Optimistic Nihilism

by David Landers

  I took a piss at the bush where I always did when coming home simply drunk and/or stoned, in order to minimize commotion once I got into our little three-bedroom house. As I looked up into the trees while standing there, the silhouette of branches and leaves against the lighter night sky looked as they always did on LSD: flat and surprisingly symmetric, like those snowflakes you made in elementary school with scissors and construction paper, except much more detailed and the paper was black. Also unlike paper snowflakes, the whole scene was alive, a gigantic kaleidoscope turning in various circular motions. It was beautiful but ominous, because I was definitely tripping, just like I had been the day before at the Galleria, only now I was about to enter my scary-ass home, a place I had never really felt perfectly comfortable, even when sober.

  Making it to bed did not go well. The front door was locked, and I didn’t have my fucking key. A little panic: If the backdoor is locked, I’m stuck. I’d have to wake someone up to get in, but would probably opt to just stay outside until I either sobered up or one of my parents woke up and came to get me. There was no telling how that would go down, but I’d rather be late and relatively sober than on time and tripping like this. They would know, or the tension would simply be unbearable and I’d have to tell them. At the time, I could fathom this ending up as a trip to the ER somehow. I had to avoid facing them at all costs.

  I had to climb our cyclone fence to get into the back yard and to try the back door. As I walked up to it, our 100-plus pound Alaskan malamute, Amber, was there to greet me. She was giddy to see me as you normally like a dog to be, but at the time I couldn’t trust her and was even kinda scared, like she might somehow sense how different I was on LSD and maybe not even recognize me. I really had some paranoia that she might attack me as an intruder. I talked to her, and reached out slowly, as if she was some huge dog I was meeting for the first time, not one with which I had snuggled for years. She didn’t bite me or anything and instead behaved normally, but I didn’t dawdle.

  Praise Jesus again, the backdoor was unlocked. However, ours was a noisy backdoor, and it did its worst when I tried to sneak in. But the lights were out, and clearly no one was up. Cool. All I had to do was go about fifteen feet across the kitchen into my converted-den bedroom and jump into bed and act like I had been there for some time. Our house was a pitch-black cave, so there was little concern about anyone seeing how dilated my eyes must have been at this point. I snuck into bed.

  I made it! All I had to do now was sit in the dark and sober up. Granted, this could take hours, but it wasn’t like I was in jail or the ER.

  But I was tripping really hard now; I swear to God it was still getting more intense by the moment. As usual, the air conditioner mounted in my window was loud as fuck and it was freezing cold. And it was so dark. My mind soon started wandering like it had never wandered before. And then … unbelievably … the goddamned, motherfucking phone rang.

  Our phone rarely rang, much less at 3:00 in the morning. Presuming crisis, I was immediately concerned that one of my friends had started freaking out on his acid, too, and had been busted by his parents. It must be one of my friends’ parents calling to wake up mine so that they could bust me, too. I had this crazy paranoid thought that the parent would suggest something sinister for punishment, like for my mom to act weird to freak me out, so that the punishment would be appropriate for the crime. You know, the ol’ smoking a pack of cigarettes when you get caught smoking for the first time.

  I had to get to the phone before anyone else, which was actually a cinch because it was in the kitchen, much closer to me, and I was the only one who was so incredibly awake.

  When I answered it, I quietly asked, “Hello?” I was scared shit-less like some hot chick in a horror movie about to get murdered. There was just silence, but the other person didn’t hang up. I couldn’t hear anything. I said, “Hello” one more time, feeling like my voice must be quivering, but I wasn’t sure. I hung up the phone gently, so as not to make any more noise, and prayed it wouldn’t ring again. I headed back to bed, with only memory for navigation.

  Staggering through the darkness—unfuckingbelievably—I suddenly collided with another human being. It was the end of the earth—I totally expected a gigantic knife to land in my chest next—but it was just my mother. She had gotten up to answer the phone and I hadn’t noticed. Reflexively, and inexplicably, I said something that sounded magically appropriate, like “Oh my God—you scared the crap out of me! It was a prank call.” She just kinda mumbled, apparently not even half conscious, and presumably retreated back into the darkness. I climbed back into bed.

  With my anxiety stirred-up like a hornet’s nest, my mind quickly became lost again when I was alone in the pitch-black darkness of my room, the air conditioner blaring white noise or something similar. There was nothing else salient to capture the attention of my mad, racing mind, so it turned on itself. Lying there in the darkness, I eventually became profoundly disoriented, but paradoxically hyper-conscious; there was no element of sedation to help me. Eventually, I could no longer hear the air conditioner but instead a cacophony of sounds, and they were loud: simultaneous bells, whistles, sirens, various musical instruments, controlled by mad devils who were trying to make the most horrible sound ever.

  Eventually, the bed I was lying on seemed to vanish, leaving me to exist without any sort of tether to Earth. This progressed so that I began to lose my sense of connection with my body as well, which was not pleasant. My sense of my size became distorted, like I couldn’t tell if I was big or small. Everything was just relative but without a single reference point whatsoever. Eventually, I couldn’t feel my body at all, as if it was shapeless, but I was somewhere. I was only a consciousness, flitting about the darkness, truly mad, in the way I had always fantasized madness might be. More than fully conscious, but unfathomably uncomfortable, relentless, horrifying.

  I had to stimulate myself somehow or I was going to start screaming. I somehow managed to turn on my jam box that was next to my bed and put on the headphones, which were already plugged in, thank God. But when the little red power light came on as I flipped the switch, it wouldn’t be still: It immediately took off, in a circular motion, spiraling out and away from its original place in space until it disappeared into the distance. Further alarmed by that, I lay back down, and alas, the noise from the radio wasn’t helping. I was so incredibly disoriented—I’m not making this up for dramatic effect—I couldn’t comprehend anything I was listening to. When the DJ talked, I couldn’t understand the words he or she was saying. When music played, I couldn’t tell what kind it was, like country or rap or big band or salsa. At least as afraid as before, I turned it off and took off the headphones.

  I entertained the idea of waking my parents and telling them I needed to go to the ER. But I couldn’t, not because I was worried about getting into trouble, but because I was paranoid. I was afraid of what I would see if they were in the light: They might be grotesque, deformed—or even demented and evil. I was afraid they might lose control and try to hurt me for punishment, and even wondered if it might not be my parents at all sleeping in that room!

  I needed light—I needed to see. The one in my room was too bright and could wake my parents, so that wasn’t an option. I eventually decided to go to the bathroom and pretend I was taking a shit for a while. I was able to get in there and close the door without incident, and only then did I turn on the light. The brightness was painful, but so much more comforting than the hell of my room. As soon as I looked at my face in the mirror, it immediately became a mask and melted. As intense as this was, it was relatively familiar and quickly brought me back to Earth—granted, LSD Earth. There was still something dangerous about hallucinating in my own home, but at least I could tell once again that I was simply on drugs. I used to like melting in the mirror.

  I sat on the toilet, pants down and all in case someone walked in and wondered what I was doing. I sat there and observed another familiar and comforting tri
pping scene, the little black tiles on the bathroom floor beginning to shimmer and move, realigning themselves in various patterns never intended by the carpenter who put them there. Some of them would lean, like little solar panels trying to maximize contact with the sun. Thank you, tiles.

  But I couldn’t stay. Someone was gonna need to pee themselves, and I couldn’t risk another confrontation. I went back to bed. Realizing that light was the key to sanity, I’d just have to risk it. I turned on the little black-and-white TV next to my bed but turned the brightness way down so that I could barely make out the images on it. That was the trick: It was so much better to have a visual reference point—I just needed some reality, and this would do. I lay there in bed like that for the rest of the night, watching very dim I Love Lucy episodes and such with the sound off. I apparently fell asleep like that, but I don’t know when.

  I later woke up to the normal sounds of my folks bustling around in the kitchen, having coffee and breakfast and whatnot. The world seemed normal, but I wasn’t anymore. I was sober, but was very unsettled, in a way that felt kinda permanent. I’ve often told people, including my therapists over the years, that I felt like something “broke” that night. I even felt violated, betrayed by LSD, even though I knew it was my fault. The most magnificent experience I knew had now become the worst experience I had ever had, hands-down. I was lost, in a way.

  And it wouldn’t be the last time. I obviously couldn’t do LSD anymore, but I’d be traumatized by other drugs as well.

  Cocaine got me less than a year after my bad LSD trip; I was still about 19. After some other long night of partying, I found myself stranded in Deep Ellum, as everyone else had trickled away home or to late-night breakfast joints and I had missed all the boats while holding out for the best one. Luckily, I eventually ran into a friend from high school, but unluckily he didn’t have a ride, either. As the crowds in the streets continued to thin we were starting to get nervous, because the walk home was long and necessarily through one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in Dallas. As hope was dwindling, we finally found a ride to an unrelated high school party that was closer to our neighborhoods to the east.

  The party was essentially over by the time we got there, but a salient aura remained from what had transpired earlier, a sea of empty keg cups and niches of improperly disposed cigarette butts. There were only about ten or twelve people left, some uncertain number of whom were crashed throughout this guy’s spacious and fancy house; his parents were out of town, presumably very far away. The kid himself was a big-time wrestler at a neighboring high school, one of those overly energetic jocks who liked to party hard and even fight sometimes. Those guys always made me uneasy, as loud macho guys typically did. But they were always nice enough to me, despite the fact that they were athletes and I had salient punk leanings.

  After high-fives were done, I and the three or four other people who were still clearly awake went out back to smoke a joint. But this was no ordinary joint: I watched the guy roll it, and it was about half weed and half cocaine. I had never smoked cocaine, but was ready to try. It had been a long night and I still felt edgy and geared up. I remember thinking that this would probably get me off real good, but then I’d finally be able to crash.

  We passed that thing around the four of us in the darkish back yard, the porch light bouncing off beer cans and keg cups strewn about. I’ll never forget the smell of the joint: It really didn’t smell like weed at all, but just synthetic chemicals. It was gross, and tasted bad. I only took a couple of hits or so, but I took big ones, thinking that the more I could get off, the harder I would crash. It was gonna be hard to sleep on the floor at this place. I needed to get really tired.

  Sure enough, I started getting fucked up fast, and within moments was having an unexpectedly good time. I felt high, really high—drug high, not pot high—particularly energized and excited. Suddenly, I wasn’t worried about crashing anymore. This was gonna be a special fun time, something I hadn’t bargained for. The joint disappeared; we all held our positions in the smoking circle, but paired off, everyone talking with a lot more enthusiasm than when we started.

  Over time, I kept getting more and more fucked up, beginning to hope that I’d level off but I never did. I eventually had to stop contributing to the conversation altogether, as I became disinterested in talking, and at some point began to find it hard to say anything at all. No worries; I’d just listen for a while.

  We went back inside, and I was feeling less and less comfortable, a little lightheaded and weak, some stings of anxiety starting to come over me. We sat down at the dining room table under this very parental-looking chandelier that seemed so out of place after having smoked coke just thirty feet away. We each took a side of the square table, my friend ending up opposite me. He was talking energetically, obviously very high off that joint, too, but definitely having a different experience than I was. I was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable, bordering on scared.

  Then I started to hallucinate. My friend suddenly had a broken jaw, his face distended on one side, but it didn’t prevent him from talking, and even smiling. Then my hearing began to fail, in that the volume was fine but I could no longer understand what the others were saying. My vision became grainy, remarkably so, like the snow on a TV set, but I could still make out the forms of the others on the screen. Something was definitely wrong, and I was about to freak out, but I had no idea what that meant, or how to approach it. Am I supposed to say something to the others, or just let it happen, whatever it is?

  My ears began to ring, loudly enough so that I couldn’t even hear the garbled speech of the others anymore. That was it. Reflexively, I stood up and walked out of the dining room and into the living room. I’m not sure if I thought moving around would help, or if it was more of a metaphorical run, the flight portion of the fight-or-flight response. But, of course, there was nowhere to run. I remember there was a mirror on the ground, leaning against the wall, presumably because the party had caused it to fall, but it wasn’t broken. I could only see my legs in it, Vans skater shoes, white socks, and shorts, but I felt disembodied: Those things didn’t quite look like mine. This walking around business wasn’t helping. In fact, things were getting worse, so I headed back to the Table of Doom. At least there were people over there.

  The last thing I remember was my vision tunneling from the edges inward, so that all I could “see” was the back of the dining room chair nearest me; I don’t know if anyone was sitting in it. Something else, not me, decided to reach out for it. As I did, the tunnel vision became cliché, darkness closing in on the back of that chair like the end of a Looney Toons cartoon. Everything went black before my hand touched it, but I could still feel the trajectory of my hand reaching in that direction. But instead of making contact when it should have, the chair became a fog and my hand just passed right through it, and then I lost consciousness. That’s all, folks.

  I often tell people that this unconsciousness felt deeper than when asleep, and was instead more akin to being under general anesthesia during surgery. That sense that you have when you awake from sleep, that you were still existing despite having been asleep, was never there.

  I became conscious again, at least a little. I still couldn’t see—everything was completely black. I couldn’t really hear, either, or at least I couldn’t understand what I was hearing, but it was like there was noise. And I couldn’t move, but I felt like I was moving—violently, like I was being wrenched around by an extraordinary force, like a shark attack from Jaws or a Satan attack from The Exorcist. At one point, it felt like something hit me hard in the face. The wrenching went on for just a few seconds, and then I was gone again, super-asleep or in surgery or dead or whatever.

  I came to again, only this time everything was almost okay. I could totally see again, and there was no TV snow or broken jaws. I was obviously on the ground, because what I could see were five or six faces above me in a circle, all in shock, a scene from a comedy where I had been knoc
ked out by a blow to the head or groin. The faces were frozen, and so was I. Yes, I was totally paralyzed, but felt surprisingly well, all things considered. I desperately wanted to move so that I could tell them it was over and that I was okay, but couldn’t. Then, suddenly, as if my invisible restraints had burst, I popped off the ground, onto my feet and started saying, out loud and repeatedly, “I’m OK! I’m OK!”

  And I was. It was the damnedest fucking thing: I was totally sober and pretty clear-headed otherwise (which is generally inconsistent with a major seizure, which tends to leave one disoriented in its wake, but I don’t believe seizure activity can be ruled-out entirely). I did have a really bad headache, but that was welcome compared to what had been happening. After the initial shock left the room, someone got me some water and aspirin and they put me on the couch. I didn’t argue; I was so fucking tired. Indeed, I fell asleep—mission accomplished! Thank you, cocaine.

  When I woke up the next morning, I felt tired, disheveled, and broken, very reminiscent of the day following my bad trip on LSD. However, there was much less betrayal this time, I guess because I hadn’t had a relationship with cocaine before. And, frankly, this seemed to confirm some sort of suspicion that I may have had all along, that cocaine was gross, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. Still, the sense of trauma was there again, a general sense that I was less safe than I had been the day prior. I felt uncomfortably mortal, now knowing very intimately what it’s like to have my Self be at the mercy of my guts and chemistry and physics. Realize that I still identified as Christian at the time—quite strongly—but I lost that sense that He was necessarily taking care of me. For the first time in my life I began to appreciate that I really had the capacity to put myself in harm’s way, that God would not always have my back if I tempted him with my recklessness.