like yesterday’s Planet 13 soiree. At the end of the mall-sized dispensary, you entered through a phone booth to access a “secret” dab bar speakeasy decked out in huge psychedelic murals. Everything was built for trippiness. Smash Bros tournament. AI-illustrat- ed vortex room. Fieen-foot tall decorative bong. Handful of beaming planets that oat out to epic music, ala Rainfor- est Café. We'd roasted a Khalifa Kush blunt in a small private alcove, and escaped once again from this harsh, goddamn reality…. ankfully few people passed through the hotel garden. Avoid eye contact … But the scene was obvious and could not be helped, three junkies clearly all in the same party but weirdly all over the place, at least 20 feet apart, all smoking to themselves … Huxley, gaz- ing up near the waterfalls, Ford slumped over on a bench, me, locked in at the fountain. All of us disheveled, refugees.
It was a moment of strategic resolve, where, aer braving the rst huge vibration, you fool yourself into thinking you know how big the peak will be, so you take more. Not because you've already seen the mountaintop but you assume you might as well shoot for higher, you can handle it . A pack of four tablets was the equivalent of 2g shrooms. How many had we eaten? Why not be responsible adults rst, we agreed. We laid out all the inebriants. Charged the vape batteries. ere was a natural urge to crush the Adderall like the old days but we elected to swallow them instead. In that stretch of brief clarity, we madly insulated ourselves -- with whatever waning coordination could be mustered – against miss- ing our morning ights, knowing full well that the night would stretch right up to the moment of departure. en… we ate more Shrüms. All of this while asking, we need to go, are we going? Are we ready? We lost no less than an hour of time into thin air. Each of us traveling peaks and valleys. e aershocks were escalating, higher and higher – visions, recollections and wild imagination. It was absolutely imperative that I pack more
“We can’t stay in the same place too long,” Huxley nally said. “We’re a security risk .” Reluctantly we began the crawl back. On the way we overheard a group behind us remark- ing how, this day in age, "some people are sober-curious." Ford couldn't help but mutter in return, “Oh, sobriety? Oh no, you don't want to do that," which prompted a longer philosophi- cal discussion… Maybe there’s a charitable saint out there who wants to keep others from going sober (“have you completely thought this through”)? A hotline where you call to discuss the decision? We wandered, mercilessly fried, into detours, back through the Flamingo. “Oh thank God," I gasped aloud when two women barely missed joining us on the elevator. Nobody rushed to hold the door. We were about to gak the fuck out–and proceeded to, for 20 straight stories up. Absolutely lost it . I didn’t dare look around for cameras. ey were watching. Back in the room, we agreed to actually try to attend the party. But now that we were riding the ripsaw, the temptation to eat even more of these mushroom tabs could not be resisted.
108 MARCH/APRIL 2026
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