Clever Alternatives

Growing up, me and one of my cousins were best friends. We hung out every weekend and talked on the house phone every day after school and wrote each other notes when we were in school and unable to do those things. Her parents were a lot cooler than mine so her house was kind of the spot, especially as we got into our teen years. I thought we were a lot alike. Full of sarcasm and hormonal rage, it seems, in retrospect, we had little in common. I figure it to be a mutual appreciation for certain words, flannel, sad boys, and poetry; some of which didn’t hold up for either of us. Now, I’m a full-time beatnik and she is a young professional. I am the Tarot-reading sexual deviant and overall degenerate. She is a lawyer. We liked music, I guess. And it makes sense because even in high school I was a bit of a mentally-unstable burnout and she was an advanced placement superstar. She was never too keen on things like smoking cigarettes or weed like I was. But for some reason, she was willing to risk it all for a very special three-day trip…

But probably only because Nostradamus did it first.

We were bored, teenaged girls some fateful July afternoon in Michigan when for some fuck-it-all reason we decided to get kitchen high. Now, I get that weed is super accessible and legal now so it’s hard to imagine a world where marijuana scared people like future lawyers and was sometimes unavailable even to your best local burnouts but it’s true. That was our world. Times were more difficult in the green department, physically and existentially. There were just those days where experimenting was kind of worth it. I’m not really sure where we acquired the knowledge of a certain holiday spice being somewhat hallucinogenic but after a deep-dive from what little Internet we had back then, we decided to just go for it.

We had our trials wrestling down our own version of the then-common cinnamon challenge in my uncle’s kitchen. Eventually, we sorted it out and laughed our way outside, hours going by and feeling dizzy. I remember being at peace while spinning in the street and feeling like we truly got lifted. We hung out with friends as we usually would that night and there wasn’t too much to remember until we woke up the next day and thought, huh…

“Is this how we’re supposed to feel?”

Never underestimate a trip. We were locked into this care-free, trippy high for at least three days. The following afternoon we agreed to go see Mamma Mia! the movie musical with my aunt. Not sure why we agreed to it but I respect it. I still couldn’t tell you what that movie is about. I never saw it again but wow, it was really a great time. I was pretty into musicals in and before high school but I did not know enough about ABBA. I think I still don’t but Dancing Queen is my jam. I may have laughed all the way through but man, that was my mood. I mean, it was a decent day. These are just vague memories I have. I started asking my cousin about what she remembered, and bringing up memories from this trip, but all we agreed on was ice cream and Mamma Mia!. That just tells me I did do this shit again against better judgement. While I remember having a great time, she remembers it much differently. There was a very real chance it could have killed us, but it didn’t. I guess I’ve always been the risk taker.

I won’t lie, I was constipated from eating this stupid shit the whole time I was high. I probably felt like I was dying but I was just at peace with it because I was so blissed out. The apparent second time I ate it, I went to school for the three days. I was a wild one for what a good kid I was. I miss that house and my uncle and being a reckless youth. I think you gotta enjoy that shit while you can even though, looking back, it was all so dangerous. I’m glad to have been built out of a lifetime of experience. It provided me with the wisdom beyond my years. It showed me a way to my path and who I am. It taught me what it meant to live when you think you couldn’t. Seems like sometimes these things work better for depressed people. I wonder if I would have been much different had I not gotten so twisted. What would I have done without these moments of bliss? I’m not trying to say drugs saved my life at all. But what if they did?

Either way, I’d say I don’t recommend it.

And please understand that yes, there are actually way better alternatives than doing drugs to achieve a very humanistic perception of what enlightenment is.