Class of '88

by Wayne Anthony

  My face must have donned a look of total fear because the green grass seemed to be approaching far too fast. Suddenly I hit, safely, and rolled over. A minute later Keith landed near to me and fell over. A freak breeze filled his chute and dragged him along the dirt. I got a vision of him being seriously hurt, but even so couldn’t stop myself from creasing up in laughter. Keith sprang up straight away and then Steve came down and landed on his feet – flash git!

  Keith and I were going berserk. We’ve done it, and we’re alive! Yeeesss!!

  To completely understand this inspiring but terrifying experience, try to multiply a normal parachute jump by 50, then throw in some extra-special effects for good measure. We were heroes, man! Top buzzers, extreme to the max! The girls gave us a full Italian job that night, but when the LSD wore off I made a solemn oath not to jump tripping from a plane again. I told my mum what I had done (leaving out the tab bit, obviously) and she nearly fainted. Keith and I never challenged each other again – fuck that! Life is a learning process and I strongly wish to continue it …

  FIRST TRIP

  I took my first trip in 1984 when LSD was a lot stronger than the crap around today. Just like Ecstasy in 1988, it was purer and cleaner than it is now. I dropped it with some friends who had tripped before on many occasions.

  We went to score the Superman blotting paper in a large abandoned bus station in Hackney. My friends had scored some strong shit there only recently, so we knew there was some. The whole building resembled a scene from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Hippies had taken over the depot and made it into their temporary home. There were coaches and caravans scattered around the place, small children were playing, bonfires blazing and a flower power family were doing t’ai chi exercises.

  We walked into one of the building’s offices and found the people inside it sitting in a circle on cushions. The room was cluttered with spiritual paraphernalia from around the globe. Our new hosts invited us to sit down and join them on their magical journey throughout the cosmos. The aroma of incense filled the air and we were just in time for a toke on the massive joint that was going round.

  We bought a trip each and washed it down with a pils. Our hosts were already tripping and totally chilled. After the big spliff had gone around three times, we quickly got stoned. At this stage, the LSD was starting to take effect. One of the hippies was advising us to think nothing but good thoughts and think of the trip as a life-enhancing experience. He told me to look out for colours and the energy fields around plants and life forms.

  I was eighteen and from the hood and, although my mother raised us with all the love a child could ask for, I really didn’t give a bollocks about energy fields and the cosmos. I wanted to see mad, terrifying hallucinations, the kind that send your pulse racing and your heart pounding. I wanted the full Monty: a hands-on virtual-reality experience in a twilight world.

  However, the good karma being produced by our environmentally sussed buddies managed to keep the horrors at bay. I did learn something that day, and that was how to appreciate a really good trip. Dropping a tab in a warehouse party with untold people having it around you is a trip in itself, but this was different: these guys seemed to be having astrally projected group meetings on another plane! I reckon the hippies of the Sixties could teach us a thing or two about evolution and spirituality.

  I did see Conan the Barbarian in full Technicolor, however. He stepped out of the wall, and although my sight was blurred I could still clearly see him. He raised his sword and swung it around in slow motion. He was sweating and didn’t smile. As soon as I blinked, he disappeared.

  On the way home we walked through a park called London Fields. When I was a child growing up in the area, I heard stories of bubonic-plague victims being buried deep beneath the park’s green grass. Tales of people being harassed by bad spirits were commonplace. Unless you crossed the green with a group of friends, you would hardly dare think of walking across the grass unarmed, at night, on your own.

  My mates and I were winding each other up and trying to bring out the dark side in the Acid. It was 2 a.m. so the park was dead quiet, except for us lot laughing and acting like prats. There was a railway bridge and some alleyways on the other side of the green, and a speeding train was passing over the visible section of the bridge. It caught my attention because I couldn’t hear any sound coming from the train.

  The train was only a few hundred yards away, so we should definitely have been able to hear it. I pointed it out to the others and we tried our hardest to listen out for any engine noises coming from the train’s direction. We looked at each other and burst into laughter, then when we looked back at the track the train had gone.

  Standing where the train had been was the dark shadow of a tall man. He was facing our way. We walked towards the eerie figure to check if it was real, but as we got closer he just vanished into thin air, which freaked us out. We hightailed it out of the Fields as quickly as possible, tripping one another up on the way.

  For eight solid hours we laughed hysterically for no apparent reason and, in the morning, my stomach ached like mad. I was told it was because of the speed in the Acid. I’ve never liked speed and have only sampled it once. It’s a horrible drug with bad comedowns. The only time I took it, I sniffed a line of top-quality stuff called Pink champagne and almost chewed my tongue to bits. I ground my teeth together pretty much nonstop for six hours.

  The speed comedown was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I had terrible pains in my stomach and felt really depressed. I called one of my pals, who was a speed freak, and asked him if it was normal for me to be feeling like shit. He said it was how most people felt after a night on the whizz.

  I’ve always viewed taking drugs as a recreational pastime to enjoy with your mates. I can’t see the point in taking a stimulant that makes you physically or mentally unstable the following day. I’ve never gone anywhere near speed since and never will, and the same goes for smack. There are some things I just don’t want to know about.

  ENIGMA

  I shall never forget the day I witnessed an ex-girlfriend, Zoe, have a bad trip. I mean, I’ve heard some wild stories in my time but this one is definitely up there with the best of them. While out and about one night, I was introduced to a pretty girl whom I immediately clicked with. One thing led to another, and we spent the following two weeks together.

  As we were getting used to each other, and covering just about every conversational topic on the planet, the subject of LSD came up and we discussed our past tripping experiences. She had had her last tab a year before and thoroughly enjoyed it. Around then, there were some really strong tabs called Pink Floyds on the market. Zoe suggested that we trip together, but only if we found a Floyd. I agreed, and we spent the next two weeks looking for someone who sold them. Finally, we tracked someone down and bought three at a fiver each. As we pulled up back at Zoe’s place, my pal Danny was just coming out of the block, and I invited him to come and trip with me and Zoe.

  Zoe was a musician who always played loud music. She lived and breathed music. She shared a flat with her good friend, Paula, who was a couple of years older than her. Paula didn’t take LSD but had no objections to us doing it. Danny was up for it, and we all dropped the tiny square of blotting paper around midnight.

  Within ten minutes we were laughing hysterically. My cheeks and stomach were hurting from laughing so much. Now, I’ve had loads of trips in the past but I knew that this one was very strong and could feel the effects intensifying. This was going to be a top buzz and, as we planned to stay in for the evening and nobody was going to see us, it didn’t matter how messy we got.

  Twenty minutes had passed when Zoe got up and left the room. Danny and I were still laughing our heads off for no apparent reason, but Zoe wasn’t gone for very long before I began to wonder where she’d disappeared to. I got up to see where she’d gone and looked into her bedroom. The light was off and Seal’s track ‘Killer’ was playing softly in the backgro
und. Zoe had thousands of pounds’ worth of recording equipment in her bedroom. The little red lights were all on and it looked like an aeroplane cockpit. Turning the light on, I saw Zoe huddled up in the corner on top of her bed. I asked her if she was OK and she said no. She was shaking uncontrollably so I went over and hugged her.

  Zoe looked at me, said ‘Oh, it’s you. I love you’ and grabbed hold of my head and bit me hard on the cheek. She then apologised and wrapped her arms around me. Seconds later, she bit me again. Although I knew she was a horny chick, this wasn’t sexual. It was far more serious than it seemed.

  I called out to Paula for some orange juice. The vitamin C in the juice brings the drug down, but it’s a long process. However, orange was the only source of vitamin C available to us. She brought a glassful, which I tried to make Zoe drink, but she kept biting the glass really hard. I thought it would break, so I took it from her. She began screaming ‘Enigma, enigma!’ at the top of her voice and called out for Paula while telling me to leave the room.

  My main goal was to calm Zoe down but this really wasn’t working, so I went into the front room where Danny and Paula were sitting. I told Paula that she was having a bad trip and to try to make her drink some orange. By now, Zoe was screaming her head off. Danny and I were staring silently at one another. I was thinking: Shit, I can’t believe this is happening. Paula was in the room with her for a matter of minutes when Zoe suddenly shouted at her to get out. I heard a loud crash and bang, and headed for the bedroom. Paula came out and told me to leave Zoe alone, adding that she did this sort of thing quite a lot.

  In my experience of taking trips, you don’t leave somebody on their own when they are having a bad one: fuck that! I tried the door and found it was now locked. I could hear her crying inside, and booted the wooden door in. To my horror, Zoe had smashed up her recording equipment and was sitting on the floor completely naked. There was some kind of solid plastic thing in her hand, with which she was scraping herself across the chest. Blood was seeping from her wounds, and the situation was critical enough for me to decide that we had to call an ambulance.

  By now, Zoe was really trying to hurt herself – and me. I let go of one of her arms for a moment and she scratched me down the face. My whole cheek stung because sweat was running into the bloody lines on my face. I had to hold both of her arms tight to keep us from even greater damage. The recording equipment was the most important thing in Zoe’s life, but she had really gone to town on smashing it to pieces. There was even a chair embedded in the mixing desk. I didn’t particularly care about her stuff, however. My main concern was to get her better. I knew I had to get her to hospital.

  Holding Zoe down on the bed with all my strength, I told Paula to call an ambulance and tell them she was having a bad trip. Danny came walking into the bedroom and I yelled at him to get out. My girlfriend was naked: I didn’t want anyone to see her like this. Danny just looked at me oddly and ran out of the front door of the flat.

  I shouted to Paula to help put some clothes on her before the ambulance came, but she just stood at the door, staring at us. Zoe, her best friend, had lost it, but Paula was doing nothing to help her. Every time I let Zoe go she would punch me in the face or headbutt the wall. She kept screaming ‘Enigma’ and other things that made no sense to me. I couldn’t believe Paula wasn’t helping me. I was tripping off my nut while all this was going on, but still somehow managing to focus on what was happening. Then Paula said, ‘Don’t worry about getting her dressed. Just take her down the hospital as she is.’ Anger filled my body and I wanted to let go of Zoe and clump her, except that hitting women isn’t my thing. Friendship is a serious thing and Paula had just miserably failed a big test.

  I tried to dress Zoe in some tracksuit bottoms, but she was kicking and moving around too much. Paula simply went into the front room and stayed there. After an hour, the emergency services turned up and the ambulanceman walked into the bedroom, which by now was a total mess, with virtually everything broken. The ambulanceman surveyed the scene. I had huge gouges and teeth marks in my cheeks, and Zoe was naked with blood trickling down her breasts. He said there was no way he could take her as she was and we’d have to telephone the police. I didn’t mind getting the Old Bill involved, but how could he say he wasn’t taking her to hospital? I looked at him with blood running down my face, and said, ‘You ARE taking her, mate!’

  The ambulanceman could tell by the dark look in my eyes that I was at breaking point. He agreed to take her, and we tried to pick her up. Zoe had always been a strong girl, but now she was tripping she had super-strength. Quickly, I took hold of her legs while the medic grabbed her arms. Placing a blanket over her body, we began to carry her to the ambulance.

  Everybody in the whole block of flats seemed to be standing by their windows or outside their front door, watching Zoe screaming, kicking and punching. We got her into the vehicle and, as there was only one paramedic, I had to hold her down in the back of the ambulance. The hospital was ten minutes away and she screamed constantly for the whole time. By now I was genuinely worried for her sanity. When we arrived at casualty, four porters had to be called to carry her inside. They were amazed: here was a beautiful woman, completely naked, going utterly apeshit and yelling about world peace, for some reason. We carried her into a curtained cubicle, where the porters put her down and left us alone.

  Three doctors came in with an injection to reduce the effect of the LSD. We all had to pin her down before they could administer the medication. Then the doctors left me alone with Zoe again. She was still going mental and I had to hold her arms the whole time. While all this was going on, I was hallucinating on my own LSD trip. Everything I looked at started to change colour. Then, suddenly, the sound of Zoe screaming snapped me out of it: she was screaming ‘Fuck me! Fuck me!’ and every other obscenity you can think of. I tried to shut her up, but it was impossible.

  The doctors came back into the cubicle to give Zoe another injection and a bad thing happened. One of the nurses was short and not exactly an oil painting. As I loosened my grip on Zoe’s wrist for just a second, she suddenly screamed ‘You ugly dwarf!’ and punched the nurse full in the face.

  I grabbed Zoe’s arm to make sure it didn’t happen again, and I couldn’t apologise enough to the nurse: her face was red-raw where she’d been hit. She was cool about it, and approached us for the second time. Wham! Zoe kicked her hard in the legs and the poor nurse fell over and immediately called for help.

  About seven nurses now came running in and took hold of Zoe’s arms and legs. The doctor then gave her another injection, at which Zoe told him he was gorgeous and kept calling for him to come back. She calmed down a bit now, but was still trying to hurt herself at every opportunity.

  By now my arms were aching like mad, I had sweat soaking through my clothes and was tripping off my nut. The funny thing was how focused I remained and that I knew exactly what was going on: they were trying to preserve the sanity and safety of my girlfriend. I fully understood what the doctors were trying to achieve even though everything else was going haywire. Colours were changing, walls moving, and I could hear every single sound in casualty. In the cubicle next to ours was a man who, by the sound of it, was in serious trouble. At one point his heart machine stopped and around ten medics went in to try to resuscitate him. I could hear women crying and being comforted by sobbing men. I knew that one thing was for sure: everyone must have heard Zoe’s screams. I felt so ashamed. We were two young, healthy people who were in casualty only because one of us was having a bad trip. We were wasting the time of doctors who could be treating genuinely sick people.

  A telephone rang and a doctor answered it and said there was nobody called Wayne in casualty. I told the doc that it was me and he handed me the phone. It was Danny calling to see if we were OK. I told him that Zoe had quietened down but I was now tripping big time and needed to see a friendly face. He said he was on the way and would only take fifteen minutes.

  Meanwhile,
Zoe was in a deep sleep and, for the first time in five hours, I was able to take a rest. I sat in the waiting room, reflecting on what we were going through and wondering if Zoe would be affected by the delay in bringing her down from the drug. Half an hour passed, then, at 5.30 a.m., a scream rang around the hospital corridors. I rushed back to Zoe’s cubicle.

  She was awake and rolling around on the floor, shouting my name. I turned her over on to her back and held her arms. She was possessed like the girl from The Exorcist and kept yelling obscenities as loud as possible. There was a drip inserted into her arm and every time I loosened her grip she’d try to twist it around in her arm. I was terrified because I knew if she ruptured her vein we’d be in serious shit.

  The head doctor came back in and said that they had already given Zoe the maximum possible dose of sedative according to normal medical guidelines. He called a senior doctor at another hospital to ask whether it was safe to give her any more, and was told to go ahead with extreme caution. An army of doctors arrived and gave her yet another injection.

  She finally fell asleep and I was relieved that she was out like a baby. The doctors wanted to keep her in for observation. I left my jacket by her side so that, when she woke up in hospital, she wouldn’t be too shocked and would see something she could connect with me and know I was still there.

  Danny had arrived and was sitting in the waiting room. I asked him why he’d left me at the house. He said that when he’d walked, while tripping, into the room where Zoe and I were struggling with each other he’d thought I was raping her. He’d decided to get out as soon as possible, flagged a taxi down and made his way home. While in transit, he’d seen speeding police cars going in the direction of where he’d just come from, and thought they were coming for me! By the time he got home he was in a panic. It took him five hours to calm down and think rationally. At which point, he realised that I would never do something like that and rang the hospital.