let me try to set the mood... queue the Grateful Dead... I have pulled up The Working Man's Dead on Youtube to help to set that St. Mary's College tone... frisbees are flying... someone's dog just threw up on someone's picnic blanket... now they know what happened to the mushrooms... I never understood college age people who could not take care of themselves getting a dog...
the time is the late 80's but decades are not as clear cut as we like to claim them to be...
the decades blend... the 50's were still going on in the 60's and what we think of as the 70's started in the 60's and more than likely carried on into the 80's
St. Mary's College of Maryland was a weird little school on the St. Mary's river... the first Maryland settlement happened there... not trying to to a My Maryland My Maryland history report... but toss in the Art and the Dove here and have an Oriole fly by and perch on a the limb of a massive old White Oak with at field of Black Eyed Susans in the distance...
My college experience started in the fall of 1985... the paths between the on campus dorms and the classrooms had just been paved the spring before... just in time for me to arrive on my skateboard... my youth had been spent in Bethesda Maryland with all sorts of Urban and Semi Urban experiences that I thought defined me... landing at SMC was a bit of a culture shock for me...
back to story... gonna glaze over stuff...
It is not my place to talk about the school sponsored group IBA-I Believe in America that really meant International Bong Association with the motto "do B's get A's" as that was not my tribe... I partied with them... I played Ultimate and Disc Golf with them... but I was not one of them... they were an elite group... I was not in any elite groups
so... it is the late 80's and I am in the later years of my college experience... during that time I heard a story... a story that involved a few friends of mine... the story has been told and retold... but I have never known the truth... this weekend past I hung out with a bunch of SMC friends... one of the key players from this St. Mary's College of Maryland Legend of the Jimsonweed
Georgia O Keefe's Jimsom Weed painting
well... here I am... lost... I had momentum... I had a plan... there was a story to tell... now I am caught in the bind where I am stuck trying to tell someone else's story... I am not trying to tell anyone else's story... it is not my story... my story is that I do not know the story... my story is that this weekend there were a number of us seeing to find out the truth of the story... one SMC graduate wanted to know the details of what she called an "Urban Myth" so around a camp fire we tried to get some answers... we heard a few crazy details... but I am not sure if any of us got any of our details confirmed...
Georgia O Keeffe
so... let me try to the story I heard and have retold...
the story goes as simple as this...
a student in a Sociology\Anthropology class is doing some reading of the Indians native to the region and stumbles across something about the Piscataway Tribe and their use of this native plant for rituals that involved deep hallucinogenic experiences. I am not sure how long the article was... I do not know if there was any more detail than what I just typed... in his reading... not quite research... in his reading this student learned that this tribe that had lived in this region used this very easy to find native plant to trip... there was something about three seed for consumption or tea..
well, that might the corner stone of the story...
limited information and then misinterpretation of the information
as there are may seeds in each pod
the three students that decided to experience with this native plant would consume basically three PODS each... each pod possessing many seeds (a hundred or hundreds?)
So... in reflection...
this story with all of its legend and lore also has a horrific side
like someone marveling at a persons story from a car wreck and then surviving...
the listener may miss that there was also pain, loss, and trauma caused by a near death experience
so... what we think was a cool party may have been a week or so of terror for these individuals
back to the story...
what I heard was these three guys made tea with that they thought would be the dosage of three seeds per person... when they actually consumed a dose many many many times past that...
the experience was so powerful... that in that moment... they very well might have been literally "out of their minds"
I am not sure how the authorities got involved... but there are police and then there is hospitalization... and the trip is still continuing... days of intense tripping while being held and monitored at the local hospital... families had been notified and were also involved... it must have been a terrifying moment for all involved... but, from the outside... we heard stories... we heard stories that we thought were from Carlos Castaneda's Teachings of Don Juan... stories of members of this group in their rooms having visions and encounters of magical proportions... not just seeing colors or hearing sounds that were not there... but seeing people who were not there and connecting with animals outside their hospital window... remember... this is all pre-Internet... stories were being passed around like joints
well... it turns out I do not hold enough of the story to tell the story... this weekend we tried to get the full story... but instead got new pieces to the story... we were not able to get confirmation of what we heard as truth... but it was amusing just the same
I will have to approach this again later
now is not the time
this is the time for me to do some laundry
YouTube Video with interview of people detained and high on Jimesomeweed