Herba: Once in, there's no way out.

by Arjun Kramadhati

  On a fine Sunday afternoon after the routine Sunday mass, Rocky was out in the sun sweating it out on the football field with his friends. A game of football never ceased to make him happy. Rocky always preferred to goal keep. He was very good at it. In the middle of the game, a hard kick of the ball hit Rocky right on his face. The striker’s kick is always the hardest. The hit knocked Rocky out of his consciousness for a few minutes. When his blurry eyes opened, Rocky thought he was dreaming. It was as though a big boulder had run over his soul and managed to turn it into a slimy paste. He felt that a guy who looked exactly like him was trying to help him.

  ‘Get up, tough guy,’ the new lad said as he extended his arm out for Rocky to lift himself up.

  ‘Thank you brother, I do not think we’ve met before,’ Rocky spoke with a certain abrupt tone, still recovering from the sudden shock of the hit.

  ‘Yes indeed! I am Natas,’ he said as he extended his hand for a handshake. Rocky shook his hand weakly.

  ‘We look a lot alike,’ Rocky said with a curious grin on his face.

  ‘True,’ Natas returned the same grin.

  ‘Enough of the talk, let’s play dude!’ Natas said in a spirited tone and ran back into the centre of the field.

  The game continued.

  It was in these conditions that Rocky first met Natas. Natas bore an uncanny resemblance to Rocky. If not for the little tanned contrast, Natas looked almost exactly like Rocky. Looks apart, there was nothing else in Natas that could vouch for the resemblance with Rocky. Unlike Rocky, Natas had no such guided growth. Reckless in almost everything he did, his football skills were the only thing that someone could publicly praise. Alcohol, drugs and women were to Natas’s life as was football to David Beckham’s life. Natas was the embodiment of everything that a parent would not want to see in their children.

  Just like how the law of opposites governs the world of science and physics, Natas and Rocky became thick friends very soon. A friendship that started out on a game of football would, very soon, govern each other’s lives deeply. It was as if they were always meant to be close friends. They started hanging out more often in the days that followed the minor football injury. They played many football matches together. Nothing bonds a friendship better than a football field. Rocky grew very fond of Natas. He saw Natas as a cool person that he wanted to become but never could. As the days started to run faster fuelled by their newly found friendship, Natas was now comfortable enough to slowly roll out and indulge Rocky in some of his activities.

  It was a boring afternoon and Rocky was feeling very restless at home. He ached to go out and play a game of football on the field. He thought of Natas and his cool character that attracted many a people. Rocky decided to meet Natas and reached out to his mobile phone to call his newfound best friend. Suddenly, the phone rang and Rocky picked up the call. It was Natas himself.

  ‘Hey Rock-o! I am bored, want to chill out?’ said Natas with a confidence that Rocky would certainly oblige.

  ‘Hell yeah!’ replied Rocky with an excited tone. He was mildly surprised at the coincidence.

  ‘I am parked around the corner of your block, man. Hurry along,’ Natas said, as he noticed how excited Rocky was.

  ‘Right away! Coming in 2 minutes,’ said Rocky as he hopped out of the bed like a kangaroo, as though there was no time to waste.

  Rocky hurried along, excited to meet his doppelganger. He found an old car parked at the corner of his block. It was an old Fiat Strada. The car looked a lot like his father’s old car. He opened the door of the car and sat inside. Rocky suddenly found himself in a car filled with smoke. Smoke, which smelt and felt different from the usual smoke emanating from the kitchen chimneys.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ he asked.

  Rocky was suddenly taken aback at the density of the smoke that filled the insides of the car.

  A creepy smile spread across Natas’s face.

  ‘Come on, you wanted this,’ Natas replied, with the same smile.

  ‘Wanted what?’ Rocky was very intrigued.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Natas, as he reclined in his seat and took in a deep breath of the smoke. His body showed a certain relaxed state, one that would normally be seen in the sadhus found on the perilous Himalayan mountain range.

  ‘Natas, you are really scaring me now,’ Rocky spoke again with a stiff upright and tensed body.

  ‘You better tell me what it is Natas!’

  He was getting very annoyed at the calm and silent demeanor of Natas.

  ‘Relax, it’s just a hot box,’ replied Natas with his eyes closed.

  ‘Hot box? What’s that?’ screamed Rocky, who was now freaking out at the creepy mess inside the car.

  The car was filled with white smoke. For any naive and innocent passerby, the car would seem as though it had caught fire on the inside and that the cabin had been engulfed by the smoke emanating from it.

  Rocky and Natas could barely see the outside from where they were sitting. Luckily for them, the car was parked in an isolated neighborhood. A neighborhood well suited for activities as the likes of these.

  ‘Natas, you are scaring me. I am getting out of the car right now,’ Rocky signaled, pretending to get out of the car.

  Rocky began to feel dizzy. A feeling that was new and strange to him.

  ‘It is just weed. I have made a weed hot-box, no big deal,’ Natas said, with closed eyes and an annoyingly calm persona.

  ‘Weed! You mean Marijuana?’ Rocky jumped up from the car seat. His eyeballs almost popping out from their sockets.

  ‘Yes,’ Natas said, with a proud smile on his face. A smile that a father would give after successfully teaching his child, alphabets.

  All this while, unbeknownst to Rocky, the magic compound in the herb was working on his body.

  ‘Oh my god! I did not know you were into all this nonsense!’ Rocky was shocked at the realization. He never knew Natas took part in practices that for him was unforgivable.

  ‘That’s it. I am getting out of the car,’ he said and tried to open the door.

  ‘You are going nowhere, my friend,’ said Natas as he held back Rocky firmly.

  ‘Just try it out. Just once. I promise you will like it,’ Natas said as he fought back Rocky’s relentless attempts to get out of the car.

  After much hustle and protest, Natas somehow managed to convince Rocky that smoking weed would do no bodily harm. All of the negatives you see about weed is nothing but a conspiracy by the government said Natas.

  ‘Marijuana never harms your body. It’s just a harmless herb,’ Natas convinced the clueless Rocky.

  ‘Sit back and inhale a piece of heaven,’ Natas said as Rocky began to quiet down a bit.

  Natas added one more sentence before Rocky conceded.

  ‘Don’t you want to be cool like me?’

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  A hot box is a street term for a special technique of smoking-up Marijuana. The windows of the car is closed and the stoners inside start smoking the joints. The smoke exhaled by them is trapped inside the car. Very soon, the entire car is filled with white smoke. The exposure to the excessive smoke in the car ensures a long lasting high. Once inside the hot box, the air they breathe is nothing but THC-rich smoke. Although the joints they smoke gets over quickly, the smoke trapped in the car ensures that the trip does not end so quickly. The smoke takes them on a longer and higher toy train ride than the conventional joint.

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  Rocky had no choice but to bite this bullet. As the helpless Rocky began inhaling more of the white smoke inside the car, something unusual was tingling inside his body. Rocky’s legs began to feel lighter than usual. His legs seemed to be floating in the air. His hands began to feel numb and weak. Time started to slow down as things began to look funny and colourful. Rocky could not feel most of his body parts. It was as though his body parts and limbs had suddenly decided to retire from their otherwise super busy schedules. His soul was beginnin
g to tear through the constraints laid out by the body. Rocky could see his soul looking back at him as it flew away to a magical land someplace far, far away. He sank into the car seat involuntarily as his body was being controlled by the green herb. He felt a rush of love zipping through each and every vein in his body. Everything looked beautiful around him. He suddenly seemed to have answers to life’s greatest problems.

  ‘Look at the steering wheel! Ha-ha,’ Rocky pointed at the steering wheel and laughed uncontrollably. There was nothing wrong with the steering wheel. Natas joined the laughter. The Marijuana was making them laugh.

  His soul flew higher and farther than ever before. For a few hours, Rocky and Natas sat inside the car, laughing at the silliest of jokes and wondering at the beauty that was, apparently, all around them. He had just experienced something out of this world. Something he never thought he would do. He wanted more of this stuff.

  Strangely enough, Rocky became closer to Natas after the incident. This mysterious herb had somehow nullified all of the values and morals that Rocky’s dad had instilled in him right from childhood. The green stuff showed him a fun and colourful picture that superimposed the black and white boring picture that he was taught to call as life. Natas suddenly seemed much cooler to hang out with. Despite Rocky’s initial anger towards Natas for showing him a taste of the dizzy world of narcotics, Rocky started to admire Natas more than before. They started smoking-up regularly after hot-box ‘orientation’. Each trip the weed gave was more euphoric than the previous one.

  Rocky soon found out that Marijuana could be consumed through very many ways. There were brownies mixed with Marijuana oil. One just had to eat the innocent looking cake pieces to climb the highway to heaven. There were Marijuana ice creams and even lollipops. Rocky and Natas tried out more and more of these forms. The more forms Natas showed, the more Rocky wanted. Before long, reinforced by the barrage of brainwashing attacks by Natas, Rocky was strongly hooked onto the herb.

  The two, unfortunately, were unaware that Cannabis was the gateway that led them to far vicious drugs.

  From the naturally growing herb, Natas and Rocky moved on to the synthetic daddy-drugs.

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  The world of Cannabis is a pleasant ride of calmness and relaxation, usually. The complete opposite is the world of the synthetic drugs. There are no certainties. No pleasant rides and no rainbows. Although the kick is higher than the Marijuana, synthetic drugs have an innate ability to induce bad trips more often than not. A bad trip is called so because the trip suddenly turns violent, terribly frightening and filled with scary dreams.

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  On one such experimenting day, Natas and Rocky were seated in front of a small table in Rocky’s house. In front of them lay a small sheet of paper, on which was a small quantity of white crystals. Rocky’s dad was away, out of town for a few days to meet some of his relatives.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Rocky.

  ‘Crystals,’ replied Natas, with his eyes firmly fixed onto the crystals.

  ‘Whoa! I think I am just going to stick to weed bro,’ Rocky did not want to try any of the synthetic drugs.

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  Known in the scientific circles as Methamphetamine, this is no ordinary drug. First known usage was during the World War ll where pilots and tank commanders used it as a stimulant powerful enough to make them forget the gory scenes of death they were tasked to witness hours on end and help them continue to fight. It then took the form of an anti-obesity drug in the United States of America. Not long after its medical guise, people started getting severely addicted to the medicine. Crystal Meth now stands as one of the most dangerous and addictive drugs being used all over the world. Meth is a neurotoxin, which floods the brain with high levels of dopamine, which creates the feeling of extreme euphoria. The excess flooding in the brain damages the dopamine receptors. This leads to the brain craving for more and more of the dopamine. Thus, the addiction process starts from very early on. Hidden behind the extreme kick that the crystal gives, lays a long list of all the deadly things it inflicts on a human body. A Crystal Meth addict’s life span is just seven years.

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  ‘Aren’t you bored of the same old high from the weed?’ Natas countered to convince Rocky into snorting the legendary drug.

  ‘Not really. Or maybe I am,’ Rocky was unsure.

  He took a few crystals in his hand and inspected them in detail. The crystals were small shards with sharp edges. When seen from a distance, the crystals looked almost exactly like the thick sugar crystals that are used extensively in cooking.

  ‘I don’t even feel the high I used to before. I have become so used to it. We smoke-up weed so regularly that at any given point we are, to a certain degree, high on Cannabis,’ Natas spoke calculative, with a deliberate effort to convince Rocky.

  He added one more sentence that ensured an easy subjugation.

  ‘Don’t you want to experience the high which is ten times the weed-high?’

  ‘Ok screw it. What is the point anyways? I have only one life. Who cares?’ Rocky spoke to himself.

  He made up his mind. Rocky felt like a complete bad-ass.

  ‘How do I take it in?’ he asked, after giving into his temptations and to Natas’s diplomatic persuasions.

  ‘Ha! That’s what I am talking about bitch!’ Natas was proud of his nifty speaking. He patted Rocky on his back.

  ‘There are a lot of ways, actually. You can snort it easily if you want to. However, I suggest that we try the bong. We can smoke it for a longer time than snorting it off in a second,’ Natas said, as he took out a strange looking apparatus from his bag pack.

  ‘What is this weird thing?’ Rocky was inspecting the strange contraption thoroughly.

  ‘It is a Crystal Meth bong. You can easily get it in the streets,’ Natas answered Rocky’s innocent doubt as he took the bong into his own hands to set it up.

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  A bong is an apparatus that seems to belong to a school chemistry laboratory. It looks as though a cool and a colourful science experiment were to be demoed in it to the curious young kids at school. It has a main glass bulb in which the powdered crystals is to be fed and sealed. The bulb has a glass pipe that runs from it into a glass jar. The jar has a glass pipe protruding from it. Essentially, the jar is a water container. The bulb houses the crystals which is burnt by means of an external lighter. The restless and chaotic hot meth smoke travels through the pipe into the jar where it bubbles through the water. The smoke that comes out from the surface of the water is smooth and cool. This silky fume is inhaled from the pipe jutting out from the jar.

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  Natas filled the jar to the quarter with water. He then took a few crystals and powdered them.

  ‘This is where you feed the meth,’ he explained as he filled the bulb with a few milligrams of the white meth powder.

  ‘Now, watch,’ he said, as he held a lighter flame to the bottom of the glass bulb. The powder began to heat up and emit plumes of white smoke. The water started to bubble rapidly as the smoke passed through it and emerged on the surface with a cool and smooth outlook.

  ‘Come on, quickly now. Inhale it,’ Natas directed Rocky to place the free end of the pipe into his mouth. Rocky took in a big whiff of smoke and sat back into the chair. Natas followed suit and took in some of the smoke. They finished the first-hit in a jiffy.

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  While the Marijuana high is a peaceful toy train ride that lasts for a few hours, this is a totally different ball game. Meth high is often violent and aggressive. It runs into almost sixteen to seventeen hours. The users often spend the high by paying extremely high amounts of attention to obviously insignificant items. Meth users often clean the same windowpane or a door repeatedly throughout the entire night. They keep on brushing and cleaning, hours on end the, same patch that they had cleaned moments ago. Most of
them scratch their head and arms all through the high as they are convinced that there is a bug crawling under their skin. When the high comes down, the users are knocked out into a long sleep, which can extend up to three days in some cases. Meth has the unique ability to infuse permanent hallucinations in the users’ brains.

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  Almost immediately, Rocky felt a rush as his body reacted to the new rebel substance warring in the blood. His heart started beating faster and his pupils dilated. He could almost hear his heart beat thumping inside his chest. The high was starting to take form. It hit him like never before.

  Rocky suddenly felt smart and powerful. He wanted to smash everything he could lay his eyes on. He felt like he was the most destructive person on earth. A new, animal rush was beginning to consume him. Rocky and Natas spent many hours in cleaning and scrubbing the refrigerator door. They broke the old radio that Rocky’s dad was proud to possess. They talked aimlessly about the most trivial matters over and over again. They cut each other’s sentences halfway trying to complete it with their own wit. Their bodies ached and craved for more of the crystals. They smoked more of the remaining crystals. It was all going normal until the good trip suddenly turned course for the worse.

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  The bad trip stories of Crystal Meth users are often extremely scary and freaky. The slightest of the stimulants can trigger a bad journey. Poor meth quality, powerful dosage, bad surroundings, creepy songs, literally anything can trigger a bad trip.