Downtown Alley

we had a friend
his name was mr. kelp
when we locked up all the doors he screamed for help
and we didn't care
we left him to die
with the crayfish and the flies and that's just fine
we didn't like you anyway

– Manuka Piglet, Mr. Kelp

I never read the book, only saw the movie. Wristcutters: A Love
Story has a really cool premise that haunts me occaisionally. The
story starts with the protagonist killing himself and waking up in the
afterlife. This afterlife is designed to be the perfect punishment for
suicides. Everything is the same as normal life, but just a little
worse.

I did my engineering undergrad at UCR. UCR uses a quarter system
instead of semesters. Classes are 10 weeks long with an additional
week for finals. I don't remember … and don't care to look this
up… I think the spring quarter has an additional week to account for
spring break. So the total duration of the spring quarter is 12 weeks.

Starting some time during the winter break before my last quarter, I
did what I believed to be LSD, 12 times in 15 weeks. I did acid
roughly once a weekend, skipping three. And then smoked so much weed
in the interim that I never seemed to come back all the way.

The visuals during those interims were much less intense, but they
were definitely still there. And then there was the delusions and the
paranoia. Before this acid binge, I had overdosed a few times. A
couple of those od's seemed like they were pretty close. I don't know
how I survived. I am not sure close I really was. But when the next
day, my arms and legs are constantly tingling and I could barely lift
them, that didn't seem good.

Or did I survive? What if one of those times I went on a death-wish
drinking binge, I actually accomplished what I was too afraid to
do myself? And how would I know the difference? This seemed to be an
unfalsifiable hypothesis. I don't know what death is like. Perhaps I
must assume I am both dead and not dead at the same time until an
observation can be made to confirm or invalidate the theory.

That made perfect sense to me- as I hotboxed my car in the parking lot
of my student apartment… just before the black cat from the album
cover for Fear Fun jump scares me. Wow, where did that come from? That
one was really vivid. Open eye visual, too.

And that would explain why people in class or in the study room seem
to all be saying these weird things. They seem to be talking about me
in a very indirect way. They appear to be talking about one thing,
criticizing how something is being done or how someone else is doing
something. But the criticism could also be applicable to me, kinda
sorta. These were conversations I only half overheared and tried
not to pay attention to. To make these criticisms applicable to me
required some contorting so I assumed that was paranoia. I also didn't
really know most of these people- didn't think they knew me that well.

…or I tried to dismiss those conversations as paranoia.

Unless they talk to each other about me and therefore have some idea
of me that way? …or if this is the afterlife and they are all some
sort of demonic entity and this is my punishment for being a bad
person. If they really had this many problems with me, to not tell me
directly is cruel… unless they didn't believe I would change… and
so they punish. Whether 'they' are actually my classmates or demonic
entities, …or undercover cops, or observers of some
experiment… but I'm not special. There's no reason for anyone to
waste that much time and effort on me. Unless with the internet, this
doesn't take that much effort? Or they are demons?

Was I that bad towards them? I tried to keep to myself most of the
time. I stayed in my apartment for the most part. Except for group
projects, senior design, mr. dealer man, going home on weekends to
hide there… the group projects and the senior design though. I made
a lot of stupid jokes and comments that probably pushed people
away. And then the robotics class. But I think with that group, that
was a legitimately difficult situation, trying to work together with
that many people, but only enough room for two to look at the screen
at a time.

Or was collaborating difficult because I was so high I rendered myself
totally incompetent…

I need to be more aware how the audience will interpret what I say. I
need to be more flexible, more willing to leave the safety safe to
work with their schedules. Need to be more willing to leave my comfort
zone to help with other parts of the project… But to remember in the
moment to not say the funny thing or to not default to staying in my
safety safe…

Or is this all hallucination? Probably good changes to try doing
anyways… if I can… But still, I am only noticing this while
extremly paranoid. No, this is what a bad trip does, reveal harsh
truths. Need to face them, need to accept them.

Sometime after these thoughts came another scary thought. I didn't
know how to interpret what anyone said. The different possibile
explanations, for why people were talking this way, each drastically
changed the context of what they said. And with that context, the
subtext of those conversations changed. I cannot tell which
interpretation is the speaker's intention and which is only an
artifact of my delusional thinking. Is that your criticism or my
self-hatred?

Another, scarier, thought. There were other variables that I didn't
know how to account for: tone, body language, what they know or don't,
their opinions or beliefs, etc… and all the combinations
therein. How to interpret what anyone said seemed to be a problem with
an infinite number of solutions. I couldn't see any criteria to use to
select an optimal solution…

If I can't understand what they are saying, I also cannot be sure how
they interpret what I am saying. I am not sure which context they view
the conversation and how they are reading me. I don't even know what
I've been telling them. Without knowing what they are saying, without
knowing what I am saying, I cannot trust them either. Whether they are
some sort of demonic hive mind or a group of classmates that
excommunicated me, the effect is still the same.

This must be the drugs. This is just intense paranoia. There's no way
I am that bad at reading people and only just now noticing
this… right? Remember feeling this same disconnect with the other
kids back in high school? Back in middle school? Back in elementry
school? Remember all those weird comments and jokes that felt hostile
but I couldn't tell why? …remember why drinking back in high school
felt like such a relief? Remember why dealing with other people was so
exhausting…

Remember why I wanted to do psychedelics in the first place? And when
that alone didn't seem to help, the reason for wanting to try inducing
a bad trip?

…because something always seemed to be kinda broken. Not broken
enough to be a major problem. But broken enough to be miserable. And I
wanted to either stop hating myself or become broken enough to justify
how much I do.

Here, at the last week of 2024, that acid binge and my subsequent
nervous breakdown was about ten and a half years ago. I'm about to
reach my second year of complete sobriety. For the longest time after
that breakdown, after talking about it with some of my therapists and
my parents, I had assumed that I was delusional. But the psychedelics
are long gone from my system and that disconnect is still there.

we had a friend
his name was mr. kelp
when we opened up his doors
he just killed himself
but he didn't care
he left us to cry in our milkshakes and fries
…

– Manuka Piglet, Mr. kelp