KO PHA NGAN

I grew up with parents that were very open-minded and fun. I was allowed to have parties at my house (they were going to an hotel for the night to leave it to me) and I always felt that they were trusting my judgement in every situations. I was always allowed to do mistakes -as long as I was learning from it. There was only one clear rule that my mom put in place from the start: do not do any drugs or i kick you out of the house. She didn’t care if my friends were doing it - she just didn’t want her daughters to be involved. I learned, later on, that her experiences with drugs were very very bad - her brother had schizophrenia that got triggered by the usage of pot and she also saw some of her friends lost potential because drugs overuse made them lazy asses. She just didn’t want her daughters to not become the best versions of themselves.

In the end, she did very well at making drugs look unnecessary to us- with the freedom of hosting parties without a chaperone and being allowed to sleep at our friends place (boys or girls) without having to report- we felt great enough that we actually didn’t care for trying drugs at all. I, in fact, grew an aversion for it and was slapping my friends and telling them how stupid they were every time I saw them smoke.

One day we were at an open-house party and I was about to slap my best friend because he just popped a pill but he stopped me dead in my track by telling me that I wasn’t allowed to condemn something I never had tried before. I have no clue why, but it resonated with the rebel teenager I was- after all, the thing I hated the most was being told not to do something without having a clear reason why. I always wanted to know the reasons behind things. I took a deep breath and decided that; that year, I would try a few different drugs just to see what they were all about. A purely scientific experience to give me some ammunition for when I wanted to slap people. I started that very night -with LSD. I know what you are thinking -why the fuck did I started with something so hard. Well the answer is I didn’t knew the difference. I thought that all the drugs were equally bad.

I remember being with my friend Melodie, at the time. She agreed to jump in the trip with me. We found a guy selling it at the party and both had to put a small cardboard piece on our tongue, under his directive. He then put one drop of liquid on the paper in my mouth. Than he tried to do the same for Melo but the little flask he was holding was now empty. He searched his pocket and found a second flask -put one drop on Melo’s tongue and left. We both swallowed the paper and went back to the party.

It took about 45 minutes for me to start noticing that I was high. I was sitting in front of the fire, outside, and the smoke was changing colours from grey to bright purple to tints of pinks and oranges. Everything was so beautiful and made me uncontrollably happy. Melo was clearly high too, by then, because we started laughing for no reason for about 10 minutes. Then, I remember the hallucinations becoming more extreme. I was looking at my thigh and on it there was a concert venue seen from above, with a very tiny Celine Dion waving at me. I kept laughing, not because it didn’t make sense -at the time it didn’t even cross my mind- but just because I thought this was so cool and funny. I remember looking up to tell Melo to look at my thigh- but she was gone. I started walking, trying to find her in the massive backyard crowded with teenagers. About 5 minutes into my search, i had to stop to look at my feet because they were hurting like hell. One of them had an axe stuck into it. I wasn’t scared at first, not even surprised. It’s like I had a feeling of pain and now I just knew were it was coming from. I continued walking, laughing, and telling everyone that there was an axe in my foot. Until I finally found back Melo and she told me that I didn’t had anything in my feet. Turns out it was just super cold outside and my LSDeed brain filled the void with that story instead. As soon as Melo told me, the axe disappeared. But something else far more creepy was lurking around- Melo was not high anymore and I was just going up in intensity. We both thought that was very weird, so we found back the pusher who told us that he didn’t had enough LSD for the both of us -he gave Melo PCP instead. I had no clue what that meant, but turns out LSD trip last way longer. And like if the feeling of knowing i would be the only one high for hours wasn’t enough, the pusher told me “I hope you haven’t swallowed the paper- that shit can kill a horse”. And here was the beginning of my bad-trip -that lasted more then 48 hours in total.

I will not go in details here, but that was the first of a series of very bad experiences with drugs. I did end up trying many others -from weed and hash to pills- but only about two times did I end up liking it. Both times were because I had cook with weed, instead of smoking it. If I smoke it, I always end up feeling anxious and paranoid and I never enjoy the feeling. So yeah, Mommy was right. Maybe it is because I do not like not having control, but drugs are an absolute no go for me. I will stick to alcool as my main vice.

But how in the hell is this story linked to Thailand? Well, allow me to start from the beginning.

I arrived on the island of Ko Pha Ngan after an hour-long flight and an hour-long ferry ride. The island smelled like weed, I am not even joking. Everyone was sooo chill though, it was amazing to feel relax walking on empty streets and beaches, day or night. Weed is legal in Thailand, and I couldn’t forget as I crossed path with many weed cafe and weed farms along the way to my bungalow. I wanted to check-in but the owner wasn’t there so I dropped my bag in the lobby and decided to walk to go explore the beaches. It was beautiful and so relaxing. Very few tourists -I felt like I had my own private beach. After lunch, I went back to the bungalow and checked-in. The owner showed me a bike I could borrow the next day and told me that the previous guest had broke the toilet seat but that he would go buy a new one and install it today. I said thank you and continued my exploration of this part of the island. Ended up eating in a pizzeria on the beach and was in bed by 10pm -the toilet seat wasn’t fixed yet.

The next morning I woke-up early to go explore a bit further. I hop on the bike, wishing there would not be a lot of people on the road so I could get more familiar with it without being stressed by traffic. There was no one on the road, but the bike kept changing gear without me doing anything. Although this was kinda manageable, I decided to go back to the bungalow after the throttle handle stayed in my hand while i was going up an hill. So now both the bike and the toilet seat were broken. Went back to explore the island by foot- more beaches, small coffee shops and tattooed people everywhere. I really liked the vibe overall, although i couldn’t see myself live here forever. It’s almost as if everything was too chill for my personality.

During my three days on the island, I tried my best to adapt and just do nothing. Walk to a coffee shop in the morning, then go to the beach, then go eat again, back to the beach and so on ‘til sleep. I have to admit that it was very relaxing and I think my body unconsciously needed that. But I was also laughing at the fact people kept telling me they were going to fix things but they were so high all the time that nothing got fixed by the time I left.

On my last night I met with my neighbour, Dominik -he was smoking weed, laying in his hammock in front of his bungalow. I sat with him on his porch and we started talking about many things -including a bunch of drug trips. The conversation took this turn because Dom just came back from a weird chocolate ceremony that he described as similar to a DMT trip. So here me out, I do not do drugs but I still find everything around it so damn interesting. I am following this youtube channel where a girl and her brother test all the different kind of drugs but under medical supervision (they have sensors hooked on their head and body to monitor what is happening when they are on it). This is so interesting because it gives insight on both the feeling of the person getting high and what is actually happening in her brain and body. We discussed about this for a long time and it was so interesting for me to get the perspective of someone doing so many psychedelic drugs to get insight out of it. A part of me wish I could do that but my personality will turn any buzz into an anxious nightmare. There is no way -perhaps except if I am monitored by doctors- that I can have a nice trip without my brain bringing back all these times it wasn’t fine. I wanted to continue discussing with Dom, because he was interesting and so funny -but I started feeling very dizzy out of the sudden. I think it was a heat stroke from my day out in the sun. I tried to push through it for another hour but I was feeling so dizzy I finally had to tell Dom and walk back to my bungalow. I wish I had met him the first day I arrived, so we could have had the chance to hangout a bit more. We hugged good night and I passed out in my bed as soon as my head touched the pillow. The next morning, I woke-up top shape, thank the lord, because I had a 7 hours commute to my cottage in the jungle.