My Brother Saved Me From a Mushroom Trip Gone Terribly Wrong

I didn’t plan on eating magic mushrooms at noon on a Tuesday. It just sort of happened. You know, just as all spur-of-the-moment illicit drug use happens.

I had been living in Victoria, BC, for the past six months and was back home in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, visiting family for a week’s vacation. I was revelling in the fact that, for once, I got to be a tourist in the bustling lake town I grew up in.

Except now, all my friends had jobs, and I found myself all alone one bright and sunny morning, walking the strip and wondering what I should do until someone got off shift.

That’s when I ran into the hippies. Is the term hippies still politically correct? I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t even hippies. They wore flowing shirts and appeared to have not bathed in a while, but hey, I wasn’t in any better shape, so who was I to judge?

Five of them, all men, sat on the pier in a semi-circle, passing a joint. I was milling around them, hoping they would invite me into their circle. Nothing says safe more than sucking down on a doob from a total stranger. I was 20 and had never worried too much about germs--post-pandemic me shudders to think about that time in my life.

Anyway, my loitering worked, and one of the guys offered up some grass space.

“Hey beautiful lady, why don’t you come over here and join us,” he said in a spacey sort of tone.

“Cool beans, Brotha!”

As we puffed away, one of the guys asked if I’d like to join them on a mushroom trip they were going on later that day. Having lived on Vancouver Island for the last half-year, at first, I thought they were literally going to the forest to forage for mushrooms—a part-time job I did while living a short stint in Lake Cowichan.

But no, they meant a trip for the mind. And I was 100 percent on board.

So we headed over to the dingy motel room all five of the men were sharing, and we chewed down some nasty shrooms that had more than a slight taste of cow pie to them.

The high hit me after about twenty minutes, and low and behold, it was precisely then that I realized what sort of a predicament I was in. Me, one girl, in a tiny motel room with five strangers who were now all trippin' balls.

Nope. Terrible idea.

“Um, I um, just realized, I have to leave,” I said, perhaps too quietly for any of them to have heard.

“Oh no, why, man?” The one closest to me asked.

My brain whirred for what seemed like hours trying to come up with a plausible excuse, but in the end, all I said was, “because,” extremely long and awkward pause, “I,” another pause, slightly less long, “I don’t want to be here.”

They all looked at each other, nodded their acceptance of my abrupt decision and mumbled their farewells.

The nearest safe shelter I could think of was the local bar turned dance club during the busy summer months. I had known many servers who worked there over the years and felt it would give the gnawing anxiety the mushrooms were causing some ease. I opened the heavy door of the building, and glorious darkness encompassed me. It was nearly 2 PM, so the restaurant was in the process of shifting into party mode. People were already on the dancefloor gyrating to music that seemed to be drilling into my ear holes.

I swung by the bar, ordered a beer that I most certainly would not drink because it felt super weird travelling down my throat and made my way to where the people were dancing.

I don’t know why I thought that throwing myself into a packed crowd of sweaty bodies would be a wise choice. I guess we never truly understand why we make the decisions we do, like eating mushrooms with a bunch of strangers and then ditching immediately after receiving the free drugs.

After being touched and grinded on and momentarily seeing a flash of a lizard man coming directly at me, I realized I once again had to get the fuck outta there. So I slithered my way out of the crowd of dancing maniacs and pulled out my cell phone.

I called the one person I knew I could count on—my 16-year-old brother.

As I waited for Dustin to pick me up, I watched the people dance from a safe distance. Their sweat beaded upon their brows, their hair stuck to their foreheads, and they glided their hands up and down one another’s bodies the way you rub down iguanas at the zoo because you know you’ll never feel another one again in your life.

So disgusting. That's all these people were—just iguanas in the zoo.

Finally, Dustin arrived, and he didn’t look especially pleased with me.

“How much did you do? Jesus Linds, your fricken pupils, are the size of marbles.” Yeah, well, I can’t do anything about that now. I’m just going to have to ride this shit out, I thought but didn’t say because my kid brother would probably give me more shit.

"Since I saved you from this crap, you should go get us a few beers to share for when we get home."

As we pulled up to the liquor store, I felt for my purse and was rummaging around inside to find my wallet when Dustin sucked up a sharp intake of breath.

"Geez, man, don't do tha…" I said, but the rest of the sentence was lost when I realized that three cop cars had pulled in beside Dustin's truck, all with their lights flashing.

"Aweee Fuck, man," I squealed, heart nearly beating out of my chest, "this is it, dude, they know about the hippies and the drugs. I can't go to the cop shop high on shrooms. I’ll have a goddamn heart attack." My words were coming out in a thick soup of panic, and Dustin, only a young kid. but definitely the grownup in this scenario, told me to calm the hell down.

The next thing I knew, a cop was approaching Dustin's driver-side window.

Now, if there's one thing you need to know about Dust, it's that he could sweet-talk the boots off a cowboy. He’s a firecracker, and his glamours are not lost on anyone.

My husband recently told me that on the occasions he and Dust have stayed up late drinking beers long after the wives went to sleep, they'd mosey over to the local corner store for midnight snacks. And every time they’d go, Dustin always found a way to haggle down the cashier to give him the remainder of the food in the display cases at cost.

"Come on man, you can't tell me you're going to sell that 10-hour old taquito. Look, sell it to me for wholesale cost and then you won't have to throw the thing out."

On any given one of these drunken nights, Dustin’s managed to walk out of the store with 50 dollars worth of food, having paid 15 bucks for it.

Let's time travel back to pre-husband times, shall we?

Back when I was a silly young girl riding a shroom high and a police officer was approaching my brother's truck where I currently sat, stunned still from the encroaching horror of being caught.

Dustin calmly rolls down the window, smacks a big friendly smile on his face and says, "Hello, officer; how's she going today?" (This is not a grammatical error. This is just how Albertans talk.)

The cop immediately asks what we are doing here. I’m still pretending to shuffle through my enormous purse. I can't let this cop see my eyes. They are flying saucers in a clear sky.

"Oh, I just went to pick my sister up, and, she thought she had forgotten something down at the beach, so I pulled over to let her check before we went any further."

He says it so casually. Like it's the truth or something. I blessedly find a pair of ratty sunglasses at the bottom of my bag. There's cigarette tobacco all over them and something gooey on one of the arms, but I slap them only face like my life depends on it.

"Found them," I yell manically. My 16-year-old brother slowly turns his head towards me as if to say, if you blow this, it’s on you, bitch.

"Uh, okay," the cop responds dubiously, "well, I’m going to have to ask you to clear out. There was a suspicious person reported at this liquor store, and we need the space."

"Yep, no prob, officer," Dust says.

He pulls out of the parking lot, and we both breathe a sigh of relief. My breath is more hyperventilation, but it’s a relief nonetheless.

As we crack a beer and cheers our sly getaway in the little park across from my parent’s house, I think about how lucky I am to have this guy as a brother. We talk about the mundane existence that is our lives, and I think it's really not that dull at all. But it would be a lot more dangerous if I didn’t have my little brother to keep me safe. I take another swig and hug him because, at the moment, it’s the only thing I can do to say thank you for taking care of me.