The Yellow Mirage: My Unintentional Psychedelic Trip

A dumb decision to take drugs ended well, fortunately

Gothic, metal, punk: I grew up in subcultures, where letting your freak flag fly and being different was not considered odd, but healthy. Still, even amidst the most flamboyant people, you could stick out like a sore thumb.

I was seventeen years old and visiting an intimate open-air music festival in the mountains, organized by the dark scene. Mid-summer night vibes and a warm patchouli-soaked breeze, the moody goth crowd melted into one collective, slow-dancing organism. Everybody was clad in pitch-black leather, rubber, velvet, or other textiles ravens might like too.

Not me. Despite owning an impressive goth wardrobe, I was wearing baby blue jeans and a tight yellow t-shirt with the word “Splendid!” on my chest . I just felt like it that day.

When people thought they had figured me out, to put me into a box, I enjoyed doing the opposite. Like scaring the graveyard scene with sunny colors and an optimistic smile.

My outfit attracted some curious glances. I must have resembled a yellow dot, a human Miss Pac-Man zig-zagging on a dark screen.

When we entered the grounds, making our way to the front of the stage, the festival was already in full swing. A band was enchanting the masses with their atmospheric tunes.

Our circle of friends started to dance, swaying dramatically, moving sharp and aggressively, bumping into each other, and spilling our beers with a laugh. Yes, emo, grunge, and goth people can be a good-humored bunch.

The sun was setting behind the rocky peaks as the strobe lights flickered, and the forest grew its eerie shadows — it was magical. Might this moment never end, I thought.

“Hey, want some?”

Sitting around a bonfire to unwind after dancing, this long-haired dude stared at me, offering a blunt. The well-known herbal scent of cannabis rose into my nostrils. I had already had some experiences smoking with friends. Good ones and bad ones, depending on my mood (“set”) and the situation (“setting”) of consumption.

One principle I insisted on though: No chemical drugs. I considered them to be more dangerous, having witnessed too many people getting addicted and going off the rails. Chrystal meth was offered to me once, which I refused after learning that those were synthetic crystals people snorted — leading to bleeding noses, mental and physical decline.

Another time, an already manically behaving guy — our driver — put a cute-looking piece of paper with floral designs on his tongue. It was acid, LSD. He refused to refrain from driving, and I decided to lose my ride and be stranded in the city at night. Better than ending up smooshed in a car wreck.

So now the long-haired hippie look-alike from the open-air concert offered me some innocent cannabis. Young and reckless as I was, I accepted gracefully.

Puffing, the joint’s smooth end between my fingers, I marveled how its burning tip glimmered in reddish hues. I inhaled the smoke, held it in for a while, and tried not to cough. After some more puffs, I handed the magic cigarette to the next person. My vision got hazy, and a snigger escaped my mouth. That’s how my ride on the psychedelic roller coaster began…

I stretched myself out to lie down on the grassy earth, watching the flames. Closing my eyes from the real world, some sort of inner vision kicked in — and showed me beautiful pictures. My whole body suddenly was not human anymore, but resembled a wild pond, with rustling sea grass and quacking, pastel yellow ducks gliding through the clear water.

Weird, that never has happened before. How amazing, I thought, and immersed myself, fearless and curious like a child, into the drug-induced mirage. Voices around me started to fade and swirled away with my consciousness. My human shell dissolved, and I became one with the water. Just a small element in this beautiful scenario of nature…

Something warm, rough, and wet on my face disturbed my dreamy state. Slowly opening my eyes, the lids still firmly glued together, there it was again… A slobbery tongue from a huge dog, kibble-breath, excited to give me some love. Uhhhh. I hoped he had refrained from peeing on me.

Gathering my senses, I checked my surroundings. Morning had broken, last night’s bonfire was burned down to ashes, and other people snored around me — all al-fresco style, resting on insulation mats and sleeping bags. Groggy, I couldn’t tell how many hours I had been out. Scrambling to my shaky feet, I found my friends who camped properly nearby.

Everybody looked a bit hungover. Just what you would expect — sleepy, rumpled, wrinkled, slightly grubby from dancing in the dust. Their eyebrows rose when I told my story from the previous night.

Someone said, “You don’t hallucinate from smoking pot… Certainly, some kind of chemical substance was involved. You’re lucky to have had a good trip!”

Now I’m forty-one years old and still remember that night. I’m not sure what kind of drug I had consumed: Maybe I reacted strongly to a certain cannabis strain? Some people say that’s possible, but researchers are certain that the hallucinogenic effects of cannabis are pretty rare.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, since you might learn things you would rather ignore — it’s nowadays possible to search the internet for consumption symptoms. After doing that, I concluded I also could have smoked a blunt laced with PHP (phenylcyclohexyl piperidine). A dangerous and evil substance also known as “Angel Dust” leads to hallucinations, but can also cause horror trips, psychoses, and aggressive behavior. Indeed, PHP was invented in my home country and already flooded the illegal drug market in the 1970s. So this bill would fit. Retrospectively, I cannot be sure.

I had accepted a drug from a person I never met before, relying on my nose telling me he offered cannabis. This led to an involuntary psychedelic experience and probably violated my principle never to take synthetic drugs.

Luckily, my mood was like my shirt that day — bright and sunny, yellow instead of black, and thus, an optimistic setting leading to a positive psychedelic experience. Maybe not taking too many inhales also played a role, and the (quality!?) of the drug itself…maybe… maybe. Who am I kidding: I don’t know and made a very dumb decision that night.

Things could have ended differently. I went on this trip without having consciously booked a ticket. I never accepted a single puff, sip, or bite from a stranger again. Cannabis is about to be legalized in Europe, and available by prescription already, but my drug days are pretty much over.

Unless my best friend makes space cookies. An alternative Martha Stewart, she once distilled cannabis oil from fresh weed and baked it into a buttery dough. Acts of service are her love language, and she wanted to help me relax from anxiety, without having to inhale smoke (I don’t do this anymore). I still remember the cookie’s yummy taste and calm feeling fondly. And thankfully, it did not make me hallucinate.