LSD was the drug creative artists had to take to become cool creative artists, and everyone I knew taking LSD were cool creative artists with friends and/or accomplishments. I wanted to be a cool creative artist too, but I was afraid.
“Don’t be afraid,” a new friend reassured me. “It’s not scary.” (That same friend took LSD the previous night, and spent its entirety laughing and watching the ceiling like he was binging on stand-up specials.)
In the two years it took for college culture to normalize smoking pot to the point where it was no longer rebellious fun but numb routine, the ‘new friend’ had upgraded his trust level to ‘real friend,’ and suggested that maybe I was ready for LSD.
Imbued with the courage of a second semester sophmore, and cultivating my fledgling reputation as a creative artist, I relented, justifying it: “Just to grow my character…just to cross it off the list.”
Another ‘real friend from home’ and expert in taking All of the Drugs admitted the previous year that “it [LSD] was not as [hallucinogenic] as advertised. Pot is way better. Pot is the best.”
Recalling that testimony was disheartening. I was finally comfortable enough with my college life to lose my inhibitions and irrevocably and radically alter my entire worldview with the terrifying and awesome hallucinations LSD promised, but his sentiment that ‘pot is way better, pot is the best’ stuck like a splinter in my mind. “Everyone,” (now including myself) was smoking pot routinely. No one was taking LSD anymore. I really didn't even like pot that much. Was I now too late for this rite of passage? Was I ever going to become a creative artist??? Was pot really “the best”?????
There was no more time to waste; I took LSD with the last remaining drop of freshman courage and have no memory of it ten years on. It was completely unmemorable and unremarkable. This did not stop me from taking it with other groups of 'friends' over the next year, more so to build my reputation as ‘edgy’ with those less experienced than it was enjoyable and revelatory.
The same is not true of Laxatives: The Best Recreational Drug.
Older and wiser now, I was never going to do drugs ever again; drugs were gay now. Food was better. Food was even better than pot.
Youth is wasted on the young. Pizza and ice cream were daily staples as an immortal 19-year-old, and thus became boring, which led to the misguided testing of drugs against my immortality. (When immortal everything eventually becomes boring, even Power.) But as age dilutes the youth’s immortality complex until the youth (hopefully) reaches the point of humility, healthy food becomes mandatory to maintain normal mortality.
And healthy food sucks. Sure, its responsible to eat healthy, but responsibility is not Fun. Responsibility is the dike holding back the sea of indulgence, and responsibilities to oneself breaks the dike faster and easier and more frequently than responsibilities to others. Enter laxatives.
Indulging on a surprise sixth meal of short ribs the midnight before a Thanksgiving 5k, I did not expect to be able to crawl, let alone run. With the 5k miraculously finished and the main meal approaching I was worryingly still without an appetite. And then I was offered laxatives by a trusted source.
Laxatives had a sexy pink label and could be bought OTC in a pharmacy. A Madison Ave marketing agency made it look appealing, and the FDA label made it legal, official, encouraging. I didn’t need courage, I needed solutions; I swallowed the white, tasteless grain with a 12oz glass of water.
The meal was eaten with typical Thanksgiving gluttony, and no one could ask me if I was feeling alright, or if something was wrong with the food. Emptying my bowels that evening was unmemorable and unremarkable. No longer a laxatives virgin, I could now cross that drug off my now irrelevant drug list and shelve it as a disappointment, like LSD.
I had nearly finished an impromptu stroll through my hometown two days later when a friendly neighbor approached with her equally friendly dog. Predicting an impending conversation, I braced myself for an unwanted, intrusively polite chat when a sudden force I thought I wanted two days ago made itself known from a sensitive area inside me: it was did not ebb or tickle or knock lightly; it kicked down the door and stormed the premises with a swat team that sprayed bullets in all directions at once. I was being turned inside out.
The neighbor was far enough away not to recognize me yet, so I obscured my recognition with a scarf and hat and bolted past her like a vampire melting in the sunlight. Her dog recognized the scent leaving me and stopped to bark hello, my disguise kept my neighbor from following her dog’s instincts.
False moves undoing my belt were not permitted in those precious moments before everything left my body in an endless and awesome gush, and I laughed louder than any ceiling stand-up special on LSD could make me laugh, with a combination of relief, awe, confusion and joy, completely out of breath. The physicality of the laxative experience made it very real and very remarkable, unlike LSD,
I knew that no subsequent laxative experience could ever measure up, and learning from my past LSD experience, I did not try. Laxatives have a purpose. My proper one-time use achieved that purpose to complete perfection.
Years of tradition and experience have taught me exactly what kind of sick person I am, and my interest with recreational laxatives is further proof that I must never use any drug, no matter its legality.
The road to maturity need not be pockmarked with craters of drug experiences, and I am happy to have survived its traversal to the bridge over turbulent waters, stopping and recalling the past before crossing it and embarking on the next stage of my life, knowing with certainty that laxatives are superior to LSD in every measurable way.
