So here is a lengthy tale of the single most spectacular loss of consciousness I have personally witnessed, in my misspent youth, lo these many years past. https://twitter.com/likeokaysure/status/1337651606221885440

I grew up partly in Very Rural Oregon in the Nineties, when we did not get reliable TV reception but did have quite ready access to nature’s cable.

By which I mean hallucinogenic mushrooms.

My boyfriend James had very long black hair and somewhat resembled John Lennon or Charles Manson, depending on how he wore his beard. And we were young and foolish and committed the cardinal sin of hallucinogens, which was to say, “I don’t think it’s working, let’s take more.”

Don’t do drugs, kids,

But if you do, do not, say, split a hundred and forty Liberty Caps between two people because you think taking twenty five apiece wasn’t doing anything.

(These are a small variety of psilocybin mushroom, not to be confused with the far larger P. cubensis, anyway, I’m already probably on a watchlist now DON’T DO DRUGS KIDS)

“Are you feeling it?” asked James, as I lay on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling, whereupon a gigantic dragonfly descended through the drop ceiling with rainbow wings that pulsed in time to my heartbeat.

I indicated that possibly I was feeling it.

We had also committed the OTHER cardinal sin of hallucinogens, namely doing them with my parents home, because we thought we could play it cool. This is how I wound up having the following conversation with my mother:

MOM: Are you high?
ME: ...possibly.

MOM: ooh! Can you see my aura?
ME, SQUINTING: Yes.
MOM: What color is it?
ME: Chartreuse.
MOM: You know, I thought it was chartreuse today!

(My mother, ladies and gentlefolk. I come by it honestly.)

My mother left the room. My stepfather, aged beatnik, shook his head in disgust, said, “You didn’t SHARE?” and instructed his friend Ken to drive us up into the woods until we were coherent again.

Ken was a good-natured sculptor, a regular Picasso with a chainsaw, but I digress.

We spent a good many hours in the Oregon woods, during which I became convinced that the mountain was a single gigantic toad, which ultimately led to the only painting I have ever done directly inspired by a drug trip. The woods are lovely for this.

Ken made sure we did not do anything too foolish, like fall off a mountain or attempt to pet a bear. Eventually, with nary a neurotransmitter remaining between the two of us, we returned home.

Mostly sober, but with the lingering fried hangover that accompanies such indulgences, we cleaned up and ate, and then James discovered he had lost the bandage on his hand. He had gashed his palm a day or two earlier, working as a short-order cook.

Big box of Saranwrap fell off a high shelf, he caught it with the serrated blade down, very unfortunate. Healing fine, though.
JAMES: Maybe I should clean this.
ME: You were climbing all over moss covered rocks, dump some peroxide over it or something.

He went into the bathroom of the very small house we lived in. I stood in the doorway, because that bathroom could not accommodate more than one. I handed him the peroxide. He dumped it over his hand.

The bathroom fixtures—sink, shower, toilet—were white. There were a couple black rocks in the shower because my parents were artists and had found some neat rocks and felt they improved the shower. I gazed at this scene with perceptions still a bit off true from the mushrooms.

Black hair. White skin. Black rocks. White fixtures.

Wow, I thought, he is the EXACT SAME COLOR as the Formica—

—whereupon he pitched backward, hit the wall, and slid down it in a dead faint.

(We would later discover that the smell of certain antiseptics reliably put him out like a felled ox, after he performed a similar maneuver at the vet’s office.)

Anyhow, the sound of him hitting the wall brought my parents running.

MOM: Oh god, is he dead?
STEPDAD: Oh god, did the toilet finally fall through the floor?!

I indicated that he had just fainted, but made a note to be cautious of the toilet going forward.

I then picked up a man who weighed half again what I did, because while adrenaline can lead to feats of strength, so can being too damn high for your muscles to realize they can’t actually do that safely, carried him to the bedroom, where upon he came to going, “Urghhly...”

My mother came and sat on the edge of the bed, which would lead an unwary observer to think that she was going to be motherly and concerned, but Mom has priorities.
MOM: So you fainted!
JAMES: Uh-huh...
MOM: What was it like? Ive never fainted and I’ve always wondered!

To Mom’s sorrow, he did not remember it. He had applied peroxide and then he had woken up in bed with no intervening elapsed time. He would never remember, in fact.

But I have never forgotten that amazing monochrome color palette of hair and rock and skin and shower.

Don’t do drugs, kids.

Oh! And Alert Reader has found the painting! https://twitter.com/sparkletindi/status/1337922466077945861?s=21 https://twitter.com/sparkletindi/status/1337922466077945861