CHRIS BARRY -- BLACK MAN IN THE UNPROMISED LAND @Arts & Opinion

It’s funny, I don’t take psychedelic drugs anywhere nearly as often as I used to. And I’m not sure why. I love psychedelics, and regardless of what it suggests about the fullness of my existence, many of my very happiest moments on this god-forsaken planet have been whilst flyin’ on ‘shrooms or acid. I mean, giant scary purple spiders and the occasional melting face aside, the good times and laughter to be had from a 7 dollar blotter of ‘cid just can’t be beat. Honestly, have you ever laughed as hard as you do on acid under any other circumstances? Okay, I mean outside of the last time you sat through a weekend marathon of Check It Out re-runs on the TV Land network. Probably not, I’m willing to bet, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that I never have, which makes my recent abstinence from the psychedelic experience all the more bizarre. A cause for concern actually. Like, what’s the hell has happened to my priorities that I’ve allowed such an important and life-affirming activity to take a diminished role in my world? It can’t only be that I have to drive a car every once in awhile, can it?

Having lots of free time on my hands, my brain decided it was time to start worrying about all this only a few weeks ago, with the end result being my recognition of the fact that I’ve been way past due to get my head straight again, to go back to my roots, to rediscover my core, as it were -- the happy, laughing, psychedelic me of years gone by. It also didn’t hurt that one of my pot dealers very generously passed me several grams of top quality ‘shrooms free of charge around the same time. So . . . and because I actually like to get high when I decide to get high -- this past weekend I sat down and ate two full grams of the cow-shit-spawned muck, and sure enough, I was back in psychedelic mode in no time. Within the half-hour I was reconnecting with my inner being like a motherfucker. At which point it started coming back to me. I began to remember something I’d pretty well forgotten since the last time I’d taken psychedelics almost a full year ago: my inner being is something of an idiot. A tough revelation to grapple with, for sure, but perhaps as the years advance I’ve finally acquired the wisdom affording me the clarity to recognize that my inner voice is not to be trusted, that it is, indeed, as often as not, the voice of a ‘tard.

Perhaps there’s no better evidence of the psychedelic me’s idiot leanings than the bizarre relationships I’ve formed with countless inanimate objects over the years I’ve spent high on psychedelics. Sure, I’ve had plenty of those drug-fueled moments of creativity, or life-altering personal observations immediately forgotten upon coming down, but what does tend to stick with me long after my ‘trips’ are over is the closeness and/or animosity I can retain with respect to . . . uh, for example, the 2x4 piece of plywood currently rotting in my porch, the one I only began conversing with the last time I took peyote. As it turned out, this particular piece of wood offered me quite a bit of eye-opening information about the world and my relationship to it, and to throw it out back now, after we got to know each other so well, like, I just can’t seem to do it. It’d be like sneaking out in the morning after an especially satisfying one-night stand without waking your lover up to say good-bye, or at least leaving a note by the bed with your phone number expressing thanks for the good times. Like, to pretend that piece of wood and I never had anything going now would be disrespectful, patently un-cool. Yet, um, it’s a piece of wood -- and it’s rotting.

My wife, a wonderful gal whom I love dearly, shares similar emotional attachments to the menagerie of brightly coloured stuffed animals she’s been dragging around with her since childhood – although I don’t think she treats the advice Mr. Ducky gives her with anything near the reverence I do for my piece of wood. I hate these fuckin’ things, not only because I’ve been forced to share a relatively small bed with them for god knows how many years, but even though they have nothing to do with me, there’s just something I find disturbingly fruity about sleeping with stuffed animals come a certain stage in a man’s life. Call me ridiculous or, uh, call me ridiculous, but the fact remains these torn-up purple rabbits and yellow elephants bug me to no end -- not the least of reasons being that I realize we will no doubt be sleeping together until death do us part. The only thing though, is that until this past weekend I never knew they were so keenly aware of this animosity I feel towards them.

Well-stoned and crawling in to bed in the middle of the afternoon with my MP3 player, Yellowy, some kind of canine, I imagine, and one of the uglier stuffed creatures inhabiting our bedroom, decided it was time to set the record straight by promptly creeping into my mushroom-clouded brain and determining he didn’t want to leave. “Why do you hate me so?” he kept asking, genuinely bewildered. “I don’t hate you. Don’t you care that I’m one of your wife’s oldest and dearest friends, that I bring her comfort when you’re off frying your brain on drugs all the time?”

Now, look, it’s not like I lost sight of the fact that this suddenly bellicose Yellowy beast had probably become so because I’d just swallowed two grams of ‘shrooms, but I had to admit he had a bit of a point. Like, it’s true, who am I to tell the lil’ lady she can’t keep her depressing stuffed animals on the bed? She doesn’t bug me about the rotting wood I keep in the porch. Compromise, man, it’s the foundation of any successful relationship, just ask Dr. Phil.

Except this oh-so-profound insight came to me by way of a stuffed pooch, and yes, of course I know it was the ‘shrooms talking, but I have trouble looking at Yellowy the same way now. We’ve kind of . . . well, bonded, I guess. And this, my friends, is retarded. Ever more confirmation that the inner me is idiotic. Cursed inner being! But I do now realize why I haven’t being doing psychedelics as much lately. As I write this I’m realizing all my recent psychedelic trips have been on either mushrooms or peyote -- and fuck, those drugs never made me laugh all that much to begin with. It’s LSD that’s always brought me the good times. The inner me might be an idiot, but on acid I’m happy to laugh at said retard, and that’s a lot more fun in my book than having serious conversations with inanimate objects -- at least at this stage of the game in my life. Fuck the self-exploration, man, bring me some of that rot-gut strychnine-laced blotter and let’s have fun!

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