Ego Death.

Birthday.

Where the fuck is he?

I shifted my position in the driver's seat of my 2012 Toyota, sitting in a sketchy neighborhood, waiting for my dumbass brother to buy some drugs from his dealer.

"Bruh I'm sorry I took so long, we were catching up!" Jack said as he burst through the passenger side door.

"It's all good, let's just get out of here."

We headed back to my house to celebrate my 22nd birthday. It was already 8pm and we hadn't even done any drugs yet. It's going to be a long night. We had planned everything for us to trip on acid together, neither of us had ever done it before and we were both fucking stoked.

We walked into my house and saw the kitchen table that we had grown up eating at, a hand me down from my dad. This was "base" our car keys were staying there, snacks, water and most importantly Jack's seizure medication would be there. Jack was epileptic and we knew taking acid could make him have a seizure so we wanted to be prepared, luckily I'm a nurse and surely I won't get so fucked up that I can't manage a simple seizure, right?

"I'm going to bust out the cookies!" I announced as I headed into my bedroom. My friend, Izzy, had moved to California and sent me hella weed products from the recreational dispensary there, including these cookies. I popped 3 and went back in the living room to talk to Jack. We cheered and took our acid tabs together.

I waited and fucking waited for hours, NOTHING. I didn't feel shit. I was beginning to think Jack's dumbass drug dealer ripped us off.

"Do you feel anything?"

"I don't feel shit. Maybe it's like...genetic? Like some people don't react to it?" my brother suggested. I had never heard of that happening to anyone else before, but who the fuck knows.

"Let's smoke at least, it's almost midnight already," I pulled out a blunt that had been dipped in Keef oil from California. I had been saving this bitch.

After a few hits I realized I did not remember the occasion we were celebrating.

"Jack why the fuck are we celebrating again?"

"It's your birthday bro, you're fried," he laughed so hard that he was throwing his head back. I felt myself start to sweat. Damn I didn't think I would forget the fucking date and everything.

"Let's eat something," I suggested and I walked over to the kitchen table, opening up some peanut butter crackers. We both ate and laughed hysterically. Our mouths were numb. The nurse in me put the crackers down,

"This is probably low key a choking hazard because our mouths are numb, let's put these away."

Jack suggested that we go outside and enjoy nature and I loved the sound of that. We headed out my front door into the warm summer air. It was dark outside but there were street lights in my neighborhood. I felt myself starting to get paranoid about the shadows I would see in the bushes, in hindsight they were probably small animals, but at the time I was unsure.

I kept walking around with Jack, looking at the stars and seeing them move very quickly in a formation. It was mesmerizing. Everything was fine until I closed my eyes and opened them again and we were about a mile away from where we had been originally, I had no memory of walking there.

"When did we come here?" I asked Jack. Jack shrugged and said, 

"I don't remember."

I suggested that we go back inside and things started to go downhill from there. The time lapses kept happening and it was making me feel like I was losing my mind. Jack suggested that I take one of his seizure meds because although they help stop a seizure, they are also for anxiety. I said fuck it and swallowed one dry. We laid on my king sized bed in my room and shit started to get weird.

I felt scared. I called my girlfriend, Cameron, and told her what was happening. She spoke with me in a calm voice and tried to reassure me that all of this was temporary. I turned my head towards Jack and didn't recognize him as my brother. I couldn't remember who he was anymore. I just knew that I loved him. He was smiling and waving and having a grand time.

I closed my eyes and my vision cut out into another universe of some kind. A voice that I had never heard before came into my head,

"You have a control issue. Let go."

I had been fighting this for what felt like hours, but every time I looked at my phone it had only been 1 minute. I said "fuck it" and relaxed.

The next 12 or so hours were some of the craziest experiences of my life.