Affinity for blackbirds

I've told it before.
Here it is again.
Probably won't be the last time.
***

"What did I look like?" I asked Mom referring to when I ate the jimson seeds some five years prior.

"Your eyes were big and wide...and scared," she responded.

I'm sure they were.

Ron and I each ate three podfuls of seeds on a Tuesday afternoon in the fall of 1974. I was 15 years old; Ron was 16 or 17. I weighed in at a whopping 95 pounds; Ron weighed over 200.

Ron ate the seeds that were black; I ate the brown seeds.

I can almost taste and smell them....as I type at this moment, in 2015. They had an earthy taste, those raw tiny seeds concealed by nature in their spiky pods that screamed, "Danger! Danger! Do not touch!"

Danger. That was our lifestyle. We were invincible. We would always get high, forever. We were the "freaks." Our motto was, "Never go straight; always go forward." At that time, "straight" did not refer to sexual orientation. "Straight" meant you didn't do drugs. We'd never go straight. When we would be 60, we'd still be getting high.

The black birds must have been the first hallucination, though at the time I thought the birds were real as I squatted and peed in the woods. Hundreds of blackbirds, maybe thousands, everywhere scratching and hopping along the pine needle carpet that covered the forest floor.

Perhaps the birds were an omen from Edgar Allan Poe warning of the next three days. Daddy used to read Poe to us kids at bedtime. Or perhaps those real, but not real, blackbirds were my guardians and somehow helped bring me back to reality four days later.

Would I have come back without the so-called "antidote?" I didn't receive the antidote until Friday evening. I've been told I was awake that whole time from Tuesday morning until Friday night. Jimson weed aside, being awake for four days in itself could cause hallucinations.

I have no recollection of walking back to Ron's green AMC Hornet after I peed. Ron later told me what happened. After I staggered back to the car, he drove us to my home. It was around 4:00 in the afternoon. Dad was home, but we didn't see him nor he us when we entered the house. Ron and I sat down on the couch in the living room in the front of the house; Dad was in the family room in the back of the house.

We didn't lock our doors in those days.

I looked at Ron and spoke in a slow slur. "i. feel. tired. i'm. going. upstairs."

I stood up, staggered into the dining room, took a left turn, then a right turn. I steadied myself and pulled my body partway up the old hardwood stairs. Then...kerplunk, tumble, thud. I lie at the bottom of the stairs. Nothing broken, except my psyche.

Upon the noise, Dad came running to the front of the house from the back. He could see me to his right on the floor as he stood in the dining room.

Then his gaze turned to Ron.

Ron thought Dad was going to kill him.

So Ron stood up and stumbled out the front door. And that's all Ron remembered.

Somehow Ron drove to his home where his brother Skeeter got him to Hickory Memorial Hospital. The nurses and doctors had to put Ron in a straight jacket; he was trying to attack the female nurses. Ron's stomach was pumped.

At some point Dad got me to Catawba Memorial Hospital; I think he called an ambulance. At the hospital, I was strapped to a bed in ICU. Unlike Ron, my stomach was not pumped. I later learned that the staff didn't pump my stomach because the doctors weren't sure what I had ingested and were concerned pumping might cause further harm. Apparently the two hospitals didn't communicate.

That same night, Mom brought the doctors some cut plants that I had in my bedroom at home. A couple weeks prior, I had cut and gathered some jimson weed stems with their seed pods from the pasture behind our home. I had put them in a vase without water and placed the vase on my bedroom dresser. Those plants were sent to Chicago where Mom had connections with folks who had connections with a lab. An antidote was made from studying the plants, so I've been told. I have no reason to doubt it.

Between Tuesday afternoon and Friday night, hallucinations were as real as any life event.

• I was raped on a bed of steel springs. The bed was in the middle of a football field surrounded by a stadium of bleachers.
• I lived at a castle, where I rode horses. I was part of the royal family. Maybe not a family member, but I was like family. I broke my arm while riding horses.
• I spent what seemed months at an insane asylum, which was a giant, circular aquarium with winding sidewalks. Witch doctors visited me and the man in the bed beside me, who was as crazy as I was. The witch doctors wore masks and lots of color and danced around and between our beds ridding the room of evil spirits.
• Every day in the aquarium asylum, a visitor would come from the outside world. I would scold him demanding he give me my supplies.
• My Aunt Flossie visited me while I smoked a joint which I tried to pass to my friends Beth and Tricia when they visited. The joint had been toked down to a roach and it was burning my fingers.
• I got eaten by a multitude of black cock roaches.
• I died and on my way to heaven as I floated upward, Crosby-Stills-Nash-and-Young played for me.

I was administered the antidote on Friday evening. It worked. I finally slept and woke up Saturday evening after a long slumber; my arms set free and no longer secured to the cold, steel bed rails; my torso no longer seat-belted to the bed by restraints; the IV in my arm and catheter in my urethra removed.

I was back at high school a week later. I stuck by my motto, "Never straight," for another nine months.

~~~
Some other pieces about my jimson weed experience:
Part 1: A Green Hornet and Blackbirds
Part 2: Witch Doctors and Roller Coasters
Poem: Datura Stramonium: To Dance with the Devil
~~~

This post was inspired by Crazy Cat.