I often get asked whether or not I take hallucinogenic substances (although the actual wording of the question is usually closer to: "What the heck are you on?" The truth of the matter is that I don't do recreational drugs; in fact, I avoid drugs of all kinds if I can. I have only had one experience with illicit substances, and that was enough to keep me away from them for the rest of my life.
It was several years ago, at a party at the house of a friend of mine whose parents were, of course, out of town. Every good story starts with parents who are out of town. His father sold fertilizer, his mother sold life insurance. I can't begin to imagine where they were or what they were doing.
But, I digress.
A joint was passed around. Everybody around me was giggling and seemed to be having a good time, so, when the joint was offered to me, I took a puff. I immediately started coughing, being, as I am, an asthmatic. As you might imagine, this diminished my enjoyment greatly...
Later on, some pills were passed around. To this day, I do not know what they were. I only knew that when I washed them down with Diet Pepsi (did I mention that my friends were health nuts?), my worst nightmare suddenly became reality.
It was dark. Pitch black. No light at all. "I've gone blind!" I shouted. "I can't see!" "Open your eyes," a little voice whispered in my ear.
I did and, miraculously, the world returned. Sitting next to me was a beautiful young woman I hadn't met before. "Thanks," I said, "I think you just saved my life..." The woman did not respond.
"I'm high, you know," I admitted, giggling ferociously for many seconds. Still, the woman, who must have been having an inner journey of her own, said nothing.
I put my arm around her and lowered my voice seductively. "So, tell me a little something about yourself," I suggested. After a couple of minutes, I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere and wondering if I should try to go further when I began to have a blinking fit.
When, at last, I was able to see again, I found that I had been talking to a table lamp. A wonderfully curved table lamp, to be sure, but still... I removed my arm in a hurry, hoping that nobody noticed. In fact, nobody seemed to be paying me the slightest bit of attention.
Then, things started to get weird.
The dancing things from Fantasia - I think they were rhinos - entered the party through the front door. Boy, they sure looked great in their pink tutus... Except, it wasn't dancing rhinos at all, but Orson Welles, Tip O'Neill, John Candy and...and Elizabeth Taylor. Although a vastly talented group of folks, none of them could keep to the beat, and they eventually all fell in a heap in front of the fireplace, like a game of Twister gone horribly, horribly wrong.
That was about the time that, for no adequately ascertainable reason, purple started creeping into the room. Before I knew it, everything was washed in purple - the guests, the furniture, the party snacks. I adore purple, but I'm not ready for purple party snacks. It may have been at this point that I decided to claw my eyes out.
The room started spinning. Everything was purple and whirling with greater and greater speed. By this time, I was making a very serious effort at clawing my eyes out. "Oh, no!" I cried, "It's the purple drain!"
Somebody took my hands away from eyes and whispered gently into my ear, "Be cool." "Good idea," I thought, and, sitting as still as I could, I made every effort to lower my body temperature.
I might have succeeded, too, if a great peace hadn't descended upon me. It was a strange, mystical experience, not unlike attending a Hollywood premier or spending a day with the entire floor crew of the Toronto Stock Exchange. In a flash, I understood that crazy thing we call the world.
I understood why there was a Pierre Trudeau...heck, if there hadn't been, Parliament would have had to invent him. And, I now knew why it was imperative that MacDonald's sell all those hamburgers, and why Lee Iacocca had to be martyred to save the automobile industry. It was a revelation unlike any other, in which the Great Fabric was revealed to me.
Fortunately for my career as a humourist, I forgot it all a few minutes later.
It ended, as most things should, with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert sitting in uncomfortable chairs, debating my trip's artistic relevance. "Well, I have mixed feelings about this drug experience," Roger said. "It is obvious that this boy has a unique style - I'll give him that - and he does have quite the imagination. But, whether he has said anything worth saying is another matter..."
"I'm willing to go much further than that," Gene said further, "and say that this drug trip was a complete bore from beginning to end. It was trite, cliched and couldn't hold my attention past the opening paragraph. I was expecting much more Canadian content, too, but, except for a cameo by John Candy, there wasn't any..."
"I don't think Canadian content would have helped this trip much," Roger argued. "After all, it was only a reflection of the boy's interests and emotions at the time he took the pills..."
"Then, there should have been more sex," Gene grumbled. "I give this trip a thumbs down and suggest that the creator get out of illicit substances."
"Reluctantly," Roger said, "I must agree."
I became conscious in the back of an all-night doughnut shop with a splitting backache. I can't even get the hangover right.
Since that evening, I have avoided drugs whenever I have had the chance to use them. If I can't get a good review out of my own drug-induced hallucination, what's the point?
