Diary of a Mad PCP Teen
or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love washing dishes
An Evening with Ozzie
I know you guys just love hearing my stories from the 70s. Well, my very first Black Sabbath concert, me and my cousin bought some pcp and took two each just before the concert. This was probably 1975. The drug came in yellow capsules. Back then, for some reason they sold it as "THC". Of course, it had nothing to do with THC. It was all PCP, phencyclidine, and if it came in a powder form you snorted or smoked, it was called "angel dust".
So, the night of Black Sabbath, it started out good, but got intense very quickly. I went from laughing and being woozy inside a big civic center auditorium to a descent into hell. Ozzie was singing, and I was clapping my hands, and everyone in the whole auditorium was wearing black hoods, clapping their hands automatically. That was all a hallucination, of course. It wasn't that the trip was horrible, it was that the hallucination was of me being in hell, you know, where the devil lives and all that. My hands were on auto pilot, they were clapping themselves, synchronized with all 10,000 other people's hands. We were all Ozzie's, and the Devil's slaves now. "I'm fucked, I'm in Hell." It was as if I was in the very pit of hell. My cousin said she thought she had died and gone to hell. Our trips were very much the same, as we discussed afterward.
Getting my Driver's License
I took, and passed, my driver's license test on pcp. I took one yellow capsule at about lunch time. The only problem I had was a mechanical one, where the clutch on my VW mini-bus got stuck, and I had to slam my foot down on it to free it. I think the cop who was with me was actually impressed that I handled the vehicle so well. God only knows how that could be. Guardian angel? Or a powerful will?
Friendly trip
Another time I was with a group of friends, out on a starry night, drinking and smoking at a lake. We philosophized and conjectured and dreamed late into the night. It was one of the more pleasant pcp experiences. we were snorting it (angel dust). Because we had to share it, we didn't do more than we could handle. Friends and pcp are good, if you are somewhere safe, and your friends are good people, not bad people. If you take just a little dose, and you can talk about interesting things with people, ones who aren't going to go berserk, then it can be a positive experience. Know who you trip with.
Cruising
Another time I was driving my friends around the city in my VW bus, and they all took pcp (yellow capsules). Really, I didn't, but I told them I did, and that freaked them out. They kept saying, "Holy shit! How can you drive? How can you drive?" because they were tripping their brains out. When I got home, I took the pcp I had saved. Again, two yellow capsules. I was staring at a Punk Floyd poster from Dark Side of the Moon, it was a green poster of pyramids. Somehow, I tele-transported to a kind of city tunnel freeway road system, where I was driving a car through this freeway, through tunnels with green lights. Imagine being on a roller coaster, but you are in a car, instead, at the driver's wheel. It was as if the green poster had transformed into a green freeway, where I was driving a fast car through the city. Very Isaac Asimov, Cities of Steel! At some point I pulled back out of the vision, and I thought, "Whoa! Was I really just there?" It was very real.
Two days of tripping
Another time this kid sold me a big bag of pcp (angel dust) for $10. I said, "how much should I do?" He said, "Oh, just do all of it." That was a BIG mistake. This was powder, kind of doughy, like bread dough. I had to make little balls and snort it with a straw. I was in my brother's room, talking to his friends. My brother said, "___, you're talking like a robot! You'd better go lay down." So, I laid down in my bed.
All that night, I was astral projecting BIG TIME. First, while lying in my bed, the stars were out. That's right, I was tele-transported to the outside, where the starry heavens were overhead. Then, I was at my girlfriend's house, sitting on the sofa while her family was talking. Yet, of course, I wasn't really there. This lasted all night long, and in the morning, I was still tripping. I was scared, because I had to go to work.
Of course by morning, I must have been slightly better, not astral projecting, because I got a ride to work and was able to function. But let me tell you, I was so fucking high, I have no idea how I managed. I seriously believed I was permanently burnt out forever, so I resigned myself to the fate of being a life-long burnout. My boss actually complimented me on how hard I worked, though she asked me if something was wrong. The owner of the hotel said, "you look like you got squeezed through a keyhole."
It wasn't until the following day, two days later, that the cloud started to lift, and by afternoon I was pretty much back to normal. I was so grateful, I thanked God...the real one, not the phony one who chimes in occasionally on psychonaut.com.
summary
In actuality, pcp was very common in the 70s, and those were only a few of the many times I took it, the most memorable occasions I can think of right off the top of my head. What it's like, when you're not out-of-body, is a kind of "plastic" world, where everything and everybody seems artificial, as if it's made out of plastic. There's also this "deep" aspect to the world, where it seems like you are at the bottom of a deep swimming pool.
At first, when it starts coming on, it really is a lot like pot. Then it's like very strong pot. Then it's like, if you can imagine what it must be like to inject a half-pound of sinsemilla into your blood. If you have ever eaten lots of hashish at one time, the effect is similar. But with pcp, you will get honest-to-god hallucinations. It is more depressing than acid. It doesn't resemble acid, it does not resemble mushrooms or mescaline. It's very "dreamy, disturbing, inner space. A comic book fantasy world come to life."
My school was all gray, and had lots of electrical gadgetry. To me it was as if I was in a space ship, like the one on Heavy Metal, the cartoon movie. I was very into science fiction at the time, and I think Art Deco spaceships and Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov influenced my trips. I would say that mostly, it was very pleasurable and positive. like being at a carnival. After the "two day trip" I never touched the stuff again. That was probably 1976 or 77.
It got a lot of negative national programming in the 70s. I think most stories were bullshit, made up for Hollywood. I never had violent thoughts, I never believed I was superhuman. The ego was very much intact, it was the rest of the world that was different
