Chapter 26: Have you ever done drugs?
Originally written June 15, 2021
Back in the early 1970s, during my early college years, apparently there was some interview somewhere of John Denver in which the singer admitted that he’d “experimented” with marijuana. This startling confession prompted Paul Kanter of The Jefferson Airplane to write a sarcastic letter to the editors of Rolling Stone in which the guitarist for one of the world’s major psychedelic bands declared that he too had experimented with illegal marijuana.
Referring to Denver, Kanter’s letter ended with “His courage inspired me.”
So, in that courageous John Denver spirit, I will answer this question:
Yes, I have done drugs.
Actually, I never really kept that dark secret from my kids or anyone, really.
The second semester of college is when I started my career as a junior druggo.
(I’d have never turned to drugs had it not been for Kenny Rogers!)
Marijuana was everywhere back in the early ‘70s. It was cheap and plentiful — though most the time very low quality. Usually just potent enough for a few giggles and some unnatural craving for Der Wienerschnitzel chili dogs.
In the summer of 1972 I tried psychedelics for the first time. For the next couple of years I fancied myself as some kind of astral shamanic mystic Carlos Castaneda warrior.
Most of the trips were good ones — fun and often spiritually rewarding.
But in retrospect, a lot of those times now seem like dumbass teenage Archie & Jughead/Porgy & Mudhead shenanigans.
My tripping buddies and I were always having weird run-ins with authorities. One morning, after a wild sleepless night of “camping” up near the ski area, we went to Denny’s for breakfast. We ran into the preacher from the Methodist Church (several of us at the time were still involved in Methodist Youth Fellowship.)
I believe that the preacher knew that we’d been tripping. He started telling us of his time as a preacher on Oklahoma Indian reservations and how he could tell when there had been a peyote meeting because the next morning you’d see Indians “passed out on their blankets on the side of the road.”
Another trip that summer involved a trip in our friend Spence’s van to Los Alamos. We stopped at a phone booth at a White Rock gas station so I could call a friend. Someone had ripped out the page I needed in the phone book. I turned around and yelled at my friends “THEY STOLE MY PAGE!”
And then I noticed the cop beside me, who replied sarcastically, “Oh they DID?”
I’m not sure what the cop wanted. He didn’t arrest anyone or issue any tickets. If he just wanted to intimidate a bunch of hopped-up teenagers, he did a good job.
That wasn’t the only time I had to deal with a police officer. About a year after the Los Alamos incident, I was driving home in the wee hours after a night of LSD revelry going down Central Avenue near the University of New Mexico when I apparently ran a red light. Somehow I kept my composure.
Then I wrote a short story — deeply influenced by Hunter S. Thompson, of course — about this little adventure, and a few months later it was published in the UNM literary magazine. (I think I used my alias, “Chester Leach” in the byline.)
I remember showing it to my grandmother. I could tell she was proud of me for being in a literary magazine, but she kept saying, “Well, of course I don’t approve …”
After 1974 or so, my use of psychedelics began to fade. I turned 21 that year, and most my crowd was boozing a lot more than tripping. I didn’t completely stop psychedelics until the mid 80s. My last trip was nice — a mushroom-laced campout in the Jemez Mountains with several of my Jackalope Coven friends.
Nothing dramatic. No cops messing with us, no preachers talking peyote apocalypse. Just some pleasant hiking, and, as one old college pal used to say, “Mushrooms always did make the sky look nice …”
As for harder drugs, I did try cocaine a few times in the late 70s and early 80s. Hell, when I was a musician, people would leave it in my tip jar ever so often.
But I never actually bought any coke and I never became an enthusiast. I started realizing the effect it had on friends and loved ones, so I just stopped and was never even tempted to go back.
I’m not downplaying drug addiction. It’s can be extremely tragic. But I’m lucky it never became a major issue for me. Just like booze a couple of decades later, it was surprising easy for me to part ways with it.
By this point I had a daughter in grade school and I was feeling more and more like a responsible adult. Also, through the years, my marijuana consumption dropped to pretty near zero.
And it stayed that way pretty much until I went to Amsterdam in the summer of 2012.
I went to visit my son, who went to school there for one semester. The day I first arrived at Amsterdam, I went into a “coffee shop” just a block or so from my hotel. I actually went there because they had computers for the public and I was going to email my son to let him know I had made it. In the establishment I actually ordered a cup of coffee.
The lady at the counter looked at me like I was crazy.
That’s about the time I remembered that Amsterdam coffee shops are not known for their coffee. I felt like such a square!
But a couple of nights later, when I had gone back to my room after a day of touristing I was restless. Back in the old days, I would have just gone to a bar for a beer or two before crashing. But I’d given up alcohol because of my diabetes about 10 years earlier.
Then I remembered that coffee house down the street …
I went back that night. And I didn’t order coffee.
After my time in the hospital for necrotizing fasciitis in 2018, I got on the state medical marijuana program.
When I first got my card, I felt like a kid in the proverbial candy store. I probably smoked more marijuana during those first couple of months than I had since the early ‘70s.
My cannabis-infused chocolate bars really did help with the pain in my leg, which was affecting my sleep. But my first reaction was that medical marijuana was a gift from the state for those of us who’d lived this long!
But after that initial couple of weeks, I started slowing down. Having to go back to work after recovering from my illness had a lot to do with that fact.
And now that I’m retired, I really don’t smoke that much weed. Just a little square of cannabis chocolate at night and I sleep well. And sometimes I’ll eat a little 5mg gummy to make an afternoon walk or a concert a little sillier. Maybe a toke or two when watching tv after dinner …
So yes, gentle reader, I have done drugs.
And here’s a little authentic New Mexico psychedelia for the road.
Entertaining and factual, as always. Enjoy all these.
I resemble some of those remarks! 😜😎🤪😵💫😱