We all have a friend of a friend of a friend that has had some traumatic hallucination experience. Stories from people jumping out of a 16th story window thinking they could fly, to people cutting off their hand thinking it is a spider trying to attack. I’m sure a majority of the stories we’ve heard are more urban legends spread through a community and it’s a good way to keep the kids off those drugs, but we all know urban legends have some basis of truth, and hallucination-inducing drugs can actually become truth.

Well I’m that urban legend and my small town probably still tells the stories within the halls of its police department and local hospital.

I was 17; it was a Texas summer, the start of my senior year and freshly back from church camp. I just got off of a long string of being grounded, finished the fifth book in the Left Behind series, (a movie staring Kirk Cameron was later made) and finally got my car running. Time for some teenage antics — sounds perfect.

The phone rings, “a nice party out here in the woods, it’s BYOB,” or for me and Matt bring your own acid.

Mom knows who I’m going with and trusts both of us enough to allow my first free night out in 3 months (getting grounded that long is another story). I can’t blame her. I was in a good place, and seemed to have learned from my last extravagant party, where I got home and promptly failed a drug test. For those of you who don’t know, acid doesn’t show up in a home drug test and it was the drug that takes you to another reality.

Matt arrives and we take his 1985 Isuzu Trooper one mile south to Ryan’s house off Greenwood Cut Off Road, just a quick run from my place. We’re right on time, first ones there of the 20 or so who would show up. I’m dressed in oversized Kikwear jeans (think Jncos but with 30 inch bottoms), a blue Alice in Wonderland shrooming shirt and I’m ready to party. I was into the rave scene and loved the whole culture — so much so I have senior pictures in these clothes. I even took this look with me to church camp because it was who I was at the time. Only problem is I am also the only person in my small town that dresses like a raver, better known as a “clown.”

We decide to go ahead and drop the acid when we arrive, not telling anyone (pro tip: let people know you’re about to get weird — this will improve your overall trip) then proceed to mingle with whoever is willing to listen. I start feeling the effects about a half hour in, higher heart rate, sweaty palms, movements start tracing, falling down the rabbit hole has begun, I sit on the couch when I really can tell this trip is going to be deep and has got me by the balls. Michael sits down next to me with a Zima, soaking at the bottom is a Jolly Rancher, this was a way to make bitch beer more bitchy, but holy shit is it amazing (we are highschoolers afterall).

::30 minutes deep (or so it seemed)::

“Would you like a drink?” Micheal asked, all I heard was “bechibabinghsig?” in the voice of Speedy Gonzales, “There is a Jolly Rancher on the bottom,” right about then the door opened with some more country folk caring cubes of Keystone and behind them the biggest pack of moths and bugs fly right in. Matt and I look at each other making sure we both just saw the swarm of moths and bugs. We sink deeper into the couch, Micheal realizing this, points to what I thought was 100 moths and bugs, it turns out just to be one and was sitting on one of our knees (thanks Micheal I needed the pull up). This trip is ramping up.

Now I’m at that point where the party is going well, people are all over the small three-bedroom house and high school antics are unfolding all around me. I realize we are all monkeys trying to get our nut off with other monkeys, trying to play hard to get, it was like I am in a barbie world and nothing can save these innocents from what I seem to be witnessing.

This is the point where my heart rate has accelerated to the point of screaming through my chest, Matt seems to sense what is going on and pulls me out of my own trip (and his own) to try and calm me down. We go to one of the rooms where no one is around just us two, our trip, and a bed to sit on.

I start telling Matt I have to go home, I shouldn’t be here, guilt has started to surge through my brain, and my ego is starting to take over. I am not where I should be on a head full of acid, I need to let my ego go but tonight is not that night.

Matt is trying to talk me off the ledge, he sees that something is majorly wrong with this situation that I am in and knows that the only person on my level is himself. About this exact time where my trip starts to subside and I’m letting go of this ego someone opens the door, holding whatever prize they have won from the boy to girl ratio. They see us and proceed to call us out for being “fags”. I embrace the fact they would think such ideas, but at the time this was on top of the insult list and could easily bring status at school down. No matter how it might seem neither of us are actually gay, we are just both tripping, HARD.

Right here is where things get distorted, I decide leaving and trying to walk home on five hits acid is the best choice I have. FUCK ALL THESE CLOSED MINED ASSHATS (except Matt and Micheal).

:: THE WALK HOME::

I leave the house off Moss Lane and start up Greenwood Rd, it was a short road that intersected with Moss Ln once again after the L shaped, I see a swing set by the local church…so I swing.

I decided at this time that I can walk the next 3/4 mile home and start my adventure back to mother. About 1/4 mile in I seem to have lost my mind and my clothes. They are wet from me sweating, the July humidity of Texas, and these conveniently large pants, which were left in a pile like I was just raptured out of them according to my family that later found them.

The next few houses are a blur, I don’t remember being in a backyard farm full of goats and barbed wire fencing, but I have the scars to prove I tried to jump something that ended up being barbwire. What is interesting is all of this happened within only 5 houses from the church. Turns out this goat pin was the third house.

I finally break free of my box and I am now running home, I just want my Mom. Two houses later I find (what I think is ) my house and mom…

It wasn’t my house or mom, it was a women on the phone calling the sheriff's about a disturbance, something she was truly worried about. I can still see her blue eyes staring at me as I run around her house to the front, BUTT ASS NAKED, on the cordless phone, Mom has blue eyes too.

I scream “MOM” and start running at the open front door. We make eye contact as I realize what is going on, I’m finally home…but not even close.

The door was open except it was protected by a glass outside door, that my eyes could not make out because I was probably too busy looking at this women. I preceded to jump through a full glass door landing on my left side curled up in the fetal position scared and out of my mind. I can only imagine what the actual owners of this house were thinking, some naked teenager just jumped into there house around 12 AM, through a fucking glass door, shattering into a million pieces, and hopefully I didn’t wake the kids.

I thought this was my mother because of the blue robe and eyes, Mom always had a blue robe. I then mounted the couch in the fetal position spilling out all my wrong doings, seeing that demons have been chasing me because the end of the world is happening according to my biblical history of what was going on right now, in my head, on acid.

I must have had a moment of clarity, I am now in the garage of this house, facing a larger man with an aluminum bat. Being high my reflexes are actually pretty acute to movement, more enhanced by the fact I was in danger of getting fucked up. The man swung the bat twice at me, I have reflexes like a cat right now, I got off a hard right jab after the second swing, knocking him back. Shocking him that I just somehow dodged a bat swing twice and made contact with his face. This is when I decided I was in the wrong spot and need to get the fuck out, running around the countryside naked.

Now, this trip gets a little deeper with the Christian influence that I’ve had for the last three years, as I start running from “Bat-Man.” I can hear my brother calling me, riding around on our four wheeler (it wasn’t him, and there was no four wheeler) yelling about the demons chasing me, telling me to hide in the roadside ditch to be rescued, so I do.

The four wheeler wasn’t him, it was the sheriff’s interceptor (four cars total and 5 humans), they continued to chase me what seemed like through the 9 levels of Dante’s hell, it is more accurate to call it 100 feet. This time was more of a blur, I recall having my head stomped on more than once, and fighting at least 3 Parker County Sheriffs with zero weapons or clothes, I never saw them, I only saw hell coming after me trying to drag me back to where they came from. Next thing I know I’m being wheeled into some small compartment, with who I thought was my mom crying and screaming things I couldn’t make out while I wheeled into this crazy cage. It was actually the owner of the home trying to express how much I have ruined their normal nightly routine.

Darkness.

I wake up, not able to move my extremities, everything is stuck to something, and some strip of cloth is over me, covering my private region, but I am on my right side, facing a red exit sign. I look back and some persons in scrubs is staring into my ass, meticulously making little stabs at my ass cheek. Turns out I was getting stitches in my left cheek. Poor CNA.

Blackness.

I’m now on my back, looking up into a bright light, “Am I home Jesus?” I think. Silence, so I just enjoy all the geometric shapes of the walls and red/white hues keeping me company, then the brightest light to my left appears…it was the closest thing to God I knew.

Walking through are the two most important women in my life up to this point, Mom (a recent born again christian) and Gran (my grandmother) who’s the closest thing to Jesus we will ever know, even to this day.

HOLY SHIT, the rapture has happened and I am stuck between both heaven and Earth. Seriously, this was my initial thought, as they both look over me saying my name to see if I am there. I start staring back into my grandmothers eyes, watching the wrinkles fade away because she was my Jesus. THIS ROOM IS FUCKING BRIGHT.

I hear a door open, this door has a bright red EXIT sign above it and walking through are too large sheriffs, at this age I hated authority, especially cops. They seem to look at me for a few seconds knowing I’m just a crazy kid, and then continue to answer whatever questions my family was asking. I am still deep in my trip and have no idea what is actually being said, but I do remember thinking to myself that “this is it, it’s time for judgement.”

Now, here I am in these few seconds guessing what is happening, from my left is my mother and grandmother appearing to me from the brightest light I have ever seen, then you have the authority of sheriffs, coming from a bright red sign, talking to these two angels about HELL…(fucking Left Behind series) which actually meant JAIL. I am having to go to jail for what was later revealed to me as Burglary of Habitation with Assault, felony two.

I stay in this cuffed torture bed for another FOREVER before I am finally sober enough for the sheriffs to handcuff me and walk me down the halls of my small town hospital. Not realizing I’m facing a felony 2 at age 17, in Texas, where I can be tried as an adult.

I call this my rapture. I realize that someone in the middle of small town Texas, having a stranger jump through their fucking glass outside door, butt ass naked, should be dead, but I am not, and Jesus isn’t the reason but was a big part of things going wrong.