all I had or hoped to have to be as I was three hours before.

A cloud of unutterable strangeness was settling upon me, and wrapping me impenetrably in from all that was natural or familiar. Endeared faces, well known to me of old, surrounded me, yet they were not with me in my loneliness. I had entered upon a tremendous life which they could not share.

Still I spoke, a question was put to me, and I answered it; I even laughed at a bon mot. Yet it was not my voice which spoke; perhaps one which I once had far away in another time and another place.

With time, space expanded also. At my friend’s house one particular arm-chair was always reserved for me. I was sitting in it at a distance of hardly three feet from the centre-table around which the members of the family were grouped. Rapidly that distance widened. The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side. We were in a vast hall, of which my friends and I occupied opposite extremities. The ceiling and the wall ran upward with a gliding motion, as if vivified by a sudden force of resistless growth.

Oh! I could not bear it. I should soon be left alone in the midst of an infinity of space. And now more and more every moment increased the conviction that I was watched. I did not know then, as I learned afterward, that suspicion of all earthly things and persons was the characteristic of the hashish delirium.

In the midst of my complicated hallucination, I could perceive that I had a dual existence. One portion of me was whirled unresistingly along the track of this tremendous experience, the other sat looking down from a height upon its double, observing, reasoning, and serenely weighing all the phenomena. Presently it warned me that I must go home, lest the growing effect of the hasheesh should incite me to some act which might frighten my friends. I acknowledged the force of this remark very much as if it had been made by another person, and rose to take my leave.

Next page: Armando gets good advice from his five-year-old-self....

“I had a face-to-face-conversation with my five-year-old self”

Armando (Costa Rica) is 27 years old. He’s not a regular drug user but tried Ayahuasca in Peru a few years ago.

Ayahuasca ain’t no drug – at least not in the Andes region where it is used for ceremonies. I tried it once on a spiritual quest and I can say: it was the best supernatural experience I’ve had in my life. The “medicine” – that’s how those in the know call it – divides your consciousness: the notion of ordinary reality is not lost, but another parallel and equally tangible reality comes into existence. In it, time and space as such do not exist. It’s a world in which sounds can alter and in which one can even play with wild animals.

The ceremony begins with a personal question, lasts about eight hours and is performed in silence and total darkness. Admittedly, at first the whole experience is not pleasant at all. But as the night proceeds you start feeling the effects Ayahuasca causes in your body: visions of animals, colors, sounds and even people appear in order to – as the shamans say – teach us everything we need to know.

In my case I had a face-to-face-conversation with my five-year-old self. What we talked about still helps me today whenever I have to make decisions in my life.

So, would I do it again? Yes, probably, within the next couple of years.

Next page: how Yage made grown man William gag

“I kept saying: ‘All I want is out of here’”

William (USA) was 39 when he travelled the Amazon #link:http://books.google.de/books?id=G_JmuAYr0ecC&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+s.+burroughs+the+yage+letters&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vApRVNXNF4bTaIGbgugD&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA##v=onepage&q=william%20s.%20burroughs%20the%20yage%20letters&f=false:in search of Yage#, or Ayahuasca, in 1953. He described his experience in letters to Allen Ginsberg, now published in the book 'The Yage Letters'.

The medicine man was around 70 with a baby smooth face. There was a sly gentleness about him like an old-time junkie. It was getting dark when I arrived at this dirt floor thatch shack for my Yage appointment.

The Brujo began crooning over the bowl. I caught 'Yage Pintar' repeated over and over. He shook a little broom over a bowl and made a swishing noise. This is to whisk away evil spirits who might slip in the Yage. He took a drink and wiped his mouth and went on crooning. You can't hurry a Brujo. Finally he uncovered the bowl and dipped about an ounce more or less of black liquid which he handed me in a dirty red plastic cup. The liquid was oily and phos-phorescent. I drank it straight down. Bitter foretaste of nausea.

I sat there waiting for results and almost immediately had the impulse to say, 'That wasn't enough. I need more.'

In two minutes a wave of dizziness swept over me and the hut began spinning. It was like going under ether, or when you are very drunk and lie down and the bed spins. Blue flashes passed in front of my eyes. The hut took on an archaic far-Pacific look with Easter Island heads carved in the support posts. The assistant was outside lurking there with the obvious intent to kill me. I was hit by violent, sudden nausea and rushed for the door hitting my shoulder against the door post. I felt the shock but no pain. I could hardly walk. No coordination. My feet were like blocks of wood. I vomited leaning against a tree and fell down on the ground in helpless misery. I felt numb as if I was covered with layers of cotton. I kept trying to break out of this numb dizziness. I was saying over and over, 'All I want is out of here.' An uncontrollable mechanical silliness took possession of me.

I was on all fours convulsed with spasms of nausea. I could hear retching and groaning as if I was someone else. I was lying by a rock. Hours must have passed. The medicine man was standing over me. I looked at him for a long time before I believed he was really there saying, 'Do you want to come into the house?' I said, 'No,' and he shrugged and went back inside.

The twitching spasms subsided slowly and I felt a little better and went into the hut. The blue flashes still in front of my eyes. Lay down and covered myself with a blanket. I had a chill like malaria. Suddenly very drowsy. Next morning I was all right except for a feeling of lassitude and a slight back-log nausea. I paid off the Brujo and walked back to town.

Next page: read how Valium knocked Kilian sideways...

“A drug that cut me down like a giant tree in the rainforest”

Kilian (Germany) was 26 when he tried Valium for the first - and last - time.

“Make it happy!” That was one of the essential sentences in Phnom Penh back in 2005. If you said it to certain pizza bakers you’d get more weed than cheese on your pizza - for only an additional 50 cents. South-East Asia can be quite a happy place.

My friend Melanie, however, wasn’t feeling well at all. She had just pulled through Dengue fever. Valium had kept her going through the time; she gave me her leftovers. Valium, the fuel of American TV series. The secret dream of every depressed housewife. I had always been curious about it.

So there I was, sitting on my bed in the Swiss Hotel, which is actually a rather cheap place, with the fan on, the light too, and the television as well of course. I guess “Tom and Jerry” was on as always. I took the pill, swallowed it with warm water and excitedly waited for all the wondrous magic that would hit me at any second.

Then I woke up. The TV was still on, yelling at me, as it probably had been the whole time. The light was shining brightly, the fan was whirring in circles.

How long was I out for? I have no idea. But I really don’t need a drug that can cut me down like a giant tree in the Cambodian rainforest. I’d rather be happy than sleepy.