Say Maybe to Drugs

Here's something interesting I've learned lately: everyone is doing drugs. Apparently, I've been living a sheltered life, walking around jolly and oblivious to the fact that there is a pervasive underworld full of people who are constantly high on one drug or another, and it is spreading. Crystal meth, marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, Valium, crack, alcohol - everyone is doing something and just because I choose to remain cooped up in my apartment 6 days out of 7, I am fully ignorant of just how many people are going to ruin their lives this year because of addiction and/or mistakes. Now, given that I do spend the majority of my time hanging out with my more laidback self, it shocks me that I am meeting more and more people who do drugs. The sheer odds of my meeting that many people means that there must be millions out there, and apparently they're always looking for fresh meat, more people to drag into their dark despair - cuz it ain't fun getting high all by yourself. Ergo, I feel the need to share an experience or two of mine, just for the general education of the virgin public. Just so you know what to expect.

I remember the first time I really got high. I mean, there was the Christmas party at my little sister's foster brother's house in London, but that was just an introduction. They were passing round a spliff at this party before dinner. Everyone smokes spliffs in London; it's just the done thing. I'm just a Nigerian girl (fairly extraordinary, yes, but simple nonetheless), who is a firm believer in moderation and not going down the slippery slope; I turned down the j's first couple of rounds. But when I saw my darling sister puffing on that thin white roll of weed and tobacco, I asked myself whether I was really living life by being so prudish. I decided I wasn’t. On the next round, I took three puffs, and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up 20 minutes later, everyone was laughing at me, but I felt somewhat validated. I had smoked weed - or so I thought - and nothing had happened to me. I resolved then and there to make weed smoking a firm and fixed part of my intoxication menu, which up until this point only included various kinds of alcohol and the occasional cigarette.

I came back to the U.S. and began shopping for a dealer. I hate that I have to use such language, like it was a covert operation in the middle of the night, but this is America. Anyway, so I began to look out for people who looked like they might smoke tweeds, that I might drink from their fountain of wisdom in the acquisition of such dark goods. It was harder than I thought. But as it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised by the discovery that many of the people I hung out with daily were frequent worshippers at the altar of Mary Jane and I didn’t have to look far, or for long. One day, GT told me that he had gotten a shipment of “the good stuff” and asked me if I was ready for the ride of my life. Strangely and stupidly confident after my one brush with drugs, I laughed at his insinuation that I wasn’t ready, got in my car and went to his apartment to “show him how it was done”.

When he opened the Ziploc bag of reefer, I was struck by the sharp, tangy smell of the leaves. It smelled strong. GT noticed my brief hesitation, perhaps even glimpsed the shadow of anxiety that had passed over my face, and laughed at me. I resumed my false bravado attitude, but now I was slightly worried. This “good stuff” didn’t look like any kind of weed I had ever seen before. It was green and had a sparkly quality, almost like it had been sprinkled with stardust. There weren’t just leaves either – there were buds and twigs, and everything seemed extremely fresh. Prior to this, I had only seen shriveled up, dead-looking weed. Certainly nothing that looked like it might grow roots in my lungs and spring to life through my mouth. Inwardly, I started to shake.

GT rolled the j, and politely offered me the first puff. I inhaled – and immediately went into a coughing fit. My throat felt like it was on fire, like the veins and arteries had disintegrated, sending the blood spewing directly from my heart into my esophagus. I thought the pain was never going to end. By the time I recovered, GT had taken the joint out of my hand – to protect it, no doubt – and was sitting on his bed, smoking and laughingly asking about my health. To further rub in my embarrassment, he offered me the joint again. I glared at him, then went to the bathroom down the hall. As I sat on the toilet, I thought to myself how annoying it was that I had to go through all that without even the satisfaction of a high. I still wasn’t sure what constituted a high, but whatever I was feeling, which was nothing, wasn’t it. I dabbed at myself with some tissue, pulled up my pants, and went over to the sink.

As I looked down at my soapy hands, I noticed that the suds looked shinier than usual. I also noticed that I thought I was looking at myself washing my hands from a distance. I blinked. Everything went back to normal. Weird, I thought, and rinsed the soap from my hands. I could still taste the blood in my mouth, so when I noticed the mouthwash by the sink, I thought I’d have a gargle, try to chase the memory of my fall from grace with the minty freshness of Listerine. I reached for the bottle, opened the cap. The green liquid splashed into the small black cap. I threw it back in my mouth, and sloshed it around violently. Rinsed the cap. Screwed it back on the bottle. It was then that I began to realize that I was very aware of every detail of all my actions. I could account for what each finger was doing as I opened and closed the Listerine bottle. Everything was going in slow motion; raising my eyes to the mirror took three seconds instead of the usual fraction of one. Looking in the mirror, the kulutempa I thought I would see was no longer there. Instead, kulutempa was slowly moving out of this girl, prepared to float behind her and watch her from a few feet away. I could literally feel myself drifting out of my mind and body, into a state of oblivion, an unknown place I had never been before. I could only assume that this is what dying felt like. Suddenly, I was overtaken with fear. I had to get back to the room and ask GT what was going on before I ceased to be part of myself. I flung open the bathroom door and started down the dark, unlit hallway. But not before I turned off the bathroom light, essentially plunging myself into instant, impenetrable darkness.

I’m going to have to admit something about myself that few people know: I’m scared of the dark. I haven’t slept alone without a night light for over two years, and before that I had only managed to sleep alone in the dark for about a year. Something about the dark of night terrifies me. This is not a good character trait to have when you are high, prone to paranoia even when you’re sober – which can only get worse when you have smoked igbo – and are lost in a pitch-black hallway. Unfortunately, I was in this state of panic and frantically searching for GT’s bedroom doorknob, vainly fighting screams, when I chose to leave my body. I blacked out. When I came to, I was huddled and shaking on one end of GT’s futon, he was sitting on his bed peering across at me worriedly and asking me if I was ok – for real, this time. His muscular form came to me slowly, through a black haze that never fully cleared the whole time I was high.

That was the longest night of my life. I remember being very worried that I had broken an infinite number of sins by embarking on this weedy journey, and grew increasingly concerned that I would die a horrible death very soon. Within minutes, to be exact. Flashbacks of all the times in church when people were called to the altar to re-dedicate their lives to God and I declined, putting it off for another Sunday, came to my mind and I felt so distraught. I started rocking back and forth, asking God to forgive me for my stupidity, to have mercy and give me another chance to make my life right before He sent me to the fiery pits of hell. GT, long gone at this point, started telling me to just calm down so the paranoia could pass and so I could get to enjoying my high. I think I was ruining his. However, in that short phrase, he had introduced me to the idea that this feeling would not last forever and that I would not live and die like this. There would be an end to my suffering, and I would live a full life afterwards. All I wanted to know was when it would be. So I asked him.

“What time is it?”

“It’s 1:30.”

“Ok.” I waited for a very long time before I spoke again, and then I tried to make small talk. Unfortunately, all I could say was:

“What time is it?”

“1:31.”

“Ok.”

Another long pause.

“What time is it?”

“1:31. Now it’s 1:32.”

“Ok.”

We did this for hours. When GT gets high, apparently he has the patience of Jesus. There he was, laid out on his bed, watching the TV, chilling. Meanwhile, kulutempa is there on the futon, fidgeting and twitching, unable to think of anything except her impending death and the time. I tried to watch TV, but he said the light and waves would probably make my high worse. I had no choice but to believe him; I couldn’t even process what the hell he was talking about. So while I feared everything, I also became obsessed with keeping my eyes from even glancing in the general direction of the TV as I waited for my trip to end. I eventually fell asleep on the futon and woke up at 6 to the sound of birds chirping outside and the misty blue of dawn slipping through the slats of the blinds. I touched my body - to make sure it was all there - went to that eerie bathroom again to check the redness of my eyes, then got the hell out of there. I don’t even think I said bye to GT. I had come to know that igbo pass igbo. All I knew was I would never smoke weed again.

A few months later, I was high on the train in London, on my way home after visiting my sister’s then boyfriend, who was kind enough to offer me trees, the way an Italian offers his visitor red wine. When I became paranoid about a number of men raping me on my walk home, I decided that it was finally, finally time to stop smoking that stuff. I had never gotten used to the unbearable dry mouth, anyway. There is one effect that I will miss terribly, but I’ll leave that unspoken. Man, that was hard to give up. But I digress. I don’t really have a point, but I will say this: weed will get you high, and it might soften life’s edges, but more often than not, it will overly sharpen your senses and make you paranoid as hell. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes not. Either way, my decision to say “maybe” to drugs has meant that at least now my “no” has the weight of experience behind it. Which will totally save me from the desperate clawing of miserable druggies looking to drag me down into their despair. Think about it.

Next topic: Black Friday in America and Ndidi the Undercover Artful Dodger. Watch this space.