What A Ride: As Winter Approached

(previous chapter)

At first, I loved having so much acid around. I wasn't always on it, but it was always on me, so the option was always there. I was living life how I wanted to at the time, high and in the woods.

But it wasn't sustainable.

I often needed help from friends and family to keep myself fed. When I did have money, the food I bought was mostly dry and ready to eat from the packaging; lots of peanut butter, granola, and pop tarts. My diet wasn't healthy at all, and barely kept me full.

As the weather got colder and wetter, I began relying on friends and family more for shelter, too, making me feel like a useless burden at times. Whenever I needed to shower, shave, wash clothes, or even prepare some of my meals, I needed to find a house I was allowed to do those things in.

I fell into a depression, at which point I stopped being able to hold onto acid without doing it. Between my own acid, and the acid of the friend I was effectively living with, I started to trip at least three times a week, though most weeks that number was more like five or six times. That went on for a few months as the weather got colder and colder.

I didn't sleep much during that period. Almost every night was a party that I attended for the sake of having somewhere to be for the night. I'd end up on acid, go all night, then run on coffee the next morning because I couldn't sleep once the sun was up. The triple-loaded cocktail of THC, LSD, and caffeine kept me functioning, but left me stressed and mentally exhausted.

It was only a matter of time before I started to experience health issues. Everything from trench foot to dental problems tore at my body, while the lower-left area of my stomach region would sometimes spaz out and get hard for a reason I still don't know the origin of. Maybe it was my diet. Maybe it was the acid. Maybe it was both. I began to lose faith in my life and accept that I would probably die young, if I even made it through winter. Something had to change. I had to leave the situation I had trapped myself in, but I was also afraid of leaving. That would mean facing the unknown far from home when my body felt like it was falling apart. But still, I knew I had to go.

My family is pretty big on Ohio State, so with the run they were having I decided to stay around long enough to watch them win the first ever College Football Playoff. Then, I set out for my first Rainbow gathering in Ocala.

(next chapter)