THE "TRIP" REPORT THREAD
this thread is dedicated to trips of the psychedelic variety. i'll get it started with a TR of my very first trip - eating a bunch of tablespoons of nutmeg.
for those who don't know, start with this primer on the effects and duration of nutmeg: https://erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/
i sure wish we had.
PART 1: EPILOGUE
in 2008 i was living as a mormon missionary in portugal. being a missionary is incredibly demoralizing; even more so when serving in western europe. nobody gave a shit about "the restored gospel of jesus christ", and to make matters worse, my companion (whose name has been changed but would be identical to elder steven stevenson - just not steven, if that makes sense) and i were in a tourist area with nothing to do, no one to talk to, and way too much time on our free hands. even on days when we wanted to be productive, it was a two hour bus ride to get to our "area" (we lived in the burbs but weren't allowed to shit where we ate), so four hours of travel a day only to get rejected by disinterested tourists meant that our morale was at an all time low - we were evangelical sailors adrift in the doldrums of secular apathy.
with little else to do, our pursuits turned domestic. during our time together we managed to accomplish the following things:
- perfected our deep fried icecream AND deep fried lion's bars recipes
- made a river of molten wax that we could float lego boats down
- generated plasma inside of our microwave with pencil lead and cork
- learned that LEDs glow red in the microwave (shortly before the microwave catches on fire)
- built an entire deck of cards we picked up on the ground while wandering around aimlessly
- each ate two bulbs (not cloves) of garlic in an effort to get weird dreams (spoiler alert - no weird dreams, but we did get kicked out of district meeting by the sister missionaries who seriously thought that we had came from the dumpster)
- learned that if you eat that much garlic you can taste it in your bumhole when you poop
anyway, you could say that we were very productive missionaries, just not as measured by the sales-driven metrics of the LDS corporation.
i digress. one afternoon, while riding the bus home from a day spent watching surfers at estoril's famous beach break, the topic turned to drug use.
"i used to smoke weed when i surfed" elder stevenson bragged. "tried some other stuff too, but i've repented" he assures me.
"i've never done anything." i admit. that wasn't entirely true - one time at a party somebody put rum in my coke and i didn't notice, but i still carried that guilt with me. i had not repented of that. "have you tried nutmeg?" i asked.
"nutmeg?"
"yeah, nutmeg. i've got a cousin at stanford who says it makes you feel funny. only problem is you gotta eat a lot of it, that's why you don't feel weird after eating christmas cookies". i was careful not to use the word high, mostly because i didn't think nutmeg was a drug and also because i didn't want to sin.
"no, i haven't...wanna try it, elder?" elder steven stevenson asks with a big grin
---
an hour later we are back from an impromptu grocery store mission (forbidden by mission rules), with the object of our design acquired. we had found our drug of choice exactly where we thought it would be, on aisle 7, between chinese five-spice and cinnamon. we crowded around our small kitchen table and each managed to down two tablespoons of the stuff. now, for those who have never eaten two tablespoons of nutmeg - or any kitchen spice for that matter - doing so is no easy affair. we tried mixing it in a smoothie, swallowing it dry, mixing it with powdered sugar, and a few other things. the barrier to entry is real.
having eaten our nutmeg we sit down together in our small living room, furnished with a dingy couch and a 19" television (also against mission rules, but we only used it to watch church movies - more on that later)
"feel anything, elder?" i ask
"nothing elder. i hope we don't smell like we did after garlic".
"i don't wanna get in trouble with the sisters (female missionaries) again. let's pretend we're sick if it comes to that"
we go to bed in our matching beds wearing our matching underwear in our shared bedroom, feeling dejected that we had made so much effort for so little funny feeling. the garlic episode seemed doomed to repeat itself.
PART TWO: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
elder stevenson is crying in bed. like, sobbing hysterically, like a 7 year old does when trying to convince his mom that he is too sick to go to school. big gulps of air punctuate fill the darkness of our room.
"are you okay elder?" i ask. he is not okay. he is clearly not okay.
"i am dying" he tells me in between his cartoonish wailing.
i am at a total loss - i don't know what to do to help elder steven stevenson right now; as acute of a medical crisis as death is, elder stevenson's fatal proclamation has made me aware of two key, indisputable facts related to my own condition:
fact # 1: my body is made of lead and i am absolutely incapable of any movement
fact #2: i have peed myself, and it is inexplicably warm. by my best estimation i am covered in pee - swimming in it - from head to toe. unfortunately i cannot tell how far the pee has spread because of fact #1. i am deeply, deeply embarrassed about this.
i lay there considering our fate - i can't tell what time it is, since we have blackout curtains, but i can see light from the kitchen is pulsing like a rave. LIGHT DARK LIGHT DARK LIGHT DARK like some sort of hitchcock-movie effect.
"elder i am genuinely dying" he tells me again. i don't know how to process this, and i'm mortified by how much pee has come out of me. also my body is still made of lead.
i remain silent.
minutes later, "elder i need a priesthood blessing because i am going to die".
i start to cry. finally, i get up the courage to speak.
"elder i can't give you a blessing because i am currently made out of lead. and i have peed myself". seemed like good reasoning at the time.
eventually i summon my strength and by some superhuman feat i manage to get up and get out of bed. elder steven stevenson sits up and i put my hands on his head and tell him that by the power of jesus he's not going to die. or something. he doesn't die, so i guess it worked. years later, while drinking together at the tavernacle in downtown slc, he told me that it was that very moment - that blessing - where he realized that there was no god to answer our prayer and that we were alone during that trip. i feel bittersweet learning this.
elder stevenson stops crying and we both go back to sleep - weird fever dreams are all i have, ones where my ex leaves me thousands of times, again and again and again and again.
PART THREE: bodily fluids
there is no more light coming from the kitchen. i don't know if it's been 12 hours or 12,000 hours. maybe the sun has burnt out. maybe we're in hell now. maybe this is our eternal punishment for breaking mission rule #372, don't eat more than one shake of common household spices.
i need to pee. i channel all of my energy and manage to get up, stumbling blindly the 10 steps into the bathroom. in later years i would compare this experience to being blackout drunk, something i still have never experienced - but this was an order of magnitude stronger than any experience i've had with alcohol before or since. or stronger than anything i've ever had, before or since.
upon arriving successfully at the bathroom (no small feat), i trip (literally) at the finish line, crumpling into the no-mans-land space between shower and toilet. for those who have never set foot in a missionary apartment - this is the most dangerous territory. with no women coming by (ever), there is no need to clean. the collection of concentrated urine is generational, going back to companionships long-since departed, containing the bygone fluids of missionaries who are now married and now have wives to clean their bathroom floors.
i consider my fate for some time, unable to do anything to improve it, deeply exhausted from the perilous journey that brought me here. it's hard to move when you're made of lead, after all.
hours pass. or maybe weeks. elder steven stevenson opens the door at some point, and sees me crumpled in the piss corner. i can't even look up at him - i'm too embarrassed. this is my darkest hour. he leaves.
eventually, i remember why i came there, push myself up and on to the toilet, and pee. i am relieved to find that my garments are pee-free (other than the pee from my floor wallowing), but equally confused. has it been so long that my pee dried up naturally? where did the pee i was lying in for hours (centuries) go?
i leave the bathroom and notice elder steven stevenson bathed in the blue light of our television. it is also pulsing like a rave strobe. his face is expressionless, totally blank. he is staring at the dvd menu for one of the five church movies we have, "finding happiness". elder stevenson cannot apparently figure out how to start finding happiness.
as i amble into the room i notice that elder steven stevenson has his feet firmly planted in a puddle of his own vomit. his vomit is christmas themed, big flecks of red and an overwhelming aroma of nutmeg. he seems unphased by this.
"why did you do that?" i ask
"you were using the bathoom" he replies, eyes transfixed on the dvd menu animation of a very white family sitting down to dinner together in a nice home.
i go back to the bathroom and grab a towel, the overwhelming smell of nutmeg vomit sobering me up enough to realize that if i don't clean this up, i'll also be joining elder steven stevenson.