Okay, one more. Labor Day Weekend, 2002. I had just moved back to San Jose from Chico (I got kicked out of Chico State-apparently they prefer if you show up to class) and my buddies Pete and Mike were partying with me at my new apartment. I began drinking whisky at about noon and by evening, I was belligerent, surly, aggressive and borderline psychotic. Pete and Mike, in a brilliant moment of decision-making, decided that the best way to calm me down was to get me to drink more and take in as many drugs as I could in the hopes that I would quickly pass out since it was only nine pm and I was showing no signs of slowing down. Going out in public with me at that point was out of the question.
They ended up getting me to take a bunch of beer bongs that they secretly had dumped a bunch of Jim Beam into with the beer. By three am, I had taken three tabs of ecstasy (it was decided later on that it was pretty weak shit), eaten about a half eighth of mushrooms (I’d eaten a shitload in the past and built up an alarming tolerance, along with a general psyche pre-disposed to handling hallucinogens ably), I had about twelve Vicodines, I was chewing prescription muscle-relaxers like Flintstones vitamins, I was smoking weed at a prodigious rate, and I was chasing all this down with Sierra Nevada Pale Ales.
By 3am, I was finally calmed down, heavily slurring my words and still able to walk, but sluggish and docile. Somewhere along the line, we had decided to drive up to Chico to float down the Sacramento River on Labor Day (a long, debaucherous tradition-anyone from California reading this probably knows what I mean)the next morning.
We left at 7am for the three hour drive after finally passing out at 3am. I had a splitting headache, felt weak all over, needed food, and I suspected the shrooms were still running strong due to my questionable vision. Pete drove and nearly had a nervous breakdown while Mike and I openly drank beer and threw the bottles out the window on the freeway. On Highway 80, we ran out of beer and I insisted we pull over so I could get this huge jug of chopped fruit I had mixed with rum out of the trunk. Pete, in his infinite wisdom, pulled over ON THE FREEWAY. I got out, had a severe bout of lightheadedness and fell over. When I got up, my hangover disappeared when I realized a Highway Patrolman on his motorcycle was pulling up behind us. We were fucked, given that all of us were shitfaced again, I had a bunch of weed in my backpack, there were pills all over the car, and I was pretty sure there was still some ecstasy around somewhere.
The cop got off his bike and started walking toward us and then out of nowhere, he stops, says something into his radio, then turns around, runs back to his bike and takes off with the sirens going. We got the fuck out of there and jammed up to Chico. When we got there, it dawned on us that there was barely any room for inner tubes in the car. I decided to swim down the river without one. Here I am, beyond shitfaced, going into severe detox from all the drugs, I’m not in touch with reality at all, and I’m swimming down a rushing river with one hand held above the water the whole time to keep my cigarettes and weed dry and I’m using my other hand to alternately paddle and keep a two-liter bottle of Coke and rum with me. The cops kept coming up to me on their Waverunners and telling me to ditch the cigarettes and save myself. I kept telling them to fuck off and that I had once swam all the way to Hawaii. When we finally got to the end, I went into a blackout and woke up in Pete’s car hours later in the middle of Sacramento. He and Mike had decided to stop at a friend’s house for the night because they were too twisted to drive and I was babbling incoherently about some chick who refused to suck my dick while a bunch of dudes from Girls Gone Wild filmed. I found out later that I was the life of the party on the river, but the tone of voice they used when telling me this made me suspect otherwise.
I had no clue where they were or where I was so I staggered down to 7-11 (it’s now about 3am) and demanded that the cashier tell me what city I was in. When he told me Sacramento, I flipped out and the cops got called and I got arrested. The hangover the next morning in the drunk tank was monumental…