Never let it be said that business travel isn’t sometimes adventurous. It is especially adventurous when you’re somewhat fearless and have no idea WTF you are doing or where you are going. That would sum up my trip to Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference. I’m not sure when this little event took place, late eighties maybe early nineties. The Pittsburgh Conference is an analytical instrumentation show. Prior to moving it to the McCormic Convention Center in Chicago every other year, it had always been held in New Orleans. At the time, I was the Marketing Services Manager for Millipore’s Analytical Division, and was attending the show to conduct a Press Breakfast and work the booth.

But first, we had to get there and that proved to be a challenge right from the get go. The guy who worked for me, Brian, and I left on a Saturday morning so that we could go to the convention center and supervise the booth assembly.  We only had forty feet of booth space, small for us in comparison to other shows, but it was a key market for both our HPLC sample prep filters and our lab water purification systems.

I know that we were flying right after some type of international terrorist event, so it was particularly touchy going through the gate. So, here we are standing in line and the woman in front of me sets off the alarms. I’m thinking. Okay, this will be simple. The problem was that she kept setting off the alarm. First, they had her remove all her jewelry, including her earrings. She still set off the alarm. Then, her belt. She still set off the alarm. Then, they asked her to remove her shoes. That’s when my alarm went off. Why?

Maybe because I had a quarter ounce of hooch in my shoe. I remember turning around to Brian, “Hey, I need to get the fuck out of this line.”

“Why?”

“Because I stuck the ganja in my shoe.”

“Yeah, in your sock, right?”

“No, in my shoe. I didn’t have time to put it in my sock.”

He was very comforting, “Oh, then you’re screwed.”

Yeah, thanks, Brian. What a pal. I was at the point of no return, however. The woman had finally cleared the security check. It was my turn. After all that sweating, I cleared it the first time. Don’t ask me why I didn’t set off alarms, but the best part of all was that Brian did. Yeah, sometimes I love payback, man.

The flight was pretty uneventful and it was, as unusual as it sounds, right on schedule. We got to Chicago and got settled into the hotel. Then, we headed over to the McCormick Convention Center to check on the progress of the booth assembly, and go through a dry run of the press briefing. The booth looked great so far. There were no problems there. But I have to tell you the worst thing about working with tekkies is that they just don’t get what kind of material to present to editors. These guys were writers, not chromatography scientists. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to drill that into their heads before the trade show. Now, I was at the trade show going through the dry run and they were editorializing again.

It started with the first guy. He started his portion of the presentation and made it so complicated I wanted to just tell him to STFU and let me do it. I remember telling him to stop, and then I told him if he went into this kind of an explanation half of the editors in the room would stand up and walk out. I remember saying, “Just tell them in layman’s terms what the products do and the benefit to the customer.”  That’s all they need to know. Every editor in the room would be given a package of detail, a copy of the presentation, and access to one-on-one discussions with the scientists in the room while they ate breakfast. Still, they insisted on cultivating what I like to call the deer-in-the-headlight effect.

After two hours of this torture, Brian and I headed out to dinner with Ed Black, the sales manager from Analytical Chemistry magazine. Ed was one of my best friends even though we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He was a true conservative from Georgia, now living in Connecticut. His wife Lynn was an airline stewardess, and she was just an awesome person. She was so funny and quick witted. We were close enough on the friendship scale that I’d go to Connecticut and spend the weekend. We had one rule: He and I never discussed politics. But that didn’t mean we didn’t jab each other good naturedly once in a while. We surely did.

I remember we got home in the early morning hours and we were wasted. Nevertheless, we had a free day Sunday. The only thing we had scheduled was a three o’clock review of the hospitality suite set up and a meeting with the convention center support staff. Brian and I made plans to go to this great flea market we saw in the local paper.

Our second close call: WTF were we thinking?

Brian and I ate breakfast and immediately hit the road. We hailed a cab and told the driver where we wanted to go. “Are you sure?” I guess I was kind of puzzled by his question.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Let’s go,” was my response.

When the driver had gotten us to our requested drop off point, he turned around and said to me, “Are you sure you want to be here? I’m not sure I should leave you here.”

We looked around. It looked perfectly fine to us. I replied, “Yeah, we’re good.”

I paid the driver and he drove off. We started heading down the street toward where the flea market was supposed to be when we saw this gang across the street with baseball bats. Yeah, that was comforting. The fact that they were looking at us was also comforting.

So, Brian and I started walking. “Can you see that they are walking with us across the street?”

“Yeah, Brian, I can see that.”

“You know, we’re dead meat.”

At that point, we started looking for somewhere safe to hide. Brian first suggested the church. I thought that might be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t been in a church for about a hundred years and was afraid of it collapsing, it didn’t seem like there was any action going on there and the doors might be locked. So, we started looking for any open stores we could find. We were sure we’d be safe there. Brian found, of all places, a hat shop. We talked about it for a few minutes, then the two of us broke into a hell-bent run and managed to get ourselves into the shop safely. We explained to the shop keeper what was going on and he started laughing.

“This isn’t a good place for you two. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. This may be an ordinary flea market, but this is not a safe part of town. The gangs don’t bother the shopkeepers, but they like to victimize visitors to the city.”

He was a really nice guy. He called a cab for us and told him to pick us up at the back of his shop. As fate would have it, the driver was the same guy who had dropped us off. When he saw us, he laughed.

“I told you, man, that I couldn’t figure out why you wanted to get out here. I don’t even like driving in here.”

We sat in the back seat and, once we were safely out of there, Brian and I started laughing. “How many days are we here for?”

I looked at him. “We’re here through Wednesday, why?”

“I can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble we can get ourselves into,” he responded.

I’m willing to state that I was once a certified party animal. I still can be under the right circumstances.  When I am in that particular frame of mind, I am very adventurous. It’s not like that is something I like to do every single day or night (anymore), but I was up for it in my younger days. And that included experimenting with mind-altering substances.

People who know me won’t be surprised by this: I am absolutely psyched about the fact that Massachusetts has decriminalized marijuana. And I support Barney Frank’s nationwide effort to legalize marijuana. Why? Give me a break. I’ve been in the business world for nearly 30 years. I’ve been out for lunches with both clients and suppliers. I have had drinks at lunch to the point where returning to work would be a joke. Many of my compatriots choose to go home from work and have a martini (or several, in fact). Me? I prefer to go home and smoke a fatty (or two), and I’m not alone in this sentiment. It’s as simple as that. Anybody remember Prohibition????? Legalize it. That’s what Bob Marley would say. Just frackin’ legalize it. NORML has it right.

The true believers in the drug war have no problem spreading the bull that marijuana is a gateway drug. It leads to bigger and better things (read: addiction to stronger drugs) because people become bored with the high and need continuously stronger highs to be satisfied. I’m here to tell you that is pure bullshit. I’m the living testament. If you do not have an addictive personality, there’s never a need to progress past the ganja.  If you do have an addictive personality, drug addiction may be just one of your problems. Hear me?

Pushing the envelope ever so slightly…

Okay, so I did push the envelope just ever so slightly. Forget the heroin and that garbage. I was never adventurous enough for that stuff. I could never in a million years understand how anyone could derive pleasure from something you simply cannot live without. It ceases to be pleasure at that point. I never entertained touching the stuff and I never did, even though several old friends did. I went as far as coke, and that was more than far enough for me.

I went on a coke bender for about six months. I was young (probably in my mid-to-late twenties) and working in high tech advertising and public relations at that time. Had I been a different type of person, this is the one drug I could easily have succumbed to. No question. This stuff was amazing if you were partying and dancing. There was no limit to the energy it generated. We used it freely in the bathrooms of the gay bars, and it was readily available. Two of my neighbors — a Boston jeweler and his beeeotch wife — had it whenever we wanted it, and there was no question that this crap dictated when that was.

It got to the point where we would be out all night. The bars would close at about two in the morning, then sometimes we’d stop and have breakfast, usually at Carroll’s Diner in Medford. After breakfast, we’d head home. It was common practice for me to jump in the shower as soon as I got home (usually about five in the morning), then do a line and immediately leave for work…without sleep. By noon, I’d be suffering like a dog and I’d swear I would never do it again. But I did. In fact, I’d usually somehow make it through the day. Then, I’d come home and crash for a few hours. By about nine or ten, it would be time to go out and do it all again.

Like I said, this went on for about six months. Then, I came to that magic moment when I immediately halted my use of coke. We were all wiped out after a week of partying, so we decided lay low for a night. I was alone at home listening to Bonnie Raitt. I decided to use what I had left in my latest stash. I did two lines. The effect wasn’t the same as when I was out with a bunch of people partying. I got into this introspective mode. This was immediately followed by the notion that I was having a heart attack from using coke. Of course, I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. The long and short of this story is that I swore I’d never touch the stuff again, and I didn’t. That was the end of it. Although we all didn’t stop at the same time, my friends pretty much did the same. It was too damned expensive anyway.

Partying at the bars wasn’t adversely affected because we had POPPERS! Yes, people, amyl nitrate immediately took over the job coke was doing. It was cheaper. There are no addictive issues and the effect is about the same in a bar situation, albeit lasting a much shorter period of time.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends…

Of course, there were other little experiments along life’s pathway. One summer a work friend of mine, Ellie, asked if I wanted to try blotter acid. Oh, yeah. We decided to go for it. I was really young when I did this. I was probably about 22 or 23. We took a day off, and believe me when I tell you it was a glorious summer day. I drove over to her house in Peabody about nine in the morning. The plan was for us to go to the beach in Gloucester and do it there. We never made it.

I wish I could tell you exactly what kind of trip I took, but I can’t. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t unpleasant. I had been hearing about how LSD trips can go bust if you have a “bad” trip, but that was not my experience. What I remember vividly, however, is what Ellie did. We were sitting on her porch when we took the hits. Time passed, but I really have no idea how much time passed before we started feeling the effects of the stuff. When it did hit, I was feeling very three dimensional and what I was looking at was very surreal. I can tell you one thing for sure. Nobody was driving to Gloucester on this shit.

I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and it was Ellie. We had been sitting on her porch, but she got up with a purpose in mind. I watched her walk down to the sidewalk, then over to a Volkswagen Beetle (she had no idea who owned the car) that was parked on the street roughly between her house and the neighbor’s house. Suddenly, she was trying to pick it up and move it. I am not kidding. I actually watched her for a few minutes before asking her just what she thought she was doing. I remember exactly what she said, “This stupid car is ruining the painting. The bumper is in my painting.” Sure it was.

This is one old memory. I do not remember much detail about this day except that it was just plain out there. We did some more blotter acid and just hung out listening to music. I know I was safely back in my apartment for dinner, none the worse for wear. And that was the only time I did blotter acid. Ah, but there were other little forays into mindbending.

My friends and I went to see the movie Network with Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway and made the mistake of taking THC before going into the theater. By the time Peter Finch got to, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna’ take anymore!” I can assure you that was the last place we wanted to be. We made a beeline out of that theater, laughing like hell all the way. We never did finish watching the movie. Another time, Greg, Jack and I met up somwhere and decided to go back to my place in Melrose to cook dinner. On the way home from Boston, we took purple microdot (mescaline). I have no idea where we got it, but it was just peaking by the time we got to Garniss Market to buy some food to cook. We never bought any food and we never cooked dinner.

I have no idea what I was looking at, but I happened to be going up the cereal aisle when something on the Captain Crunch box made me take a laughing fit to beat all laughing fits. I was sitting on the floor in the store laughing like hell. Greg and Jack found me and literally carried me out to the car. We spent most of the night laughing. All I know is that we all woke up on the living room floor sometime in the morning. As I recall, I never went to work that day. Since I pretty much felt as though I’d been hit by a train, I called in sick and spent the day sleeping.

There have certainly been other magic moments during this phase of my life, but you get the idea here. Here’s something to think about: While law enforcement has been preoccupied with stopping the flow of recreational drugs, the nation’s pharmaceutical companies have created a nation of zombies addicted to prescription drugs. Wacky, isn’t it?