Magic Mushrooms

The other day I was talking to someone very near and dear to me about recreational drug use in our youth and I realized I actually missed out on a lot of interesting experiences mainly cause I was scared of my parents finding out, please take a moment to note that I have lived on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from my parents since I was 19 years old. They only things they could ever possibly know about my life were things that I would tell them myself. But the human psyche is a very strange thing indeed and led me to feel guilty for weeks and weeks every time I talked to my Mom after a weekend in Amsterdam that I hadn’t told her about. So I was telling this person about my weekend in Amsterdam when I was 20, which incidentally is the most rebellious I have ever been, ever, since I rarely drink and may have gotten drunk maybe twice in my whole entire life, and the most drugs I’ve ever done is marijuana occasionally when I could find it or hash which is more common here in Italy, I’ve never once tried cocaine though I lived in the cocaine capital of southern Europe for 10 years (Milan) cause I’m completely freaked out at the idea of snorting something up my nose, this is how badass I am. Anyway so this person chimes in with a story about “magic mushrooms” and how the effects are really interesting. The idea was that they don’t actually make you see stuff that isn’t there, like they show in the movies, but you see the stuff around you at an almost molecular level, “take this tablecloth” he said (we were having dinner) “if you were high on peyote right now, you’d be staring at the weave of the tablecloth and these lines made by the weave would probably be moving” waving of the fingers in his hand to illustrate the point “and you’d be staring at the weave of the table cloth and thinking, duuuuuude, this is so cool, look at the little lines moving up and down.” In fact, he told me, once he sat in his parents’ bathroom for three hours straight staring at the flowered wallpaper. Now, at this point in my life I really don’t have time to sit and stare at the coolness of my kitchen cabinets for three hours, but it’s one of those things that I wish I had done in my early twenties when I could have justified it with the simple stupidity of a twenty year old. Now I’m going to have to wait till I’m in my fifties so I can blame it on a mid life crisis. Although, I’m pretty much already seeing things, so if I just keep not sleeping for another few months I’m sure you’ll find me frozen in rapt attention staring in wonderment at the dust mites in my living room.