It Happened To Me: I Painted My Dad's Kitchen High On Acid

What's the worst that could happen when you give a teenager a powerful hallucinogenic drug, a ladder, and a bunch of paint?

Hello honeys,

A sweet reader wrote me yesterday with some potential It Happened To Me stories. (If you haven't submitted one yourself yet, go for it! Send your IHTM articles to me, Jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com. I'll respond right away and the whole process is a cathartic and potentially money-making endeavor — like therapy you're getting paid for. Plus, then you get all kinds of sympathy and support in the comments — all part of the IHTM package!) The reader yesterday wrote in her cover letter that she realized that her last round of IHTM submissions had not been the right tone, because they were not “sad enough”. So I wanted to correct that impression and show by example — with this magnificent entry by Andy below — that an It Happened To Me can take on absolutely any tone or subject matter at all, as long as it happened to you. Depth and sadness not required.

I love you all and I hope you enjoy this story and today! Go Andy!

Jane

Me, just barely graduating high school before I went on to a life of crime. I'm not high in this picture either, but God I wish I was because commencement was BORING. In fact, I avoided cameras like the scourge they are for most of my life. That's why you get four shitty pictures that have literally nothing to do with me painting a kitchen while tripping balls.

By Andy Finley

God, I loved acid.

I don’t mean that I really liked it. I loved it. I loved the way the universe made sense, all at once. The euphoria. The sensory overload. Knowing there’s nothing wrong with anything. Acid isn’t a drug — it’s therapy.

Six months after I quit drinking, I started doing acid. By the time I was 17, I kept landing in emergency rooms because every time I drank the pain in my stomach was unbearable. I drank liquor because I wasn’t one of those pussies who drank beer and thought they were somebody.

The upside to burning hot and bright is the excitement. The downside is flaming out too quickly. I had to stop drinking because I just … had to. There was no great epiphany or sense that I was destroying my life. As the old saying goes, when the pain gets bad enough, you’ll do something about it.

But, I had to have something. The power of self-justification is strong. When I was drinking myself into oblivion, I opined about how I didn’t do drugs because I wasn’t a fucking dirtbag. Fast forward six months after I quit drinking and I’d say, “Sure, I’m taking drugs, but at least I’m not drinking. That shit almost killed me.”

My best friend in high school, Antonio, turned me onto acid. He was my connection whenever it was time to get my freak on. The first time I did it was the night before I got on a plane to fly to Alaska for my third season working at Denali National Park. Flying while enduring an acid hangover is not something I recommend.

The acid trip I’m thinking about right now didn’t involve airliners and bemused ticket agents, this one concerns the time I painted my father’s kitchen while tripping balls.