I could hear them calling for me, but I couldn’t speak or move

I went to college in Providence, RI. I lived in Xavier hall, which was the ghetto dorm. And in case you didn’t know, Providence is crack central of the US, beating out Washington D.C. for that distinction. My roommate smoked crack, but that’s a whole other story.

Half-way through my first freshman trimester, I got kicked out of Xavier hall, and had to move. On the nights I wanted to hang out with my friends that lived in Xavier, one of them would have to run down stairs to the front desk to distract the security guard. Then someone else would kick open the door so I could run in. And if we did it fast enough, the alarm wouldn’t go off. (We found this out by trial and error early in the year as a way to sneak beer upstairs).

One night I was bored and, with the help of my friends Chaz and Rick, I snuck in. We went up to Chaz’s room on the 3rd floor. At that point in the year, I had 1 strike left on my probation, and if I was caught in Xavier, I’d get a $400 trespassing fine and have to leave school.

"Chaz" and Rick decided to trip on acid. Long story short, I snuck back out to pick up 8 geltabs, and snuck back in. Rick took 2 and left us, I never saw him for the rest of the night. Chaz and I took 3 each. I weighed about 135lbs and it was my 1st time tripping. BIG MISTAKE.

After an hour or so, I started to feel the effects. My mind went cloudy and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. We watched some Clockwork Orange. But I shut it off because I felt like I was going to cry. We then threw Tide all over Chaz’s walls and turned on the black light. Still not content, we started throwing Tide all over each other. We were a mess.

We cleaned off in the bathroom (there is ONE bathroom on every floor that everyone must share), I had to run out of his room to go across the hall to the bathroom, and try not to get caught on camera. It took me about 30 minutes to walk 5 feet.

Back in Chaz’s room we were chilling out to some Floyd and then he put in Insane Clown Posse. I don’t think I could listen to these "clowns" sober, let alone on a mega dose.

Around 2am I was bugging the fuck out. I kept thinking to myself that the RA's are going to find my ass and kill me. I was literally in tears, then....

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

The mother fucking fire alarm went off! What should I do? The way I saw it, I had two options: 1) Evacuate with everyone else and try to sneak past 2 RA's on every floor. 2) Stay upstairs and wait for the Fire Department to shut the alarm off and let everyone in.

But what if it was a real fire?

A thousand things were running through my fried head. Its one thing to be tripping balls, it’s another thing to be tripping balls and making (potentially) life or death decisions.

So Chaz says, "Stay here!" Like a monkey, I nodded my head and he ran out the door. I was alone in the dark, a mess, about to either get burned or have a heart attack.

What now, you ask?

I heard the RA's going from room to room making sure everyone was out. I had about 5 seconds to hide. I ran into his wooden dresser-closet type thing, it was about 6 foot high by 2 feet wide and about 2 feet deep. I jumped in and did my best to hold the door shut. The RA's came in, briefly and then left. After 15 minutes with my knees to my chin sitting in this closet, I realized I was alone in this possibly burning building. I got out and started pacing back and forth. I was seeing about a million different colors and shapes. In all the confusion, I noticed that there were several fire trucks outside. It seemed like far too many if it were just a false alarm. I started to panic and stuck my head out the window in an attempt to see if there were flames in the sky. My senses were so fucked up that I knew I wouldn’t be able to smell smoke even if I was on fire.

I didn’t see any flames or smoke outside. Then my mind started playing tricks on me. I saw the room fogging up, I thought I smelled fire. I contemplated jumping out the window.

Too high. Fuck!

I decided to sit back in the closet. It was made of wood and wood doesn’t burn right? der. As I got in, I bumped the back of the closet. It shook, knocking a shit load of books and cds off the top that fell to the floor in front of the door.

All this shit got wedged between the closet and another dresser cramming the door SHUT.

You think I am bullshiting? I am not.

I was in such an awkward position that I couldn’t force the door open. So now.... I am trapped in a box, tripping my face off for the first time, with a possible fire about to take my life, in a place that is "illegal" for me to be. If I had a gun I probably would have killed my self.

Another half hour passed as I slowly came closer and closer to losing my mind.

Then I started having trouble breathing. I was convinced that I was going to die, and that’s when I started to hit my peak. For those of you who do not know, the peak is the midway point of the trip where you get the most out of the acid and everything reaches an extreme level of intensity.

I passed out soon after.

The next thing I knew I heard the sound of Chaz and his roommate coming back into the room screaming my name. I was still not doing well. Even though I could hear them calling for me, I couldn’t speak or move.

I hear: "Oh shit!" as Chaz saw the closet and figured out where I was.

He opened the door. I opened my eyes. Neither of them said a word. Nor did I.

I stretched out my legs and just sat there in silence for about 15 minutes.

Thinking you are going to die really takes its toll on you. When I finally stumbled out of the closet I didn’t know where to begin telling them what happened.

[read part 2 here.]