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The Ballad of Texas Tom Lawry

8/30/2018

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If you have read any of my earlier musings, you are quite aware of my dedication to experiencing every psycho active substance known to man. This personal quest goes way beyond mere experimentation and deep into the realm of full scale research. My first hallucinogenic journey still stands out as not only the most bizarre, but also the least understood of all my trips. To this day, when the three of us who took this drug together attempt to discuss what we believe actually happened that night, we still have a difficult time differentiating reality from hallucination, but here’s how I remember it.
 
It all started the day that Texas Tom moved to town. Tom was a short kid with a heavy Texas drawl and he brought with him stories of a powerful hallucinogenic drug none of us had ever heard of, named Marezine, which was an over the counter sea sickness medication available in most drug stores and super markets. Tom explained that we would need to take an entire box (12 pills), but promised a trip like no other. Keep in mind that we grew up in the Pop-A-Chocks era and truly believed that anything approved by the FDA couldn’t really hurt you, so we figured, “Why the hell not?”
 
Kramer, Miller and I gathered at Kramer’s house and proceeded to each take a box full. I believe what happened next was that we all fell asleep. We awoke to a raging party going on in Kramer’s house and everyone we knew was in attendance. The crazy thing was that none of us thought we were high and in fact, we thought the drug hadn’t worked. How wrong we were. 
 
I’m guessing it was sort of like a mass hallucination. When one of us would say, “Hey there’s Watson”, the rest of us would also see that person. I remember searching for a match and then finding a grocery bag full of match packs, but when I’d reach into the bag, I wasn’t able to pull anything out. The hallucinations just kept getting stranger and all the while, we just accepted the weird event and moved on to the next as if it was somehow normal.
 
After a while, we decided that we would take a walk along the greenbelts to see what was going on out there. When we arrived at the Robinson’s house, we noticed a large party going on in their backyard and decided to go around front and invite ourselves in. When we rang the doorbell, Mrs. Robinson (no pun intended), answered in her nightgown and asked what we were doing there at this late hour, to which we answered that we’d like to come to their party, to which she replied “I think you boys should go home now”. 
 
By the time we got back to Kramer’s house, the sun was starting to come up and things just kept getting weirder. The party was still raging, but I decided that I had better make my way home to get ready for school. When I walked out to my car, I discovered that it was hooked up to a tow truck and about to be towed away. I ran back into the house to tell my friends what had happened, but when I brought them out to show them, the tow truck had disappeared and my car was just sitting there right where I had parked it. I concluded that this was just a close call and proceeded to drive myself home. Along the way, I found myself running over pedestrians, skateboarders and bicyclists, each time slamming on my brakes in the middle of the road, getting out of my car and looking underneath to discover that my victim had magically disappeared. I remember feeling a huge sense of relief that I had not actually run someone over, without actually realizing that I was high.
 
I have tried many other hallucinogenic drugs since then, but I have never experienced the sort of realistic hallucinations that I did that evening. I don’t regret the experience, but I can tell you one thing for sure, I would never do it again. It’s like I always say 

“I’ll try anything once, Dude”
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    About Wali,
    The Grateful Dude

    In my formative years, I was lucky enough to attend an amazing high school modeled after the freedom school from the Billie Jack films. The curriculum included outdoor education, pottery and organic farming and emphasized values like creativity, self awareness and a strong sense of community. I spent several summers traveling from show to show with The Grateful Dead and found that not only could I beat the crap out of a plastic bucket in a drum circle, I was also quite the imported beer salesman. My early career started off in the eighties driving limousine for posers, drug dealers and wannabe rock stars in Los Angeles. In the late eighties, I was introduced to the former owner of Paradise Lakes Nudist Resort who had just seduced and proposed to my roommate while she was on vacation in Florida. Fred took me aside one afternoon  and told me, “I like you, kid and since I’m taking your roommate and I’m pretty sure you can’t afford this beach rental on your own, why not come on out to Florida? I’ll find you a place to stay, give you a job and you’ll be surrounded by naked women”. So I loaded up my truck and moved to Paradise. Lakes, that is. Swimmin’ pools. Porno stars. (insert banjo solo here).

    I wake up every morning (well almost every morning) knowing that today is a wonderful gift to be unwrapped and explored. I believe that every day is filled with limitless possibilities and endless abundance. I’m convinced that our true purpose in life is to interact with our fellow beings and give witness to this amazing universe that surrounds us.

    If you are searching for miracles in life, you need go no farther than your backyard to realize that we are living in the midst of the greatest miracle of all.

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