Halloween and highness go together like cannabinoids and human brains, which occasionally interact in ways that add up to TERROR!!!, or at least light paranoia and fear. This is due to THC’sinteraction with the amygdala, AKA the part of the brain that oversees emotional processing, which cannabinoids can effectively trick into sending out errant warnings of danger, leaving the brain’s owner to invent reasons to be afraid. It’s a kooky loop, and thankfully, it can be avoided—or at least lessened—in a variety of ways. (Play offense by choosing a strain noted for anti-anxiety properties, and if you need to play defense, help yourself out of a fear spiral with carefully deployed black pepper or CBD.) But enough about brains. In honor of Halloween and cannabis and the pleasures of watching other people live through nightmares, here is the fourth and final installment of Tales of Terrifying Highness: Dante Jordan’s…
Gravity Bong or PORTAL TO HELL??
Do you know what a gravity bong is? A gravity bong is basically a water bottle with a hole in the bottom and a makeshift bowl on the cap. You place the water bottle into a water bucket of some sort, pack and light the bowl, then slowly pull the bottle out of the bucket, creating a vacuum that renders the biggest hit imaginable. A gravity bong is also, as I learned, a portal to Hell.
Gather ’round, friends. It’s story time.
It was a normal college day in Norman, Oklahoma, where I had decided to skip Chemistry to get high and stuff my face with food. My homeboy Mike was the go-to guy for all things cannabis, so I headed over to his house for a litte seshy sesh. It just so happens on this day he needed to re-up, so he’s like, “Wanna roll with me and then we’ll go scoop up some food after?” I’m like hell yeah I do. What else am I going to do, sit around and wait for the next class that I’m going to skip? We out.
So we head over to the ultra-plug’s house and I figure I’ll just wait in the car on some Hey, I’m a Black Man Just Tryna Mind My Own Business shit, but Mike invited me in just in case we smoked a blunt or something. And like a rat to peanut butter, I was like for sure.
Bruh. We walk into the crib and I see, against the wall in a living room, a stack of storage containers FULL of nugs, piled to the goddamn ceiling. I repeat: BRUH. I’d never seen so much green in my whole entire life, and it was 47 feet away from a college campus. Wasn’t selling drugs near a school, like, quadruple illegal? I initially thought, “Wow, that’s dumb as fuck,” but who am I to question white privilege?
So we sit down, Mike introduces me to ol’ boy Seth, and we’re just cooling out. I’m cracking jokes about the beanstalk against the wall, and of course everyone’s laughing because I’m funny as fuck.
Mike gets what he needs to get, and Seth is like “Yo, y’all want a GB?”
I got hit with the biggest cloud of smoke that has ever grazed my esophagus.
I’m like “A GB? The fuck is that?” If they would’ve told me “The end of life as you know it,” I probably would’ve skipped it in favor of the blunt session that me and homies would surely have later. But no. I took the GB.
It was my first-ever hit off a gravity bong, and this was one of those big-ass ones, made with a gallon-sized plastic bottle, inside one of those big-ass water cooler jugs. I had no clue how to hit it, so I rushed the process and got hit with the biggest cloud of smoke that has ever grazed my esophagus, which resulted in the biggest, longest, most Wow-I’m-Going-to-Fucking-Die coughing session that I’ve ever endured, which then became the most Wow-I’m-Going-to-Fucking-Die high of all time.
Mike and I leave and I think we’re heading home (completely forgetting the original mission was vittles), but instead we’re heading down some roads of Norman that I’d never been down before.
At this point, my paralyzing high has turned into a full-on meltdown of the brain.
As I was sitting in the passenger seat, I looked up at the sky. Next thing I know my head is swerving from left to right in a figure-8 pattern, and I have no clue how to stop it. Like…picture Stevie Wonder swaying his head from side-to-side. That was me, and it went on for the entirety of the car ride.
Suddenly, as my head is swerving around, I look at Mike and realize he hasn’t said a single word since we left the plug’s house. Or maybe he has, and I just haven’t noticed? Nah. I’d definitely notice. This sends my brain into a frenzy. Why is he so silent? Is he just super high, too? Or am I the only person whose heart is racing at 473 bpm?
I try to move my body—which is slumped over against the window—into an upright position, and realize that I cannot move. I am so high that I’ve lost all motor functions and am now experiencing paralysis.
This is when shit gets spooky.
As my heart is racing and the back sweat is mounting, my breaths shorten and my brain hits a level of paranoia that I didn’t know existed.
Mike was the first kid in our school to own Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so I already knew he had murderous tendencies.
I start thinking, “Wow, if Mike just turned and started fucking wailing on me, I couldn’t do a single thing about it.” Mike was always one of those kids who could switch from wholesome laughter into a blinding fury at any moment, so my high ass considered this a legit concern. Plus, he was also the first kid in our school to own Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so I already knew he had murderous tendencies.
And bruh. Once that thought crept into my head, I realized exactly what was happening: We were driving out to some never-before-seen part of Norman, where Mike’s brother Tim would be waiting to kill me. And I couldn’t do a single thing about it. This was it. This was the end. I was about to die and the last thing my parents would have heard from me was a request for $17.84 to avoid a potential overdraft situation.
I started thinking of potential motives behind my situation. Mike and I had been homies since high school, but like any friends, we’d beefed about trivial bullshit before. Was this about the time I told him there’s no way he should be playing above me in basketball? Was he still mad that I said the only reason he was playing was because his parents were head honchos of the booster club? Or was this about the girl he wanted, that I had? A pretty woman with long black hair and the yeeks of Aphrodite can make a man do irrational things.
As I’m drowning in these thoughts of death, Mike still has yet to say a word or even move. I’m like oh yeah, it’s really going down: I’m about to lose my life on some Bluto vs. Popeye shit and all I can do is accept fate.
It was the worst position I’d ever been in, and if I ever gained the ability to move my limbs, I was going to hop out of the car. Straight tuck-and-roll style, and I’m dead-ass serious. But luckily, before we got to that point, we pulled up to the sushi restaurant and I remembered “OOHHHHH SHIT. WE WERE GOING TO GET FOOD, NOT DRIVE TO MY EXECUTION.”
Moral of the story: Fuck a gravity bong. I haven’t touched one since, and I never will again.
