The trailer park, dope, and insanity

[Droopy]

All the talk about dope this evening sparked a memory of a decade ago when I was shacked up in a 30 year old mobile home with a drinking buddy.

I had become interested in the occult and drug culture while I was in college and that led to some experimentation. Shortly after a strong LSD trip I became severely mentally ill. For a long time I thought that my drug use had caused my mental illness. Then I learned that it was just a coincidence. Many people who develop severe mental illnesses do so when they are young adults which just so happens to be the same age as when many people are experimenting with drugs. The two are not related. This is a story about the power of the mind and what can happen when the brain becomes diseased.

My drinking buddy and I bought a little mobile home not long after I became ill. I was 23 and had just dropped out of college. I needed to get away from my parents and he needed to get out on his own so we both got jobs, moved out, and commenced to partying most nights. Soon the parties were more than about getting a beer buzz. The trailer park was one of the poorest areas to live in my home town and many people there spent their free time getting high. Soon our little trailer began to smell strongly of fresh greenery.

We were still ok at the time. We were able to get to work on time and pay the bills. Then my buddy discovered cocaine and soon I was paying his half of the bills. That lasted 2 or 3 months and then I gave his ass the boot. I was crazy, but evidently I still had some sort of sense about me.

But that's not the point of the story. One night after I got home from work my drinking buddy and another resident of the park were drinking and getting high. I had a beer, but I really didn't feel like partying that night so I went to bed.

I felt tired when I went to bed, but I could not get to sleep. I felt more and more alert as I laid there. Then I began to feel something like an LSD buzz coming on. In short order I began to feel extremely high. I laid flat on my back staring up at the ceiling with my eyes bulging. My breaths were short and rapid. I began to get the sensation that my mind was becoming separated from my body. The ceiling above me began to disintegrate and my mind was launched through a hole in the ceiling and into sky. I was traveling through clouds at a rapid rate and then I was above the clouds and apparently heading into orbit. Then I was back in my bed.

I still felt as if my mind was detached from my body and I felt a clarity and peace that had seemed impossible due to my diseased mental state before. I soon realized that I could communicate telepathically. My drinking buddy and his friend were still in the front room and they were totally quiet. I asked them telepathically if it was alright if I joined them and they communicated back in the same fashion that it was alright. I got up and went into the front room and stared at them in amazement. Nobody said anything. I still had the detached feeling and my mind was totally clear and silent. The other two young men in the room just stared at me as if expecting me to say or do something.

I then got up to get a drink of water. While I was pouring the glass from the tap I looked at my drinking buddy. For about 2 seconds his head changed into that of a gorilla's. The water was now overflowing from the glass and spilling onto my hand. I shut the tap off, drank the water, and then went to bed.

The crash was hard and I was still unable to sleep. I got up the next morning crazier than I had ever been in my life. From that point until I took my first anti-psychotic medication I thought that people could read my mind and see my most private thoughts. I lived that way for 7 years.

[PassingFair]

1. What the heck ....

kind of JOB were you doing where you could get
away with that kind of state of mind?

I can't function with a HEADACHE!

You must be VERY strong, mentally speaking, to
have kept on keeping on!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Wow, Droopy........

That had to have been at least a little bit scary......

You had me right there with you the whole time!

Well written.......and how!

Thank you for telling it to us......

BTW.......how did it go, staying awake last night?

:applause: :applause:

[Heidi]

3. I'm glad you lived to tell us about this, Droopy.

Your writing just gets better and better. Thank you. :hug:

[SPKrazy]

4. Hey Droopy!

got courage?

yeah, you do!

that's a well written story.

mental illness is like any other illness, it is just stigmatized so much that people are afraid of it and judge it.

You won't get judgment from me my friend, my hat's off to you!

:thumbsup: :pals:

[hunter]

5. Wow.

I collected some interesting stories as a young man, but I never had telepathy or saw guys turn into gorillas! At the worst it was more of a talking to angels kind of thing. Nice angels though, with good advice mostly. That and running midnight marathons. Some weeks I'd run 75 miles or so, which probably would have been good for me if I'd managed to eat more. But I was weird about food.

I was asked to leave college twice, but they let me back in both times, and I graduated.

I lived nine years that way. I learned to mask the weirdness and I cultivated relationships with people who would cover for me. (A few of them did not have my best interests at heart, but most were simply good people.)

Some of us do not come out of adolescence with fully functional minds. As a young man I had one psychotic episode lasting a couple of days, and I don't ever, ever want to do that again.

By the time I met my wife I was stable, and life is good.

[xchrom]

6. i'm glad you are ok.

that's a difficult thing to live through -- and you made it.