I never imagined I’d be one with any drug stories. In elementary school I was so clean-cut my hair was parted and combed like a good boy. I just wanted my parents to be happy with me and to continue saying what a sweet kid I was. I didn’t even curse until seventh grade. One time my neighbor Dan and his brother Jimmy across the street grew so fed up with my reluctance to curse that they put me in a headlock and pulled out a knife.
Dan told Jimmy, “Cut him if he doesn’t say ‘Fuck.’”
I wouldn’t do it.
Under the threat of permanent and perhaps fatal injury I refused to say something unbecoming of a fine young boy. Fast-forward thirty years and I’m Mister Fuck-Fuck. Fuckin’ you right up your shit-shoot, fuck face. I just don’t give a fuck. I don’t know when I changed, but it was a slow process of trying things that were fun.
Drugs were something I associated with losers. People you saw strung out on the streets, those were people who did drugs. I didn’t realize that those were just people who did too many drugs. Drugs, like anything else, can be a lot of fun if you consume them in moderation. When you take the right amount of drugs it’s great ’cause you’re chillin’ and you’re cool and you know you’re the best.
My older sister first introduced me to drugs. And that’s a stretch of a statement because what she introduced me to was weed. I hit the pipe and then I had a heart attack and was rushed to the emergency room. Ha! Of course that didn’t happen (but more on that later). No, I got moderately high and thought, Okay.
Later I would do whippits and smoke a lot more weed at UW Madison. I wasn’t enrolled there. I was fourteen and visiting my friend’s brother, who left a bunch of shit on his coffee table, and since he left us alone in his place we finished all his drugs for him. I pretty much stuck to weed after that, mostly on the weekends, but my senior year in high school I decided to up the ante. First it was ecstasy. Today the kids call her Molly, but back in the nineties it was simply “X.” It was supposed to make you feel like you were jizzing out of all your pores and you were going to be rock hard. At least that’s what I was told. I think I must have had a placebo pill because I just acted like that was happening to me, minus the hard-on. I didn’t really fall in love with a drug until I tried GHB.
I was led to believe that bodybuilders were taking it after workouts by a classmate who had a ridiculous physique for a sixteen-year-old. I mean this kid had the kind of size and definition you see on a dedicated adult bodybuilder. My desire to be ripped without working out and dieting made it a perfect match for me. The street version of GHB was sold at that time in twenty-ounce water bottles, the kind you’ve probably drunk from for years. These bottles were filled with a liquid that at a glance might make you think it was just water. A closer look would reveal what was inside was yellowish in hue and tasted just like ocean water. To give you an idea of the potency of the GHB we were taking at the time, a “hit” would be one bottle cap. The bottle cap on a bottle of water is all you needed to get absolutely lit. How much fluid does it take to fill up the cap of a water bottle? Six droplets? Ten? This shit was straight gas, homie.
After you were able to get past the horrific taste, you were about thirty seconds from euphoria. We used to call it “Perma Grin.” I had never done any other hard drugs, but this felt the way those drugs were portrayed. In movies they always show someone shooting up heroin and then lying back as their eyes roll into the back of their heads. GHB did that to me. I didn’t always pass out, but I always felt good. Someone could spit in my face and my response would be, “Maybe he thought I was thirsty.” I finally found a drug I could really throw my weight behind.
We were so cocky my senior year of high school, in the way only seniors in high school can be, that we began doing “hits” of GHB during our lunch break, a free period where we were permitted to leave campus, and returned for the remainder of the school day out-of-our-minds high. The arrogance in retrospect was astounding. I remember Craig, the kid who introduced me to “G,” was particularly brazen with it. We had just stuffed our faces with Miami Subs when he did a quick hit. He casually asked me if I wanted one too.
My nerves took over.
“Before we go back?” We still had three periods left! I mean, I was still transitioning from the good boy who parted his hair to this guy who was doing drugs!
“Who’s gonna know?”
Welp! That’s all it took. I was convinced!
No one ever suspected a thing. GHB didn’t make your eyes red the way weed did, and it didn’t impede your ability to listen or follow instructions the way alcohol would. You just felt great and no one knew it. I did have a fair warning scare once, but I was too young and too dumb to pay attention to it. I went to a Clint Black concert with friends and did some hits throughout the night, but on the way home a couple of us blacked out. When we woke up we realized we had lost a lot of time. We had no sense of what we had seen or done or how much time had gone by (it was about two and a half hours). We were used to the idea of alcohol blackouts. While scary, they make sense. They usually happen because you went overboard with liquor. You can only blame yourself because the warning is explicit: Thirty-two ounces of Everclear and Gatorade is going to end poorly.
But we hadn’t had any alcohol, just a handful of sips of some Georgia Home Boy, like we usually do over the course of a night. The blackout scared us. Not enough to quit, of course. Just enough to not do any more that night.
When I went to Lenoir-Rhyne University a few months later I brought a full twenty-ounce bottle of GHB with me. This would typically last me two and a half months. I didn’t account for my tolerance increase and, more importantly, my sadness. I was depressed and getting more so as reality set in. I was leaving what I knew, and instead of the big campus college I had dreamed of going to, I was in a sleepy country town in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. During the ten-hour drive to campus, I sat in the back of my parents’ SUV, fumbled through my bag, and snuck shots whenever they were distracted, which was pretty much the whole time. I was high for the majority of the drive, and as soon as they waved goodbye at dropoff, I took another hit. Clearly, I was looking for an escape, and my water bottle was all I needed.
My first memory of being at college as a brand-new, first-year student was going to my dorm room and hearing that there was a freshman orientation in the auditorium. We were required to attend. I skipped and got high alone in my room.
If I’m being honest, I was lonely, insecure, and slightly depressed. I didn’t want to be in this hillbilly town in North Carolina, but I didn’t see any other options. College was mandatory in my family. It wasn’t even plausible that someone would bring up not going to college. I had fantasies of being a filmmaker at the time, and I thought comedy would be my route. I never applied to a proper film school. I was too intimidated given that mediocre schools were already turning me down because of my horrendous high school GPA, and I was holding on to the idea of playing football. I rationalized that I would get into a communications program, and they have radio, print, and video specialties. Video isn’t film, but at least it’s making something you can show people. I went to LRC because it was literally the only school that accepted me.
My first few weeks at school I was getting high constantly and doing so in secret from my roommate. I was doing it so much that my stash soon ran out, and now I was looking for my favorite drug in a new town. And trying to find GHB, if you haven’t guessed, isn’t like trying to find weed. Most people had no idea what you were asking for, but as luck would have it, one guy did. He was a sixth-year senior, a dumb-dumb. I first encountered him when I was looking for weed. I was told he was someone to ask, but he had a lot of questions for me.
“You’re a freshman?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you from?”
“Florida.”
“Florida, huh? What brought you here?”
“School. We both go to school here.”
It didn’t take me long to realize that he and a few others I’d met were hesitant to sell to me because of my physical appearance. Not that I’m particularly intimidating, but I did look… older. In my circle of friends I’ve been called the “Albert Pujols of Comedy.” This is a reference to the regular practice of Dominican baseball prospects doctoring their birth certificates to appear younger than their real age. At seventeen I was buying booze without a fake ID. Not only did the cashiers not even ask for ID, but they also called me “sir.” Sir. People guessed I was in my late twenties. The trend continues to this day. As I’m writing this I’m forty-two, but I’m often told, “I thought you were in your fifties.”
How flattering.
A big part of it then and now is the beard. It’s an age enhancer, and as the grays settle in, the age people guess goes up. I started shaving when I was fourteen, and I could grow decent stubble at seventeen. I did it then because I could. It was a subtle reminder to my less hairy friends, “I’m definitely more of a man than you.”
When the drug dealer had me asking him for an unusual, difficult-to-find liquid downer he was majorly suspicious, thinking I might be a narc, but he agreed to get hold of some, and I was thrilled.
He demanded that we do the deal in the entryway of one of the dorms—it was clear he wanted to control the environment. When I arrived he was waiting on the opposite end of the hall, about thirty feet away, staring at me like we were about to pull pistols in a duel. I knew he was wondering if I was a cop, and I didn’t know how to convince him I wasn’t. As I walked toward him he put one hand up, signaling me to stop. He looked around as if at any moment my backup was going to kick open the doors behind me, guns drawn, and holler at him to get his FUCKIN’ FACE ON THE GROUND! I just stared back with my blank face and gestured, “What now?” He gave the universal single hand gesture for “Where’s the cash?” The whole thing felt like charades for entry-level drug dealers. I held up the money, and he pointed at a pay phone. As I walked over to place the cash down, I saw the bottle. YES, DUDE! I was so excited to have my old friend back. I put the money where he’d pointed and hauled ass back to my room, ready to get down with ocean water sips and perma smiles.
What I had in my hand, though, was a far inferior product. It was GHB Light. Them Florida boys had the ill shit, and these Carolina crackers had some heavily diluted, weak bullshit. The Carolina stuff wasn’t the right color. It was more clear, the taste was not as sharp, and the effect was lame. What was I going to do? I doubled up on shots and got as high as I could. It was a serious letdown. Eventually I stopped buying it because the Carolina product wasn’t worth the hassle. I’d rather just smoke a bunch of weed.
It wasn’t that big of a sacrifice. I was smoking weed nightly with some new friends in the dorm and enjoying the hell out of it. It was the first time away from home for all of us and we bonded with one another over what we loved: weed, music, and laughing. We’d hit the bong, listen to hip-hop, and play Madden until the sun rose. It actually hit me by surprise when it was time to go home for Thanksgiving break. That’s when I remembered I could get some of the good stuff again. My first time home as a college student now had a purpose. I wouldn’t just be seeing my family and hanging with high school friends, I’d have a real opportunity to load up on some Go Hard Boss sauce and bring it back to college.
The way it worked in Vero Beach, Florida, the day after Thanksgiving was the big day to party.
That Friday I met up with a huge group of high school friends and found the guy who always had the good stuff back in high school. I was ready to get ripped on my favorite three-letter combo. He told me he’d have some later, but that I might not even want it because he had gotten ahold of some primo ecstasy from Miami. I was hesitant because I was sure of what the GHB would do to me and I had a prior experience with “X” that was disappointing, but my dealer said this was different and that I wouldn’t be let down by these pills.
“Just get me the ‘G,’ dude.”
“Later. I’ll have some later, but this shit is killer. Newest shit from the 305.”
It sounded like I would have to wait, and this was the only other thing he had, so I gave him cash, ate the pill, and within a few minutes I was… disappointed. I didn’t feel anything. I ran over to him. “Hey, man. I don’t feel shit.”
“Uh, you just took it. Give it thirty minutes.”
Fuck. Thirty minutes? See, that was the beauty of the liquid stuff. You barely waited thirty seconds.
But I thought, Okay, in thirty minutes I’m gonna be coming out of every pore. Forty-five minutes later, nothing. And worse, I couldn’t find my dealer. I wanted to feel something now. I did what I had the easiest access to—a drink, then another.
About thirty minutes later there was a company move. Everyone was heading over to Bobby’s, a well-known bar on the beach. As soon as I got there I had a couple screwdrivers. I was on my way to getting fucked up, but it was drunk fucked up, not the high kind that I craved.
I just kept drinking.
As I was on my way back to the bar I spotted him, my former classmate/current drug supplier. I was elated. He saw the look on my face and right away he knew what I wanted, a swig of that salty water.
“All right, come on, Tom.”
“Dude, I never felt that ecstasy.”
“Really?”
What I was definitely feeling were those screwdrivers. By this time I had lost count, but it could’ve easily been a dozen. I was drunk.
We went out to his car, and I sat in the passenger seat. He pointed at the ground between my legs, and there it was, something I had never seen before; a one-gallon jug of GHB. Quick reminder: I had only had standard twenty-ounce water bottles full of the stuff, which is how the dealers distribute it to consumers. This jug was predistribution. A gallon wasn’t only astonishing in volume, but also unorthodox. How am I supposed to take a hit? You can’t pour it into the cap on a gallon jug.
“Take a swig.”
I picked up a full, one-gallon jug of GHB and held it up to my lips. How much do I sip? What’s a bottle cap worth? How many screwdrivers have I had?
A moment later, my mouth was full. Full of GHB. I had tipped back way too much. I knew it was too much. My first thought was, You can’t spit it out. It’s drugs. It’s valuable.
I hesitated for a second then swallowed. Whoa. How much did I just take? That was way more than a water bottle cap. Five? Seven?
I put the jug down, thanked him, and I was ready to rock. I went straight to the bar for a couple more screwdrivers. I was dancing, high-fiving, and just generally having a helluva time. I sat down for a break and it hit me, I was FUUUUUUUCKED UP! Oh well, who cares. I’m chillin’ with a girl on my lap and people all around. That was it. My last memory of the evening.
I woke up eight hours later staring at fluorescent lights. I was restrained. I couldn’t sit up and I couldn’t move my arms. For a brief moment I felt absolute terror. A woman I recognized leaned over me. She was a classmate’s mother, a doctor. “Tommy, you overdosed. You’re in intensive care at the hospital.”
Fuck. How is this real?
I closed my eyes and wished as hard as I could, not that I would recover, but that my parents wouldn’t find out. Then I opened my eyes and there they were, looking at me. I’ll never forget that look. I killed a part of them that day.
Next, the nurses put a pen in my right hand, the hand I do not write with. They held out a pad of paper and told me they needed to know what happened so they could treat me accordingly. I already had tubes in my nose and others going down my throat. They were pumping my stomach full of liquid charcoal so the chemicals in whatever I took would come together and a forced regurgitation would take place. Before I could explain what happened I had to deal with my parents, the look on their faces. I scribbled on the pad, “Are you mad at me?” They both shook their heads, and my dad added, “We’re not mad at you, Tommy. Just disappointed.”
Hey, thanks, dude. Think you could have skipped saying that since I’m, you know, coming out of a coma. No? Okay, cool.
Next the doctors pressed me, “What did you take? We need to know what’s in you.”
I jotted down “Heroin.” Everyone’s eyes bugged out. You could hear the air conditioning coming through the vent and after a beat I wrote, “Kidding.” Not a lot of laughs, but it made me feel better.
I spent two more days puking in the ICU. Every blood vessel in the whites of my eyes ruptured. I looked like I had gone up to Cain Velasquez and told him his mother was a cunt. After yet another day I was finally in a normal recovery room when the doctor who saved me, the one who was able to fit a breathing tube down my throat when no one else could, came to visit. He told me he had never seen a toxicology report like mine where the patient ended up alive.
It turns out I had basically everything in me: barbiturates, amphetamines, cocaine. I didn’t understand. I didn’t take those things. “The drugs you thought you were taking were spiked. They were just cocktails of other drugs. Happens a lot. I just can’t believe you’re still here.”
I thought about it. How did I survive? Don’t give me that miracle shit. There has to be a real-world reason. I asked him why he thought I made it through. He looked at the chart and then to me.
“You’re two hundred fifty pounds. That’s a lot. Sometimes it’s good to be fat.”