The Potent Crumb - Part One
It had been an afternoon of gentle boozing, over conversation about recent and current events and circumstances in our lives; catching up with news and fresh stories of our latest experiences. We were old friends, being just that, in togetherness.
Eventually it was time to leave the final pub of our crawl and we set off walking back to my friend’s flat, where I would stay for the night, sleeping on the sofa. The walk was about 15 minutes, through familiar back streets, in a neighbourhood I had much frequented over the many years I had lived in this city. I wasn’t working the following day and so felt no need to triple the footfall necessary to reach my own home. The overnight situation was convenient for me, and allowed the two of us to carry on with our conversation, over a couple more beers, into the early hours.
About a third of the way into our journey, my friend suggested we call at his friend’s flat to buy a lump of hashish. I agreed. I no longer smoked, nor partook of the substance in any way, hadn’t for many years, but still enjoyed its soothing aromatic smoulder.
A few minutes later I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room of an amiable host, who had a few lounging visitors, listening to music and smoking pot. The atmosphere was sedate, and the scene strangely familiar to me, for, about twenty years previously I’d had many similar gatherings at my own home — an average Wednesday night; getting stoned and drinking cheap booze with friends, listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or Gong, and generally being blown away by the notion that everything outside the room I was in was an absolute abstraction of oblivion (whatever that might mean). The everything in nothingness of stoned conversation. Satisfying memories indeed, but I somehow found myself unable to truly complement the vibe of our current situation, friendly and relaxed as it was; my inner presence wasn’t feeling comfortable enough to relate to that old self; social dissonance? Perhaps I was just a little uptight these days.
The host offered me a spliff which I kindly refused, explaining that I no longer smoked. His generous response was to immediately break off, with his thumb, a small piece of dark, crumbly hashish from his personal stash, lean over and drop it into my palm, which seemed to have upturned of its own accord, in subconscious compliance. I thanked him gratefully, with a smile, and pocketed the potent crumb, almost, but not entirely, against my will and intuition. After all, I was not forced to consume it myself, it could be gifted, and it didn’t even enter my mind to ingest it there and then.
After maybe 30 minutes, my friend and I, him having made his purchase and ritually skinned up and shared a joint with the company, expressed our thanks and departed, resuming our journey through the starry night.
We arrived home after a few minutes and shared a couple of drinks, real ales and ciders, I don’t remember exactly which. My friend also smoked some hashish, it’s sweet scented fumes hanging like ghostly drapery in the still air of the living room, and we talked while he intermittently played songs through his aged computer speakers. After an hour or so I began to tire and reclined on the sofa, preparing my body for a restful night’s sleep.
As we were winding down our conversation, by the compulsion of desiring to experience some intense dreams, I delved into my jeans pocket, picked out the crumb of hashish the host had given me a couple of hours before, chewed it into a paste in my mouth and swallowed it down into my stomach; reliving the kind of fearless and spontaneous decision I might have made as an intrepid teenager or twenty-something, surfing the illusion of a rock and roll dream-reality, fortified with an invincible nihilistic ego.
It was a mistake. Soon there would be a profound lesson unfolding.
My friend got up to go to bed and fetched me a duvet to sleep under. Wearily we embraced, and bid each other ‘good night’. He would be working the next morning and I would probably not see him before he left home.
The room wasn’t cold, so I stripped to my underpants and T-shirt and curled up on the sofa, feeling cosy and looking forward to a good rest and illuminating dreams.
But neither of these were ever to come.
As I lay, waiting to succumb to the sudden veil of slumber, my mind began to drift away through tunnels of thoughts, fractals of thoughts, chains of thoughts. I don’t remember exactly what thoughts, or even what kinds of thoughts, but they gradually infested my mind, relentlessly proliferating in quantity and perplexity. I turned over on the sofa, pushing my head into the cushion I used for a pillow, and, with eyes securely shut, tried to gently coerce my mind into sleeping.
Gentle coercion failed. The mind refused to submit, in fact the onslaught of synaptic activity intensified inexorably. Thoughts haphazardly raced around my vulnerable mind, their complexity bewildering as they layered and merged with increasing frequency. My breathing responded likewise, and I began to feel a sense of panic rise inside my body, synchronised with a swelling of my heartbeat. I had had similar experiences before, on LSD — bad trips — but had always managed to calm and reassure myself with the emotional imprint that it was just the chemical substance affecting my reality, and that I was “peaking”, and soon I would be “coming down”, the intensity of the situation gradually dissipating. This time though, I couldn’t facilitate even a germ of inner tranquillity from which to purchase a sense of safety.
I felt my mind begin to fragment. I became afraid. In my mind I could see six television screens, endlessly flashing at high speed between thousands of seemingly random images, with periodic pauses of intense white noise. My mind felt ravaged, and after what seemed like a couple of hours I began to think that I would never be released from this internal reality of unmanageable chaos and senselessness. I wondered whether this would be the state of my mind forever (a wonderment which, in itself, is to seed the destruction of one’s own sanity). No matter how intently I willed myself to believe that I was simply unaccustomed to ingesting hashish, and that soon I would be released from this uncontrollable nightmare as the effects of the substance naturally waned, the thought occurred that I would never be able to return to work again. How could I function with ninety percent of my mind in a state of perpetual confusion and utter annihilation?
I had to intervene. I decided that it was necessary to engage in a familiar activity of some kind, anything to distract my mind from its self-inflicted twilight nightmare. I would try walking, simple.
