Andrew Brobyn - Babble On: A Drug Memoir

A DRUG MEMOIR

ANDREW BROBYN

Copyright Andrew Brobyn, 2022

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Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Julie Mannell

Cover designer: Laura Boyle

Cover image: shutterstock.com/Primsky

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Babble on : a drug memoir / Andrew Brobyn.

Names: Brobyn, Andrew, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2022021252X | Canadiana (ebook) 20220212554 | ISBN 9781459749221 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459749238 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459749245 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Brobyn, AndrewDrug use. | LCSH: Drug dealersCanadaBiography. | LCSH: Manic-depressive personsCanadaBiography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC HV5805.B74 A3 2022 | DDC 364.1/3365092dc23

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

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Dedicated to those who get it.

Based on a true story, or something.

Wait a tick.

Tick.

Why can I taste the acid?

Tick.

And why does it have a grainy texture?

Tick.

I loosen what feels like a mote of sand from one of the tabs and bite down. It bursts. My mouth is awash in a flavour Id describe as grapefruit seeds of chemical regret, and I feel an instant coolness in my extremities. Thats not good. This isnt good. Ive heard stories, and done a lot of acid in my day, and seen a lot of fucked-up shit and bad trips, and the saying is If its bitter, its a spitter. Also to be a burstable grain, that crystal mustve been at least a milligram and some compounds are effective at doses in the microgram range. Most of that wouldve just absorbed into my mouth tissue immediately.

Tick.

I follow the wisdom of countless mindless hippies before me and purge the tabs. I scrape my tongue for good measure. I can still taste the unique residue of impending psychosis, though, and start doing mental math in a futile race against my metabolism.

What sorts of compounds could one feasibly fit a full trips worth of onto blotter paper? Which ones would taste like a crushed Tylenol daiquiri? How many micrograms, across five tabs, may have dissolved through my mucous membranes in the moments its taken me to realize Ive just dosed myself with a pretty hefty amount of a substance that I, and possibly even the manufacturer of said drug, have never tried before. Fuck.

There are too many options. In a split second, I curse every blessing Ive ever made of all the renegade biochemists whove fuelled my lifelong quest to experience novel states of mental being. Fuck Hofmann. Fuck Shulgin. Fuck Nichols. This could be anything; all sorts of horrible medieval visions of Hell have been synthesized already, and more are being discovered in clandestine labs across the globe every day: DOB, 5-MeO-aMT, Bromo-DragonFLY, some sort of Aleph compound, 25I-NBOMe, 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate the list is limitless (metaphorically, though verging on literally). My heartbeat picks up a semi-step and the contours sharpen around objects I hadnt even noticed Im sharing this room with. The mind can be a prison, prism, and/or a palace; its all about perception. I remind myself of the lessons of loony Tim Learys take on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the (comparatively) more dependable Terence McKennas Food of the Gods: set and setting are everything; your thoughts and physical presence must both reside in a safe space for the duration of the trip, unless you want to come out of it all animal a devolved, semi-reptilian monstrosity wearing your epidermis: a silicone suit on an animated, proto-mammalian mannequin. I focus my attentions to mindfulness tactics and search my body for sensation

Yeah, somethings off all right. Usually my psychedelic-state synesthesia isnt this all-encompassing. Did I just chew off a piece of the fucking Loc-Nar?

Is this the drug, or the predrug placebo? Either way, the paranoias persistent, but considering that I, very stupidly, took five tabs from the untested sheet all at once, Ill go ahead and assume this is just the normal, ambient level of anxiety that I should naturally be feeling. Im already about ten minutes down, anyway, so at least I know Im not allergic to this otherwise my heart wouldnt be palpitating quite so much as just permanently on pause. The real deal, once my mind makes it there, will be considerably more omnipersistent than a simple passing perception that Im being watched, or that my watching is being sensed, or that the walls are breathing.

Should I go to the hospital? Call 911? No. I cant. I can feel the heat just thinking about it. No, this ones on me.

Maybe it was more like fifteen minutes, actually. Twenty? Time is all around me the wall, my right wrist, the DVD player, my pocket but its all too far away to be any more than a blur, an oasis mirage in an ocean, a fading, disconcertingly coloured sunset.

Hmm. Maybe I should sit down. Better yet lie down. Thats the ticket. Also maybe this wasnt the best movie choice. Apocalypse Now and LSD (ideally, properly synthesized LSD-25 not that 1-propionyl-LSD or some other analogue bullshit): great combination. Apocalypse Now (Redux, I might add) and questionable amounts of an unknown research chemical: possibly less great. It might even be fair to classify this as definitely less great.

Its OK.

Its OK.

Its OK to have such a simple mantra in scenarios like this. Its OK. Ive been in hairier situations before I mean, obviously not like doing a gap-year tour in Vietnam, an M-16 graduation present courtesy of Uncle Sam, being experimented on with Agent Orange and a Jacobs Ladder, BZ-style, stimu-deliriant but drug-wise.

The thing about psychedelics (which Im assuming I just cavalierly took some radical new sort of) is that they reveal that reality is subjective even at the best of times and its kind of like a conversation taking place in many different languages at once. But this subjectivity is open to interpretation, and the drug is kind of like an interpreter: you get a good drug, you have a good conversation; you hit a bad tab, that conversation becomes a cacophony of sense overlaid with sense and stirred up until its all nonsense.