One Toke Over the Line

There we were, my friend Zero and I, driving down Burly street with two bowls packed. Our friend had recently asked if we would recommend them trying salvia. We said it was worth doing at least once and jokingly warned her not to do something stupid like go on a burn run with it. She didn't realize that this would be a bad idea but then again, we were only speculating. We felt like fools not to try it ourselves, how could we possibly warn someone against the dangers we didn't know existed. That would be ignorant.

Since it was our intent to push the danger potential of this drug and our experience to their absolute limits, we decided to smoke simultaneously. A responsible drug user would most probably have someone sober sit with them while taking salvia. Not us. We wanted the drug to take hold of us at the same time, while one of us was driving a car.

We each brought a pipe with us that evening. I brought my bubbler, the Nautilus, and my copilot for the event brought his lady shaped bowl, Jenna Blaze. The trouble with our salvia was that it had a consistency much like sand, so we could not pack our bowls with just salvia. We had to use marijuana to plug the hole at the bottom of our bowls in order for the salvia not to fall through. So it took Zero around fifteen minutes to complete the painstaking process of packing two bowls while in a moving vehicle. And just as we were about to pass Cabot street, we sparked that shit. It turns out that both the bud we were smoking and the salvia Zero had bought, were very, very strong.

I smoked my bowl rather quickly and then placed it gently in the cup holder next to me in order to focus my attention on the slight curve to the right coming up in the road, but I held the smoke in my lungs for roughly six seconds before exhaling. When I let the smoke go it was in three steps, first I blew some out of my mouth then exhaled the majority of it through my nose. After that I cleared my lungs with a final exhale from my mouth. That was the last task I was able to accomplish with a level head. Zero finally finished inhaling when I filled the front seat of the car with smoke and he exhaled soon after. It wasn't ten seconds later that the drugs started to take hold.

I had been watching my speed as well as every side street we passed to look for a police officer parked there, just waiting to catch me go even a mile over the speed limit so he could meet his quota for the month. In my car, a 2007 Honda Civic, the speedometer is digital so I was able to know exactly how fast I was going at any one time. Once the salvia kicked in, I stopped focusing on my speed.

The first noticeable difference was that I no longer knew where I was. My eyes had seen the roads that I was currently driving on so many times that I never thought I would have to worry about my sense of direction. And yet, here I was, lost in Woodvale, a place we chose to drive because of our familiarity with it. I tried to focus on my driving but couldn't help but ask myself:

"Where am I?"
"You're in Woodvale dude."

I looked over at Zero who had just placed Jenna in his lap and let out a large breath of odd smelling smoke. He seemed fine. Maybe it's too early to tell but at least he seems to know where we are. And just as I finished that thought, my friend began to laugh like a hyena from the Lion King. It was the type of uncontrollable laughter fit that usually ended in tears and made you feel as though you may throw up. I had to think fast, I was sitting next to a raging lunatic who was the only one among us that knew quite where we were, so I took my first left in hopes of staying in this quiet area for as long as I possibly could. This was a mistake.

All of the sudden, as if out of no where, my body began to feel a strange sensation of being pushed in a certain direction. It hadn't occurred to me before this turn that the I had already felt this, but the invisible force was pushing me back into my seat. After turning left, I was being pushed to the left, and my hands began to slide that way on the wheel as well. Meanwhile my hysterical friend's laughter fit had all but ceased in a matter of seconds and when I shifted my gaze toward his direction it was a very different expression I saw on his face.

"God damn it, man, whats wrong?!"

I had never seen my good friend so terrified in my life, it was as if he had seen a ghost, a possibility that I could not quite rule out. As I waited for his answer it occurred to me that my vehicle had drifted into the left traffic lane. Luckily for us it was 10:45 at night and there was no one else on the road, because even though I saw the error I had made, I did nothing to fix it. I continued driving in the left lane due to the strange feeling of being pushed by some inner force. I equated this force to a water current that I could not fight against, literally. Although there was no water anywhere in sight, I believed that we were being picked up by a tidal wave and there was nothing that we could do to stop it. I also disassociated with the meaning of numbers, so when i saw the number 45 on my speedometer it did not occur to me that I was driving too fast for the road I was currently on. I am surprised that I retained the ability to drive after smoking. But the question still remained, what was happening to Zero?

"Jesus Christ say something!" I shouted at him.
"Please stop yelling," he whispered back. "I don't think they appreciate it."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The people in the back," he pointed to the back seat of the car, which was indeed empty. "I don't like them, they've been whispering about us. Can we drop them off."

Having no idea what he may be talking about, I had no choice but to go with it. "I don't even know where I am right, how can I drop them off?" Why I would be so concerned about them finding their way home, I couln't tell you.

Zero turned his face away from mine and continued to stare aimlessly out of the window. He looked so disappointed. I hated to make him feel uncomfortable but I didn't have time to drop off his imaginary enemies right now. There was an oncoming vehicle and I needed to focus for as long as I could. It took a lot of effort to shift back into the right lane and I hoped that the person we were currently sharing the road with thought nothing of it. We passed them with ease and I let out a sigh of relief when I no longer saw their lights in my rear view mirror.

After a short silence Zero decided he wanted to let out the smoke that had accumulated in our car, and I believe some fresh would probably do the man some good. So he began to roll his window down.

"Are you trying to kill us?!" I shouted at him as we swerved into the left lane again and nearly up onto the curb. I managed to gain control of myself again and fought my way back into the right lane.

"You're gonna let all the water in, we're gonna fuckin drown." I took control of his window and rolled it up myself. This turned out to be another bad idea. It turned out that once his window was rolled up entirely and he heard the click of its airtight seal, my friends world caved in on him, literally. Zero then closed his eyes and placed the palms of his hands over his eye lids. Apparently he saw the car that we were in literally fold in on him. What was I to do? Here I am on some street I had apparently been on before but I wouldn't know it, with a screaming lunatic next that seems to think he may be dying. I found a simple solution to one of my problems at the end of the street, as if it were sent there from god himself in order to help me make it through this car ride alive. I found, a right turn!

So I took this right turn and was immediately pushed back into my seat, my foot easing off the gas pedal slightly. My speed reduced to about twenty miles per hour creating for a much more manageable ride. I rolled down the windows to let the smoke out, for some reason that right turn eased my worries about water getting into the vehicle. I checked my rear view mirror to make sure that there were no strangers in my back seat. It felt like I was slowly coming down from the effects of salvia. I looked at my clock and it was now 10:58. To think, I was insanely high only fifteen minutes before. I came upon a stop sign and instantly knew where I was. It would appear that we did in fact make it out of this alive. I took a look at my friend Zero and he had lifted his head from between his legs. We both had trouble articulating what had just happened to us, I myself couldn't even believe what had happened. And this substance is legal?

We decided that the best thing for us to do would be to smoke some more weed, put on some Ratatat, and just drive. So we did.