The Trip
Written by Jenna Kay Duxbury
Artwork: “Andromeda” by Isaac Ben Aharon
I wasn’t in the habit of doing drugs. Alex, my boyfriend, was a bit of a stoner though. I smoked with him once in a while but didn’t really like it. Weed made my heart race, my appetite insatiable, my anxiety shoot off the charts. Or maybe that’s just how I felt most of the time, and the weed exacerbated it.
A friend from college had told us about a new drug called “jazz.” It was supposed to be like acid; it was a hallucinogen with a similar chemical makeup. Some people used it to do a spiritual quest — there were even PDFs you could find on the internet to help outline your trip, only of course they called it a “voyage.”
Alex was so geeked about the whole concept, but I didn’t try to hide my skepticism. Honestly I didn’t think he should be doing this kind of thing anymore. I was in the midst of applying to grad school, and Alex had graduated a year after me and was now “looking” for internships. I had waited a year for him, and now I was ready to move on to the next chapter. But he was dragging his feet, spending even less time on the job hunt and more time hanging with friends, playing computer games. It was hard for me to get excited about wasting time.
These were more or less my private thoughts on the day that Alex read to me in our living room from a webpage he found and printed off about “jazz.”
“OK. So it says, ‘Be sure to turn off cell phones, lock your door, and have plenty of water and snacks on hand.’ I just planned to take the whole weekend and just, like, turn my vacation responder on for emails.” Alex glanced at me over the PDF to make sure I was still there. What emails? I thought. But I nodded, and he continued.
“‘Jazz takes on average twenty minutes to set in before the user begins to feel the effects. Immediately after ingesting, begin to visualize the outline of your journey, starting with the beginning to middle to end. Fill in as many details as you can about who you are (your character), what goal or objective you wish to achieve, your starting point, and the many scenes that will lead you to your ultimate destination.’”
I considered my ultimate destination and decided I would deep-clean the entire apartment before the weekend. I couldn’t stand doing drugs in a dirty house.
“‘Jazz is similar to acid in effect and duration. Expect to experience visual and auditory hallucinations, heightened perception, emotional sensitivity, and feelings of euphoria or intense focus. For the average dose, you’ll spend one hour “coming up” as the drug takes effect, about four hours in a relative plateau with one peak point in the middle, and then about one to two hours of dwindling effects as you “come down.” In total, plan for your trip to last about eight hours.’” Alex squinted at the bottom of the printout. “Oh wait. They also included some suggestions for…writing backstory and incorporating combat…wow. I think whoever wrote this made it for their DnD group.”
“Babe, do you know anyone who’s actually tried this?”
Alex finally broke away from the page and looked at me more or less in the eye. “Oh yeah, Justin tried it and really liked it. I met his friend who has the hookup last time I went over to his house.”
“And did he say anything about anxiety? I’ve heard that you can have bad trips, just like with acid.”
Alex sucked in a breath, frowning. “Yeah, they say that. Justin’s was totally cool apparently, and mostly I think people are having good trips. It all depends on what your general mental state is going into it though. Like, whatever you have going on in your head is what’s coming with you on the trip. You know?”
I pictured my mental state: a vast, snowy territory papered over with self-aggrandizing phrases from my admissions essays, nagged by the dreadful need to solicit letters of recommendation from my undergrad professors, not to mention the pressure to actually pick a school when the time came…if any acceptance offers came. And what would happen with me and Alex? That gave me a frozen feeling in my gut — it was too much to think about. And I would definitely need to clean the house this weekend; from my vantage point on the couch, I could see dust gathering under the refrigerator.
Alex was still reading through the DnD notes on the drug paper and chuckling quietly to himself, his brow totally uncreased by thoughts of gainful employment, or the dust under the fridge, or the future at large. I don’t know why, but seeing him relaxed like that — just kind of in his normal state, not knowing I was watching him — made me say yes.
On the day of the trip, the sky was heavy and dim with rain. Most of the trees in our neighbourhood had already undressed for the winter, and their naked branches strained against the cold expanse. I drew my bulky sweater tight across my body, trying to ward off the chill.
I had succeeded in my quest to purge the apartment of grime and filth yesterday. Alex had actually offered to help, which surprised me. Together we scrubbed the bathtub, did the laundry, disinfected every surface in the kitchen, dusted our bookshelves, mopped the linoleum, and vacuumed the carpet. It was a bit extreme, but a clean house makes me feel safe. A light drizzle of rain had started to fall, and I felt a bit cozy listening to the sound from inside.
Alex and I used to spend crappy days like these wrapped up in bed, watching movies, eating snacks, and shirking our classes. When was the last time we ditched our responsibilities to just hang out together?
“OK — are you ready?” Alex interrupted my reverie. It was eleven in the morning, the agreed-upon departure time.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said with a cheerfulness I did not feel.
Alex took a plastic baggie from his backpack that contained two tiny blue pills, procured from Justin’s friend. I took solace in the thought that even if this experience pushed my anxiety up to an eleven, at least Alex was doing it with me, and we could compare notes, and also I probably wasn’t going to die.
We placed the tabs on our tongues and swallowed them. Then Alex went to his computer to play video games. I grabbed the book I was reading and slipped outside to the balcony of our apartment.
Is this normal? I wondered as I settled into the patio chair, brushing detritus off of the mildewed seat cover before leaning back and opening my book. A light drizzle of rain was still falling. Don’t couples who take drugs together usually spend time together while doing it?
But what kinds of activities do couples actually do? We had a few board games, a deck of cards we used for strip poker and gin rummy back in the early undergrad years, but not much else. We both worked, so most of the time we didn’t have the energy for anything more than scrolling through our social media feeds or watching an episode of a TV show before bed. When I talked to my friends, they described more or less the same bleak picture. So maybe it was normal.
Sometimes in the morning, I’d put my dirty clothes in the hamper and find one of Alex’s T-shirts damp with a bitter smell, usually right after my morning shower. It was a practice of careful avoidance that I understood. Guess there were some other games we’d learned to play instead.
Was it my fault? Most of the time I felt too busy and too numb. Most of the time — and this was so fucked up — most of the time, I just pretended to fall asleep right away, closing my eyes and breathing slow and deep while Alex was right there next to me. Was he waiting for me to turn to him? Didn’t I want him to be there? Why was I so indifferent?
I wiped my tears — when had I started crying? and blinked at the sun. Warm and bright, super bright — ahh. The rain had disappeared and the clouds were breaking. I arched my neck away from the itchy cowl of my sweater, suddenly started scratching like an animal. Then I just took the sweater off.
A roaring sound from behind — I whirled around, shaken from my trance like a snow globe, peering through the blizzard to see a figure through the snow — my Alex. The slider door had been thrust open, and he was staring at me with such innocent surprise that it made my tears spill down faster.
“Are you OK?” he asked. “I heard you crying.”
I swiped at my face, pawing away the tears and the snowflakes that clouded my vision, and suddenly Alex was there. He was just there, and he scooped me up and held me close, warm and solid and alive.
I slid my arms around his neck and we kissed without words. The kiss brought back memories — of the early undergrad years, of strip poker and snacks in bed, of trips to bars with friends and hikes in the mountains, of fights and tears and laughter, rising and falling like waves that swept me out to sea. I closed my eyes and saw the whole of our life together transfixed in a prism of light, shifting in colours as the sun set and the moon rose again and again, stretching not just back in time but forward too. The years flew in an instant, and I saw that we had always been flying, always been dying and growing and changing, yet always somehow staying together.
I don’t believe in magic. But isn't love a kind of miracle?
Then I heard heartbeats like drumbeats running rampant in the space between my ears. I followed them as Alex took me by the hand and led us into our clean safe house, and maybe it would never be spotless no matter how much I tried but everything in the house was ours; we had bought it or inherited it or picked it up for a song. I had a music teacher once who told me that the silence before and after the notes is just as important as the notes themselves, and what if Alex and me had just been in a silent part? What if the music had been there all along?
Like a melody I had long ago forgotten, I clung to that thought and let it soar beneath my skin and sing to my bones. I looked into Alex’s soft green eyes and let him carry me away, releasing my grip on everything that had nothing to do with us, in this room, in this moment. The rain had started again and was really coming down now, falling from heaven as it cleansed the earth.
