It was my third year of college and I was eating Saturday brunch in the cafeteria when a particularly annoying friend of a friend saw me and sat himself down at my table. The guy was a hippie-type who was raised on NY's Lower East Side by an artsy/hippie-dippy mother who was dosed on LSD nearly every day of her pregnancy with him, so hallucinogens had little or no effect on the guy. Anyway, he was perpetually stoned on weed and edibles and he knew I was a stoner, so when he sat down he offered me what I thought was a date or some other dried fruit. I thanked him and wolfed it down, noting it tasted like spiced mud. His face lit up like a Jack o' lantern and he exclaimed "You just ate a huge chunk of blonde Lebanese hashish!" I was quite pissed about that because the guy was always eating nuts and dried fruit, so that's what I thought he had given me. I was ready to wring his neck, but something told me it would be a good idea to leave the cafeteria and retire to my basement single in the dorms for the rest of the day. I'm glad I listened to my own advice, as maybe a half hour after eating the hashish, I began a cosmic trip that lasted for something like the next fourteen hours.
Imagine being as high as humanly possible with no way of stopping it, and that feeling going on seemingly endlessly. I was simultaneously terrified and elated, and I made sure to have a stream of friends coming and going for the duration of the trip. They all helped to keep me calm and grounded, and we passed the time with hours of listening to selections from my vinyl record collection — I remember the extended version of the Duane Eddy/Art of Noise "Peter Gunn" collaboration being spun several times, as its twang resonated quite nicely with my elevated state — with visual accompaniment from untranslated Japanese cartoons that were obtained fresh off of the Japanese airwaves from the venerable Tokyo Video bootleg VHS shop near Grand Central.
I don't remember eating anything at any point during the trip, and when it finally ran its course I passed out from sheer mental/emotional/sensory overload.
The next day I tracked down the asshole who dosed me, and I wound up and gave him a piledriver uppercut right in his stomach, which made him throw up all over himself. From that point he was persona non grata around me, and the close friend who introduced me to him in the first place was on board with not bringing him around anymore. Funny thing: a few years ago the friend in question, who today is quite a mess (but that's another story), was reminiscing about those college days and the people she associated with at the time, and with the exceptions of myself and maybe three other people that she named, she noted that all of the "friends" that she ran with were actually pals of the guy who eventually became her first husband, and she evaluated every one of them as "outright pieces of shit," including her future hubby. And the guy who dosed me? She rated him as the worst and most obnoxious of that sordid lot.
Common courtesy Rule Number One among stoners and would-be psychonauts: NEVER dose anyone without their full awareness and permission. It's just not cricket.
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