bad-cid trip

 I remind myself how high-functioning I am. I went to an industry friends mansion party in the Palisades the night before. I remember eating cheetos in the hot tub and doing coke in the revamped studio in his guest house. Somebody yelled at me for petting her dog while holding a highball glass of cheap whiskey. "He could drink it!" she yanked him back on his collar. "You brought your dog to a fucking mansion party. People are going to want to pet him," I spat. The dog looked scared either way. Too many people, too much noise. I understood him completely. "Sorry buddy," I told him. I remember afterwards passing around a bag of Cheetos with a couple girls who were famous on OnlyStans, a website for amatuer porn artists. They wore stringy triangle bikinis and had long, claw like acrylics and they mostly ignored me, which I was completely okay with. Someone gave me a couple "microdose" pills of powdered cubensis mushrooms. I swallowed them dry. I wandered around the party in a mindless haze. Some girl tells me she's too drunk to drive, and even though I am as well, I drive her to Santa Monica. I somehow run out of gas somewhere around Studio City. I manage to find a Chevron to pull into, but I can't remember where I've left my wallet. I never ask the universe for favors so I'm not surprised when a young Mexican mom stops and gives me a fiver. She tells me to be careful with real feeling. I swerve out of the gas station parking lot and brush my rims against a curb. Fuck. I get home around seven, find my wallet, and walk to the Ralph's where I buy a couple tallboys so I "can sleep". They work, sort of. I get about two hours in before work and I wake up feeling bloated and groggy. High functioning my ass. 

ar

  I hate myself at work. I clock in and look around the bar with bleary eyes. The place is a shithole. Our GM Walter is sitting at the bar with our other server, Lloyd. He calls me over. "How are you," he says. "How are you?" I counter. Neither of us care how either of us are doing. My head is pounding. "I've got a new girl coming in to train with you tonight at seven," He says. Of course. "Fuck." I tell him. He ignores this. "We've got a reservation on the patio for twenty." I look at Lloyd. "We should probably grab the propane tanks. It's chilly out there." Walter gives me a withering look. "I was gonna say that," He whines. I shrug. I didn't say it to feed my ego, but in doing so I denied him the opportunity to feed his own. Whatever, bossman. I am too hungover to care about something so petty. "How do you want to split up the sections?" I ask him something arbitrary to quell his ego. He tells me the usual split, but he seems happy enough to tell me what to do. I don't care. I'll defer to him anytime just to have him leave me the fuck alone. Lloyd looks at me like I'm an idiot and I watch both of them with a burning, visceral annoyance. It feels like someone is stabbing an ice pick through my retinas into my pre-frontal lobe. The meeting ends and I say "Go team." Lloyd hops over to the POS to order himself food. I go to the First Aid kit in the kitchen and snag a couple packets of Ibuprofen. We're running low and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who uses it. They don't keep a backstock for it. I'll have to find a way to hint that it needs replenishing. 

  Nobody I knows has Adderall. Again, I miss home. I got fleeced for it, for sure. But at least I knew people who had it. On a night like tonight I wouldn't care. I'd pay twenty bucks to not go through this hell sober. I could take a couple shots but the idea makes me want to vomit up my internal organs all over the front of the bar. The smell of tequila alone causes me physical and emotional pain. I drink a shitty cup of coffee, grab a tray and begin putting the restaurant back in some semblance of order. Walter keeps hiring kids who don't want to bus their tables from the lunch shift before they leave, or restock any of the dry goods. I'm used to carrying the team a little to avoid confrontation (and because I prefer to be too busy to talk to anyone) but today it's just pissing me off. I'm seething. Our bartender shows up late. It's supposed to be Adam but I'm surprised it's Tonya instead. "The fuck happened to you?" She asks. "You look like shit." I take a moment to lean up against the service well. "Oh, I'm aware." I say. I try to spin my tray on my middle finger and it falls on the floor with a plastic clatter. "You know why I think Adam's such a cunt?" I ask her, with no preface and not expecting a real answer. She begins counting her drawer and gives me a little "mm?" to go on. "It's because he doesn't drink. He doesn't hate himself and you HAVE to hate yourself a little bit to be a decent human being." Tonya nods. "Interesting theory." "It's why me and you get along so well. We're humble. We know we're pieces of shit." Tonya smirks. "I'm not hungover today," She tells me. "Well, fuck! We should do shots to celebrate." I drum my hands against the bar in a truimphant little rhthym.  "What do you want?" She asks. I wrinkle my nose. "I was just kidding. I don't know. I'll do one if you do one. I have to train today, too. I don't know. Fernet?" I say. She pours us two shots. "I don't know how you drink this shit." She tells me. "It tastes medicinal," I say, "I feel like it can fix me." "You're beyond fixing," Tonya jokes, but it doesn't feel like a joke. It feels like we both accepted it as truth. 

  I want to sleep with Tonya but I don't think it'd do our friendship any favors. She does her part to ignore my flirtatious advances. She sometimes catches my eye just long enough for me to get a little tremor thrill through me, but it's not really love or romantic interest. It's just two addicts getting high. She's also out of my league, but not in the good way. She'd be a lot cuter if she lost twenty. I'm not really into the thick-body-positive-yaskween-bullshit that gives American women the excuse to eat fast food for every meal and work out never. I expect a certain level of fitness, because even though I'm a fucking shit show, my BMI is normal and I can run a full mile without stopping. I know that doesn't sound like much but those are the same standards the US military has for getting out of basic, and by golly, if it's good enough for our gov'ment, it's good enough for me. I'm not sure what Tonya thinks of me. I've seen her eyes linger on me, and I've felt them as I've walked away. Even though she teases me a lot, I know she likes my stupid jokes. A guest orders a coke and I tell him "I've gotta call my dealer" and she laughs, she actually laughs. So she must want me. Not knowing though is messing with my head, so I pursue her a little harder. After work, I beg her to come have a drink with me at a basement bar that stays open for the sole purpose of giving industry folk a place to drink after work. By industry, in this context, I mean the service industry. I love hanging out with them because none of us pretend like we're anything other than alcoholic schlubs. Although I'm still not fully myself, I'm a self my friends from back home could still pick out of a lineup. Do I still revel in my own pathology? Absolutely. Tonya agrees, and sitting next to her in the bar I can see the chipped nail polish on her nails and the way her bra straps are cutting into her shoulders. We make out, because I've initiated this whole stupid night, until I pull away and tell her I should go home. "Uh, okay," She says, because she knows I'd never volunteer to leave a bar early. "I gotta ..." Be to work early? Go to a meeting? Can't I just say I'm still in love with my ex and run away screaming? Doesn't that work all the time for girls? She doesn't wait for an excuse. She just dismisses me with a raised brow and turns back to the sticky, crowded bar. 

  I wish I had somewhere to go. I want to text her and invite her back to my place but under the condition that we won't make out unless I get drunk enough, that there will be absolutely no emotional connection at all unless I need someone to cradle me like a baby while I cry. Somehow, I don't think she'll be interested. I text the Armenian manager of the liquor store near my house. He gave me his number because it's a stretch for me to get there before two when closing the bar on weekends. It's 2:46 but somehow he's still there - he let's me buy a twelve of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shooter of whiskey. "You goin' to a party tonight?" He asks. Sometimes, when I'm in a better mood, I brag to him about the shindigs I go to. "Just chillin'" I say. I don't really care. He tells me to be careful and I wonder what he means. Should I strap on elbow and wrist pads? Get a flu shot? Buy condoms? None of the options that flit through my head interest me, but I say that I will anyway. By the time that I get home, Tonya hasn't texted me and I wonder if she's mad, sexually frustrated, or if she doesn't even care. I feel like shit. My eyes feel like they're sinking into their sockets and my face feels heavy. I sit on the floor and crack open beer after beer while watching cartoons and scrolling on Reddit. 

  My roommate comes downstairs around seven in the morning. I know this, because he looks at me with disgust and says "It's seven in the morning!" I 'cheers' my bottle at him and he responds "Is that my Cointreau?" 

"I ran out of beer. Relax, I'll buy you another one. Want a Cointreau-colada?" I invented a drink out of necessity and I think the name is clever even though it doesn’t actually contain any colada. It's actually just Cointreau, soda water, and as much lemon juice as you can stomach to mask the taste of the Cointreau. "I have a dentists appointment." He says it in the same tone you might say I have my father's wake. "Dude, what the fuck?" My roommate starts slamming cupboards around to communicate how mad he is which I think is more than a little dramatic. Who actually cares about small shit like this? I don't work today, I pay my rent on time, I will actually replace the Cointreau, we've done this before, and  besides, no one is waking up early to drink Cointreau, this is a hail mary attempt to stave off the imminent "I'm out of beer" panic attack. His temper tantrum is bumming me out. Also, I'm (now) out of Cointreau and no where near sleep. He leaves but his shitty vibrations linger in the room. I take a tab of acid because I'm drunk, because there's nothing left to drink, because I want the energy in the room to improve, because I've got the day off, because I want to feel something other than this. 

  The thing about taking acid when you're drunk is that there's a high likelihood you might forget that you took the acid. A friend of mine sends me a link to a World War Two movie around nine in the morning. Somewhere in the middle of watching dudes younger than me watching their friends limbs get blown off, I start feeling an intense, impenetrable hopelessness. Not only am I terrified by the real horrors that exist in this world, I'm also overwhelmed by guilt for surviving this long without any real physical or mental trauma. Was my dad mean to me? Sure. Did I ever have to face watching my best friend step on a landmine? Or dragged away to a concentration camp? Or sold into slavery? Or crucified? Fuckingggg Christtttt. I draw all the blinds and I'm trapped in a dark room with shadows bouncing all around the ceilings and the walls. I can hear sirens through my paper-thin walls and I know that there is very little keeping me safe from all the things that could happen to a person. I'm not scared that I will die, per se, I'm scared that I will suffer. I'm scared that I'll end up trapped in a situation I don't want to be in. Then I realize: I am trapped in a situation I don't want to be in. I don't want to be in Los Angeles at all. I hate it here so fucking much. 

  I want to text somebody but I don't know who to text. "Hey, I took acid and I'm having a bad trip. Can you talk to me?" My mind races. What do you even say to that? It's ten am on a Wednesday? Thursday? One of the weekdays. I’m not sure which. "Hey, I took acid -" "Hey, I'm having a panic attack-" Why would anyone give a shit? I've been a mess for months. Maybe don't take acid. Maybe stop drinking, you fucking insecure lunatic. What the fuck is the matter with me, anyway? Why is it so hard for me to change my behavior? I can see the way people look at me. Don't I understand that all my friends are sick of my shit? That I'm irresponsible, stupid, selfish, a loser? I have no compassion for myself at this moment. I'm spewing out all of the hatred I have for myself and others. I feel physically unwell. My body feels uncomfortable. I go upstairs to my room and curl up in a little ball on my dirty mattress, under my dirty sheets. Its the drugs, its the drugs, its the drugs its the drugsitsthedrugsitsthedrugs. But my mind won't stop spinning out. My adrenal glands are secreting an IV of pure cortisol into my veins. I hate this. This was my day off. What am I doing? Please fix me. I try watching videos. I try listening to music. But there's nothing that can calm the fear I feel deep within my being. I ride it out. Hours. Hours, and hours, and hours. I'm still in my work clothes the next night. I'm dirty, sweaty, bloated, and exhausted. My brain ran itself into a migraine and I worry I lost a certain amount of synapses. I've never had a panic attack on psychedelics before. That's why I like them. I can't smoke weed, and I'm always really careful about not smoking weed or smoking just the right amount (half a hit, maybe.) I feel betrayed. I love psychedelics. I've taken for granted how powerful they are. I've also taken for granted my own mental health and well being. I'm too exhausted to spin out any further, but as I finally fall asleep my brain repeats the mantra you need to change, you need to change, you need to change.