I once lived and worked at a ski resort and one night there was a party. People were drunk and laughing. A bottle smashed on the floor. More laughter.

I went outside. A group of guys were sitting around on the porch and passing around a bong. The stench of marijuana was like cat piss.

"Hey bro!"

I looked over. It was a big scary guy called Mitch.

"Yo, you wanna try bro?" said Mitch.

I sat down next to my new best friend Mitch.

Another guy had just finished smoking from the bong. He casually breathed out a cloud of white smoke and passed the bong to the next guy.

As we waited for the bong to come around, Mitch told me about his life. He was born and raised in Canada, and used to play American soccer professionally, until one day, he injured his knee during a game. His soccer career was over. Now he was obese and had a bad knee.

His life sounded pretty bad. But I was more concerned about the bong than Mitch's knee. The bong was only two people away now. I kept glancing at it. What would happen when the bong came to me?

I was about to find out because finally, someone passed the bong to me. I held this unknown, foreign object in my hands, wondering how to use it.

"It's upside down bro," said Mitch.

"Oh," I said, turning it around in my hands.

"Yo man, did you never use a bong before?" asked Mitch.

"N-no," I stammered. In fact, I'd never even been high before.

"Dude, you've never used a bong before?" Mitch said. "Dude. Dude."

I felt as small and naive as Frodo in front of the Council of Elrond.

"Don't worry man, I'll help you. Everyone's gotta have a first time, right?"

I was in luck! I was sitting next to the Gandalf of bong-ripping!

Mitch searched his pockets for a lighter. "Yo yo, where's that lighter?" he called out. "Who's got the lighter?" Someone passed him a lighter.

"Okay," said Mitch. "So first you gotta put your mouth to the pipe."

So I put my lips around the pipe, like it was a straw.

"Not like that," Mitch said. "You gotta put your lips inside."

So I put my lips inside the pipe. Meanwhile, Mitch was holding the lighter under the bong.

"Now suck," he said.

I sucked. This made the water inside the bong bubble.

"Now suck!" Mitch said. "Take a deep breath!"

Like an idiot, I took the deepest breath I could.

I took my mouth away from the bong and immediately had a coughing fit.

Mitch laughed and slapped me on the back, which made me cough more.

"Whoa, good hit!" he said. "Not bad for a newbie!"

The other guys were watching me with interest.

"Was that your first time, bro?" someone asked.

I opened my mouth to reply, but instead of words, only a high-pitched squeak came out.

People laughed.

"Yo, he's really high, bro!" said a cool Australian guy with long hair.

"Yo, was that his first time bro?" said another Australian. Why were there so many Australians all of a sudden?

Yes, it was my first time. And now I was very, very, very high.

I sat there, with my mouth closed, my eyes silently pleading for someone to help.

"Yo, you okay Paul?" said the second Australian. "You okay?"

I didn't want to speak in case I squeaked again. So instead I nodded and forced a smile.

It must have been a weird smile because it made everyone laugh. Now that everyone knew I was 'okay', the attention fell away from and people went back to talking about stoner things. Things like:

"Hey, isn't it weird how the alphabet's in alphabetical order?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know... A, B, C, D, E, F, G... it's in alphabetical order. Isn't that weird?"

"Dude, that's just the alphabet."

"Yeah but—"

Meanwhile I tried to seem cool but secretly I was terrified. I was no longer myself. The weed had teleported me back to my teenage self, when I was awkward all the time and the other kids bullied me and laughed at me.

Eventually, the stoners got bored and went inside. Not wanting to be left alone, I followed them through the door.

Inside the house, the party was still going on. A couple of girls were now singing karaoke and everyone else was chatting away to each other.

I don't want to be here!! I thought. But I couldn't go home. Because if I went home, people would start asking questions. Questions like, "Where's Paul?" and "Didn't he get really high earlier?" and "Maybe he walked off into the forest,maybe he's dead?" and "We should go look for him," resulting in a nationwide, televised manhunt across Canada.

So I lay down on a couch and pretended to fall asleep.

"What's up with that guy?" someone asked.

"He took a hit from a bong, ay. It was his first time."

"Wow, he's really out of it."

"Yeah, right? Imagine being so high you fall asleep at a party."

"Aw man. I wish he was awake. Imagine the kind of profound shit you'd say if you were that high."

If I had been able to say anything, it would have been, "I think I'm going to shit myself."

Because now, the weed was affecting my bowels. My insides were slowly going uuuuuuupppppp and dooooooown, uuuuuuupppppp and dooooooown, like a skip rope in slow motion.

This went on for a while: me lying there on the sofa, with my eyes closed, praying I wouldn't shit my pants, while everyone else chatted and drank around me.

Eventually, after what seemed like hours (but was actually only thirty minutes), someone shook my shoulder.

It was my Scottish housemate, Kirsty. "Come on Paul, it's time to go home," she laughed.

Slowly I stood up. People were watching me. Without saying a word (I was afraid I'd squeak again), I followed Kirsty out the room. She saw me to the front door, but then turned and went back into the party.

I trudged through the dark alone, back to my staff accommodation building. My key turned the lock. Inside, all was dark and quiet. The German flatmates had already gone to bed.

I went to my room, shut the door, and lay down on the bed. At least now I can get a good night's sleep, I thought. Because if there's one thing I knew about weed, it's that it's an effective sleep aid.

 

I got up the next morning tired and blearily eyed. I hadn't slept a wink. My room was freezing because the radiator was broken and, worst of all, I was still high. This wasn't ideal. I didn't want to be high anymore. My ideal amount of high was zero high, not very high.

Mitch came to visit me. Maybe he felt bad for letting me get so high the night before. Or maybe he just came to raid our fridge for food.

He sat down next to me on the sofa, which nearly collapsed under his weight.

"So how are you, brah?" he asked while chewing one of our candy bars.

"I'm still high," I said in a confused whimper.

He laughed. "Welcome to Canada!" he said, slapping me on my back.

The day after that I was still high.

On day three, I was still high. I was now certain that I'd be high forever, trapped in my own mind, with only Mitch and his group of bong bros for company. I'd have to change my name to Stoner Paul, grow dreadlocks, get fat and sit around all day munching on cheese-flavoured doritos.

By the end of the day, the effects of the weed finally wore off.

Canada eventually grew on me, but I never did try weed again. Judging by my hellish three-day high, I think the universe wants me to stay away from the stuff. And I'm more than happy to oblige.

By the way, I wasn't the only one who had a bad drug experience that winter. The worst I knew of happened to a guy called Matt. He had big glasses, a ginger beard and curly ginger hair. He looked like Ed Sheeran, Shaggy from Scooby Doo and Chris Evans if you merged them together and gave the resulting person a permanent high, stoner look. He was, of course, Australian. One morning, Matt ingested magic mushrooms and then spent the rest of the day on a bad trip. He had terrifying hallucinations of monsters of demons. At one point, he was so scared that he tried to escape the monsters by jumping off the balcony. He would have fallen ten feet and broken his legs if his friends hadn't been there to pull him back. Luckily, all he suffered from was a broken ego (as well as the horrific hallucinations and potential PTSD).

If that's not enough to put you off hallucinogenic drugs for life, I don't know what is. The only worse thing I can imagine is being molested by Rolf Harris.