Drink And Drugs - PART ONE

In the spring of 2023 I cut back about 90% of my alcohol intake. I had been drinking a couple of high octane Double IPA 16 oz. beers every night. Now it’s about every other weekend that I’ll have a drink. Weed will be legal across the board soon. But, in order to be the best husband and father I can, I generally stay away from it. Over the years I have experimented with a number of different recreational hallucinogens, pharmaceuticals, booze, plants, and root extracts. Aside from the statute of limitations, I can think of no good reason to share with the world at large my personal history with taking drugs so here it is: I didn't drink until I was 22. I smoked pot for the first time when I was twenty-three years old. I absolutely hated the four years I spent in a Catholic junior high school. But it was during my time there when I picked up on - and really responded to - the idea that the body is a temple. Returning to the public school system for my high school years, I was surrounded by kids who smoked cigarettes, drank beer, and smoked weed. There was a lot of "dip" around too. Chewing tobacco. I wasn't judgmental about any of this stuff. It just wasn't for me. Most of my friends and classmates partook. But I wouldn't until several years later. For a very brief time during my junior year I had a girlfriend. But for the most part I dedicated all of my free time to practicing on my guitar, learning to play along with all my favorite records. I had discovered the music of Frank Zappa at age 12 and Frank's anti-drug stance really resonated with me at the time. My circle of friends was pretty small back then. I was uniquely qualified to be the designated driver on about 99% of our adventures, be it a camping trip, a Van Halen concert, or just skipping school and driving around.

My high school actually featured an outdoor "smoking pit" where students were allowed to have a quick cigarette between classes or during their lunch break. You would never see something like that today. Even as a teenager I can remember thinking, "Isn't it illegal in the state of Ohio to sell tobacco to anyone under 18?" Yet here was a public school providing a fully sanctioned oasis for underage smokers. Your tax dollars at work. Teenagers are crafty. Many of them managed to score beer almost every weekend. A pack of smokes was probably a walk in the park.

I was at Ripley's to see the psychodots one night in 1989. During their set break I was bored and, having no one to talk to, I approached the bar. Thinking, "What the Hell. It's mostly orange juice," I ordered a screwdriver. Can you say "floodgates"? Twenty minutes later I ordered a double. Can you say “off to the races”? This feeling was immediately comforting to me as I realized I was just stumbling distance from my apartment and I didn't have to worry about driving under the influence. Screwdrivers were my drink of choice for a while. I had not yet developed an appreciation for beer at that time. It all tasted like shit to me. All that orange juice grew tiresome after a short while and when I switched to whiskey and bourbon I stayed faithful to it for a long, long time. Jack and Coke. Beam and Coke. Whiskey straight up. Neat. No ice. Living and working in Clifton near the University of Cincinnati for over 20 years, going to hear live music almost every night of the week, including many bands of my own, gigs and drunken rehearsals, I was always just a short waddle from my doorstep. I had a car but I rarely drove, unless the music was happening in Newport or Northside. On those nights I'd cool it on the drinking, just have one or two until I got home for a nightcap or six.

Weed was far more prevalent in those days for me. Through most of my 20s and deep into my 30s I was in and out of wake and bake mode. Mostly in. Working a series of record store jobs through that time in my life, it was practically expected of me. A little wooden dugout with a brass one-hitter was my constant companion in those days. I never learned to roll a joint. Still can't. But I knew people who could do it with one hand. I went through a series of crazy bongs, eventually settling on a simple yet ornate glass pipe. My preferred vessel to this day. Pack it. Puff it. Put it away. Outside of a relatively brief bong phase I was never one to smoke pot continuously for hours, regardless of the occasion. Whether it was a Phish concert or just another Tuesday night, a couple puffs and I was good to go. Maybe pull it out again a few hours later for a couple more hits. To be honest, I never enjoyed being really high. A little buzz is my sweet spot. A tidy little mood maintenance. No paranoia and a quarter ounce bag of weed lasts much longer this way. Especially with that tiny little one-hitter. These days, they call it microdosing. Took me years to find that comfort zone, mind you. A lot of coughing and freaking out, thinking, "Everybody can tell I'm so high right now!" Took years to dispel that nonsense too. That shit's all in your head. And, high or not, most people don't have a clue what's going on in their own head much less mine.

This was years before vaping, edibles, and medicinal marijuana. But for the occasional pot brownie or cookies, it was always about smoking bud. Not a pill or gummi bear.

One time in New York City, I visited a religious artifacts store that sold five-dollar brownies. Somebody tipped me off to the place so I went in and dropped twenty bucks on a 4-pack. Splitting one with a friend, we waited an hour and felt nothing so we split another one. Impatiently waiting for even just a glimmer of a buzz after a while we just scarfed the rest of them down. Figuring we'd been taken, we decided to visit a mutual acquaintance who worked in an office at 30 Rock. We tagged along behind the NBC tour for just a few minutes when the brownies kicked in seemingly all at once. I can remember literally climbing like a monkey over the desk on the set of the Today show. Sitting in the upper deck of the legendary Studio 8-H, home of Saturday Night Live since 1975, I gazed practically drooling into an abyss below that my red eyes took to be on a size and scale similar to the Grand Canyon.

In the early 90s before moving to New York I had a roommate that we'll call Tom. He and I took our weed smoking very seriously. Tom in particular focused the full force of his OCD like a laser on marijuana cultivation and different ways to smoke it and consume it in homegrown and homemade baked goods. Tom was simultaneously frugal and wasteful. Most of the time he smoked with a one hitter to make the absolute most out of every ounce of pot. On other occasions we would load up a bong or water pipe, both incredibly wasteful and I'm not talking about brain cells. Just a lot of spilled weed swept off the table and into the trash. With a one hitter you punched out, burned, and smoked and savored every last molecule of that bud. Naturally Tom was both a Deadhead and a subscriber to High Times magazine. We attended a Grateful Dead concert together and pored over every word of every issue of High Times magazine. We actually learned about the medicinal uses and minor psychoactive compounds in herbs that were perfectly legal and you bought by the ounce at Clifton Natural Foods. We spent at least a year trying out different kinds of ginseng from around the world and taking notes on its benefits. Goku Kola, Echinacea, Ginkgo Biloba, and our favorite was Damiana. (Look it up!) We laughed at how insanely cheap it was. You wouldn't even have to break a case dollar to buy an ounce at your local health food store. It smokes harsh like a dried flower and you do get a light buzz from it. With the cost of this particular herb being so low, it was well worth it to put ice water in the bong to make the smoky hits a little cooler and smoother. That was 30 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.

*** Coming up in PART TWO: Mushrooms, hash oil, and acid! Oh my!