My drug story

 It is time to talk of my drug experiences a few of which I can safely had a deep impact on my life. I can safely say that I was always stoned on Marijuana since my preschool years and this was from the secondary smoke that the adults in my village we indulged in. There was and still is a club called, The Baharul Alam Football Club, (BAFC) in Sungai Pinang where I was born. This club was the port for all the adults who hung out after work, a rest and recreation place for bachelors. Ganja was the drug of choice back then with a few preferring to drink alcohol. Usually the men would have good smoke and then feast upon the large, pillow size Nasi Kandak lunch after their appetite is being aroused. It was fun to watch the smoking session as kids and I loed the smell of Ganja as the adults would blow it into our faces as we clung to the grill fence separating us from them. They tried to chase us off every now and then but eventually gave up and we got stoned without even knowing it. After the smoking session we would be off doing our thing of running wild as Cowboys and Indians, or Pirates during the high tide around our village. This went of for most of my childhood years and so much so that I was nicknamed, "Mata nishan", by the adults as I would stumble around with my eyelids drooping and a silly grin on my face or so I was reminded by the adults in later years,

I did excellent in my primary school years except when it comes to maths. On looking back I wonder if my mind was not affected in some way that makes my linear thinking mind dead from inhaling almost daily marijuana second hand smoke as a child. On the other hand I excelled in just about every other subject while in primary school often being awarded every end of the year for being the best in Art, English, Intelligence test but fail in maths and science. I never did any drugs untill after my secondary school education. I remember taking a trip to the southern state of Johore visiting a friend in the small town of Segamat. There I was taken into a forest area where I was oficialy introduced to pot smoking in a small hut that was surrounded by a field of marijuana plants. The first time I got stoned that I can still remember was complaining to my friend that I cannot feel my arms while we were riding back to his home on the motor cycle and he kept hold me from falling off backwards while laughing his head off. Marijuana although was illegal in the 60s it was not a serious issue as far as the public was concern. I never really got hooked on it after my initial introduction to smoking ganja even when it was readily available sometimes.

Till this day marijuana is still my drug of choice and it was while I was in college in the United States that I really got hooked on it when I found out that just about everyone in the neighborhood were getting high or stoned. One of my most memorable experience in smoking pot was when I sat and smoked in front of over 90 University students giving them a two hours lecture on Meditation. This happened at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, (UWGB). I was also a student then and I was invited to give a talk by one of my professors a Mr. Jack Frisch (sp) who was conducting a class called ,Interpersonal Communication. Jack was a friend out of class and knew I was delving into the meditation and Eastern Mysticism trip at the time. I spent many days thinking about what to share for two hours on this topic that is in actuality not much to talk about. Just the day before the due date I was sitting in a toilet still thinking about it while taking a dump. When I was done I reached for the roll of toilet paper and lkow and behold something dropped to the floor! It was a ceramic bowl that someone had left behind after doing his thing. I picked up the bowl and had my answer to my talk the next day.

I had Jack prepared for me a record player and an incense burner, and the rest I had with me which was a bag of weed or grass as marijuana was commonly known among students those days and the ceramic pipe I had found in the toilet of the Fine Arts Department. I sat on the table lit the incense, played a Ravi Shankar album on the player and loaded the pipe and had a smoke. One student in the back out of 90 odd stood and left the room while the others sat and stared at me. I gave my talk on the subject of meditation and in this case it was also in comparison to natural and the use of drug way of getting high. I kept on talking about how paranoid one gets in getting high on drugs and sometimes in the effort to attain calm and repose we end up with leaving our smoking ceramic bowl behind us in the toilet or sometimes worse yet leaving the keys in the ignition of our vehicle and stepping out locking the car door behind us. I took a great chance and so did my professor in my out of the box performance but it was well worth it and there was no repercussion from the University Admin.

Needless to say like most lost souls of the Green Bay area I was high most of the time which helped me to cope with my scattered life of being divorced, going to school and living in basements and boxes. My first trip on LSD happened at about the same time, while in college. gain it was given to me while I was about to give a talk in the same Interpersonal Communication class of Jack Frisch's. Can't remember how exactly it happened but i can remem two characters involved in the incident. The guy who gave me the LSD tab and my current lady friend who knew I had popped it into my mouth. Martha my friend followed me into the lecture room and sat among the 90 odd students just to make sure all goes well and I was armed with a slide projector this time giving a talk of my visit home to Malaysia. I was shocked and scared in the beginning when the acud hit me and I almost walked out of the room. The I looked out the only window  in the room right right across from where I stood and saw a small tree in the distant with golden grass dancing in the wind, everything was gold in color. Then the first slide came on and my attention was attracted away from the window to the screen and I began my non-stop talk on a Malay traditional wedding, the Thaipusam in Penang, my trip up the Rajang River in Sarawak to celebrate the Gawai Iban of the Head Hunters of Borneo for three days and the great time I had diving and exploring the Kapas Island on the East Coast; these were all in slides and my mind just rattled on over a hundred slides non-stop relating the events as though I was there at the moment. The two hours went without a break as everyone was enjoying the presentation. I made some good friends after the talk and the slides I donated to the International Student Center at the University for their future use.

I was living in a trailer home with a lady when one day I dropped acid while at home alone. It was a mistake that turned into a bad trip. I was depressed to begin with and was at my wit's end wondering where my next meal was coming from. After I took the acid i found everything I looked at was deep blue in color an no matter what I tried I could not shake the color off. What I remember most of my acid trip was that I ended up destroying most f not all of my artworks, prints that I had done over the semester at the university. That was the end of my taking LSD experience as I vowed never to again.

Mushrooms were different, mushrooms I enjoyed taking as I found them to be less as dramatic or intense as LSD and a little more effective than marijuana. I was first introduced to  Psilocybin mushroom while living at Green Gulch Farm in Marin County, California; I was a practicing Zen student there for two years. I found that mushroom effected my muscles, it was more of a physical rug for me, Perhaps it had to do with the immense physical labor I was involved in working on and organic farm and doing the intense practice period of Zen meditation. Sometimes pon taking the shrooms I could feel all my bones shifting into their 'proper positions' especially the spinal column. I could hear the popping of each and every vertebrae as they shit into position when I sat to meditate in the Zendo. This shifting and popping would go all the way up to just below my neck and it would cause my neck to lock the skull into an alignment with the the rest of the spine. Sometimes as soon as I came to this state I could feel an energy rising from my lower parts and threaten to explode around my neck area and causing a tremendous shake to the whole body; I usually sit by myself when I was on mushroom and doing Zazen. In sitting quietly I was able to witness how all my physiology becomes affected by the mushroom mind alternating qualities.

My most unforgettable experience with mushrooms took place in a small mountain village of Esperanza, high up in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. I have written about this on many occasions in the Blog and finds it redundant to do so now. However if there is any interest to know what transpired back then one can refer back by browsing for the post in the search for  engine...like try -"Out of Body Experience  Magic mushroom/ Ecuador for a detailed post. I did try some peyote while I was travelling in New Mexico, but the amount was too small to create any significant  altered state of consciousness other than flashes of lights popping up here and there in my head whenever there was sound generated in and around me. It was like sounds were manifesting as flashes lights as I laid on a couch and fell asleep soon after. i would like to point out that I made a thorough study of all these natural drugs prior to having the opportunity in trying them. I traveled the South West with Carlos Castaneda's paperbacks as my reading companion. I had read Ram Dass and Timothy Leary on their experiment with psychedelics and had a good idea of what I was getting into. Having had the opportunity to experiment with getting high in my younger days also kept me from freaking out when in a drug induced altered state of consciousness.

Today I rarely indulge myself in any form of drugs , not even Marijuana, the drug of my choice. Drug use is a serious offence in Malaysia and it is not worth the trouble.