A Journey Begins

Part 1

When I was in sixth grade I had already embraced the idea of drug use. The D.A.R.E. program in fact had a reverse effect on me. It made me want to get high. Even the horrible tales of drug use excited me as I had learned by then that the best stories that humans tell are ones based on the horrible things we do or are done to us. You could say that from the beginning I was into the drugs for the stories.
The thing is, though, I didn’t now what drugs were. I didn’t know what they looked like, tasted like, or how to ingest them. I also, obviously, had no idea where to get them. My confusion was so complete that when one kid brought a pot leaf to school and showed it to the fellas, I didn’t understand how that was supposed to get you high. That night I couldn’t sleep as I tried to wrap my brain around the thing (In hindsight, the kid with the pot leaf didn’t really know either as he and a friend ended up simply rolling it up and trying to smoke it.)
My friend Chris was very likeminded. We used to discuss getting high all th etime and even tried smoking a cinnamon stick once (yes you read that right) to achieve our goal. One day, before school I filled a small ziploc bag with several Actifed pills from my mothers’ medicine cabinet. When I got to school, I showed them to Chris and we thought we were finally going to accomplish this great task. We each popped three or four of those bad little fuckers. Of course, within an hour we weren’t at all high, just extremely drowsy as the warning label suggests might happen. We were falling asleep at our desks in class and Chris became convinced he was going to die (first drug freak out, man) and told a couple girls what we had done.
By lunch time Chris and I were in the principals office desperately trying to talk our way out this predicament to the principal, a couple cops, and our parents. Chris told a story about his cousin and her drug use and started crying. When asked my side I simply replied:
“I had a cold.”
“Why did you give some to Chris then?”
“He had a cold too.”
Naturally, they didn’t believe me at all, but I learned an extremely important lesson that day. When you’re lying to get out of trouble, even if you’re caught dead in the water, stick to that lie. Clint to it for dear life because even if the cops and the principals and the teachers and the parents of the world don’t want to admit it, they’ll respect you for it. Shit, I only got grounded for like two days.