Serenity Now
While I was going to UNCC and living in Charlotte, I discovered the wonderful wonders of marijuana, and in this journal I talked about my first couple experiences getting high. I admit that I was probably smoking a little too much there for awhile (or, at least, spending a little too much money on it), but I was bored and didn't have anything better to do, and marijuana has the extraordinary ability of making the most mundane things seem exciting. But, unfortunately, I don't know anyone around here who sells or grows it, so I haven't been able to get high since I've been back home. And I've missed it. A lot.
Recently the local newspaper ran a front page story on K2, which it called "legal marijuana." I then did a little research online, and learned that K2 gives a very brief, mild high. I'm not really interested in "brief" or "mild," but I called the local headshop anyway to see if they sell it. They said they don't, but that they do sell something called Serenity Now, which the guy described as "good shit." I wasn't able to find a lot of information about Serenity online, but I did come across a few forums where people had described their experiences with it, and, according to them, just three or four hits of Serenity Now had them high as hell. They likened it to high grade marijuana.
I was planning on trying Serenity Now at some point, but I was going to wait until I was finished writing this shitty ass novel I've been working on. But then spring break came along (even though it wasn't technically spring yet), and one of my close friends was going to be in town whom I hadn't hung out with since back before Christmas. I had already told him about Serenity Now, and he was interested in trying it; so, two weeks ago, on a Monday, he and I visited the local headshop and bought a packet of Serenity Now. They had a variety of flavors, including Natural, Strawberry, Blueberry, and Grape. Technically it's sold as incense and "not for human consumption," but that's just to keep from getting in trouble. No way in hell anyone is spending $55 on this stuff just for the pleasant odor.
So, anyways, he and I brought the packet of Serenity Now back to my house, opened it up, and started to smoke. I took a hit, and another hit, and another hit, and I still wasn't feeling anything. Neither was he. We both started to get a little annoyed and irritated. ("This shit cost fifty-five fucking dollars, it better fucking work!") Then, out of nowhere, it hit me. Suddenly, I just felt heavy, as if all my clothes were soaking wet. My friend, with a huge grin spreading across his face, then announced, "Oh, my God, I think I'm starting to feel it!" Shortly after that we both just fucking lost it.
I don't remember what we were talking about, but we were both just dying laughing. We needed something to dump the ashes out on, so I was going to go into the kitchen to get a paper plate. But then I remembered my parents were in there, so, for some dumbass reason, I put on a pair of sunglasses 'cause I didn't want them to see me. My dad said something about Chinatown, because of our stoner eyes, and my friend and I just burst into another round of laughter. Everything's pretty much a blur, and it's hard for me to remember exactly everything we did and talked about. It's like I was on warp speed or something. My friend was digging through my DVDs, and he put in Silence of the Lambs. I think he probably watched fifteen minutes of it, then he put in a DVD of Lost. Neither of us could focus on anything for longer than five minutes, though. We zoomed from one thing to another, talking about all kinds of random shit, including stuff we shouldn't have been talking about anywhere near my parents, like our regret over this girl we both could've fucked and never did. I've never felt comfortable cussing around my parents, but I was dropping f-bombs like crazy. I simply couldn't control myself. The filter in my mind was gone.
My dad had helped me talk my mom into allowing me to smoke here, mainly with the idea that it would mellow me out. He figured I'd just sit quietly on the couch and stare off at nothing for a couple hours, but marijuana has very rarely had that kind of effect on me. Generally, when I smoke, it's like I've just snorted a line of cocaine or something. I'm bouncing off the walls, talking five-thousand miles a minute, and Serenity Now had the exact same effect, except even stronger. I quickly started to get on my parents' nerves because I was being so loud. Plus my friend and I were starting to make a mess everywhere. We both rummaged through the junkfood cabinet, and we'd left a string of DVDs and CDs and stuff lying everywhere. We'd start to watch something or listen to a CD, then quickly lose interest. My father said that he had never seen anyone act like my friend and I when high, and I was like, "Are you saying there's something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my brain?"
My friend was continuing to smoke, even though he was already stoned out of his mind. So, since we had split the cost, I kept smoking just to make sure I was getting my share. He wanted to go get something to eat, and I was afraid to go out in public, afraid I'd freak out. I remember ranting, "They're gonna know I'm high, and they're gonna have me arrested! And then when they give me a drug test, it's gonna come back negative, so then they're gonna fucking thing I'm crazy and throw me in the looney bin. The fucking looney bin!"
We continued to smoke until the stuff was nearly all gone. My friend passed out on top of my bed while watching TV, his head resting on a bag of Funyans. He said later on that he remembered opening his eyes at one point when my mom went in there and pulled the bag of Funyans out from behind his head, and he thought to himself, "Why is Forrest's mom here?" forgetting that he was at my house; but he couldn't seem to speak or move, so he just went back to sleep.
Soon as he left, around 11:30 or so, I also went to sleep. I woke up about four hours later, still feeling buzzed. I watched some TV, then decided to smoke a little more. I fixed the bong, took a few hits, and shot back up to the moon. For some reason I became terrified of setting myself on fire with the lighter, so I stripped completely naked and just sat on my bedroom floor, in front of my mirror, for like two straight hours. It was pretty fun. I was flipping out and on the verge of hallucinating. I pretended I was riding a horse, pretending I was skiing, pretending I was canoeing. At one point I thought I had merged with the floor, and it's like I couldn't see my legs; I was just a torso. I then tried to watch Pulp Fiction, because it's my favorite movie, and I'd figured it'd be even more awesome while high; but I was too tired, and ended up falling back to sleep.
My friend had said he would come over later that evening so that we could watch Lost together, but instead he pulled up outside my house at like two in the afternoon, said, "Get in," and off we went to the headshop to buy another packet of Serenity. We split the cost again, but this time we halved it before we started smoking and kept it in two separate containers. Basically the craziness just started all over again. My mom was kind of upset. She didn't like seeing me high. I vaguely remember her expressing her disappointment. She was like, "One son's an alcoholic, and now the other one's turning into a drug addict." And I was just like, "I'm sorry. I never claimed to be perfect."
I dug out my N64 and my friend and I played Goldeneye for awhile, still continuing to smoke. At some point we accidentally knocked over the bong and it broke, which was quite devastating to both of us, although we still laughed hysterically about it. Fortunately, my friend had purchased a pipe at the headshop, so we still had something to smoke from.
He finished his half before Lost came on at 9:00, but after it was over he still didn't feel like he was capable of driving. I still had a lot of my Serenity, and my friend offered to pay me a few bucks if I'd share a few hits with him. We went to Wendy's around midnight. I hate riding in vehicles when I'm high because I'm so terrified that we're gonna wreck. It always feels like we're flying, and I keep shouting, "Slow the fuck down!" even though we're probably only going like 20 mph. Anyways, this particular trip wasn't too scary since there was hardly any traffic. My friend said he'd pay for my food, and we pulled up to the speaker thing to order our food. I'm not sure if it's because the woman didn't speak clearly, or because my friend and I were stoned out of our minds, but we could hardly make out anything the woman asked. Eventually we managed to get our order through, and we pulled up to the window. That was when I started freaking out again. I was so fucking paranoid. I felt like the woman was just staring at me and that she knew I was high. Yet I couldn't stop grinning. Then I just erupted into a giggling fit, going on and on about how it wasn't a sin to grin. My friend thought that was funny, so then he starts laughing hysterically. The woman told us it'd be a few minutes before the food was ready and asked us to just pull up and wait. My friend told me that was probably so they could call the cops on us. I don't know how long we waited there--- probably only five minutes--- but God, it felt like hours. And it didn't help our paranoia any when a police car came speeding down the highway with its siren blaring.
Once we got back to my house and I ate the most amazing spicy chicken sandwich I've ever had, we resumed smoking. There's a track across from my house, and my friend and I filled the pipe and walked around outside for awhile, passing it back and forth. It was a little creepy being outside in the dark. I kept thinking something was going to attack us. Then we saw a white dog and my friend yelled out, "Oh, my God, it's a ghost!" and turned and sprinted away in the opposite direction.
We tried to watch Being John Malkovich, which I'd never seen. That movie was blowing my mind, and I remember blurting out, "John Cusack is God!" After that we started watching The Passion of the Christ, but we just fast-forwarded it to the scene where they beat the shit out of Jesus. For some reason my friend and I were just laughing our asses off, but then they just kept beating him and beating him and I started to become so sad and depressed that I was on the verge of tears. I was like, "He did this for us, man! He gave his life so that we could be free. And look how we repay him! By getting high!" I felt so guilty at that moment, and my friend said he couldn't take it anymore and went back into my room to play Nintendo 64. I kept watching the movie, and then there's the scene where Satan walks through the crowd while holding this freaky ass looking baby. That image creeped the shit out of me, and I wanted to show it to my friend, so I paused it and just sat there staring at that fucking evil baby for like twenty minutes or more until my friend came back into the room. We also watched Requiem for a Dream while high, and then, at like five in the morning or whatever time it was, I finally fell asleep.
My friend and I split another packet on Friday right before he left to go back to school. I never was able to enjoy it, though. The bong had broken into two perfect pieces, so I could still place it back together and smoke from it, just as long as I left it flat on the surface and stood over it instead of tilting it toward me. But, like a dumbass, while cleaning it out, I set the bowl on the bathroom counter and it rolled off and broke. So then I was only able to smoke one tiny pinch at a time, which was a pain in the ass. Then, like an even bigger dumbass, I ended up going to sleep that night without putting up my Serenity Now. Since this stuff is a "cannibinoid" or whatever, the active chemical, JWH-018, has been sprayed on. By leaving it exposed to the air all night, it completely lost its potency. After that, it didn't matter how much I smoked, I could barely even feel a buzz.
I've gotten high with this particular friend on quite a few occasions, and that week was by far the highest I've ever seen him. Usually whenever we'd smoke weed together I would be the one flipping out while he mostly just sat back and chilled. His high was always more relaxed than mine. But he was flipping out and giggling and talking about crazy off-the-wall shit just as much as I was when he smoked this shit.
But even though this stuff got me higher than I've probably even been, I still prefer weed. I've grown quite fond of the smell of marijuana, and this Serenity Now stuff, despite being "incense," doesn't really have much of a smell. It's nearly tasteless, too, and I like to actually taste what I'm smoking. The high is intense, but it doesn't last as long as the real stuff, maybe a couple hours at the most. Marijuana's been around for so long that people know what it can and can't do. That's not the case with Serenity Now, so that leaves me feeling a little wary. Plus it's expensive as hell. But I guess for people who can't get the real thing, it's a worthwhile substitute. Plus, Serenity Now won't show up on any drug tests.
Recently the local newspaper ran a front page story on K2, which it called "legal marijuana." I then did a little research online, and learned that K2 gives a very brief, mild high. I'm not really interested in "brief" or "mild," but I called the local headshop anyway to see if they sell it. They said they don't, but that they do sell something called Serenity Now, which the guy described as "good shit." I wasn't able to find a lot of information about Serenity online, but I did come across a few forums where people had described their experiences with it, and, according to them, just three or four hits of Serenity Now had them high as hell. They likened it to high grade marijuana.
I was planning on trying Serenity Now at some point, but I was going to wait until I was finished writing this shitty ass novel I've been working on. But then spring break came along (even though it wasn't technically spring yet), and one of my close friends was going to be in town whom I hadn't hung out with since back before Christmas. I had already told him about Serenity Now, and he was interested in trying it; so, two weeks ago, on a Monday, he and I visited the local headshop and bought a packet of Serenity Now. They had a variety of flavors, including Natural, Strawberry, Blueberry, and Grape. Technically it's sold as incense and "not for human consumption," but that's just to keep from getting in trouble. No way in hell anyone is spending $55 on this stuff just for the pleasant odor.
So, anyways, he and I brought the packet of Serenity Now back to my house, opened it up, and started to smoke. I took a hit, and another hit, and another hit, and I still wasn't feeling anything. Neither was he. We both started to get a little annoyed and irritated. ("This shit cost fifty-five fucking dollars, it better fucking work!") Then, out of nowhere, it hit me. Suddenly, I just felt heavy, as if all my clothes were soaking wet. My friend, with a huge grin spreading across his face, then announced, "Oh, my God, I think I'm starting to feel it!" Shortly after that we both just fucking lost it.
I don't remember what we were talking about, but we were both just dying laughing. We needed something to dump the ashes out on, so I was going to go into the kitchen to get a paper plate. But then I remembered my parents were in there, so, for some dumbass reason, I put on a pair of sunglasses 'cause I didn't want them to see me. My dad said something about Chinatown, because of our stoner eyes, and my friend and I just burst into another round of laughter. Everything's pretty much a blur, and it's hard for me to remember exactly everything we did and talked about. It's like I was on warp speed or something. My friend was digging through my DVDs, and he put in Silence of the Lambs. I think he probably watched fifteen minutes of it, then he put in a DVD of Lost. Neither of us could focus on anything for longer than five minutes, though. We zoomed from one thing to another, talking about all kinds of random shit, including stuff we shouldn't have been talking about anywhere near my parents, like our regret over this girl we both could've fucked and never did. I've never felt comfortable cussing around my parents, but I was dropping f-bombs like crazy. I simply couldn't control myself. The filter in my mind was gone.
My dad had helped me talk my mom into allowing me to smoke here, mainly with the idea that it would mellow me out. He figured I'd just sit quietly on the couch and stare off at nothing for a couple hours, but marijuana has very rarely had that kind of effect on me. Generally, when I smoke, it's like I've just snorted a line of cocaine or something. I'm bouncing off the walls, talking five-thousand miles a minute, and Serenity Now had the exact same effect, except even stronger. I quickly started to get on my parents' nerves because I was being so loud. Plus my friend and I were starting to make a mess everywhere. We both rummaged through the junkfood cabinet, and we'd left a string of DVDs and CDs and stuff lying everywhere. We'd start to watch something or listen to a CD, then quickly lose interest. My father said that he had never seen anyone act like my friend and I when high, and I was like, "Are you saying there's something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my brain?"
My friend was continuing to smoke, even though he was already stoned out of his mind. So, since we had split the cost, I kept smoking just to make sure I was getting my share. He wanted to go get something to eat, and I was afraid to go out in public, afraid I'd freak out. I remember ranting, "They're gonna know I'm high, and they're gonna have me arrested! And then when they give me a drug test, it's gonna come back negative, so then they're gonna fucking thing I'm crazy and throw me in the looney bin. The fucking looney bin!"
We continued to smoke until the stuff was nearly all gone. My friend passed out on top of my bed while watching TV, his head resting on a bag of Funyans. He said later on that he remembered opening his eyes at one point when my mom went in there and pulled the bag of Funyans out from behind his head, and he thought to himself, "Why is Forrest's mom here?" forgetting that he was at my house; but he couldn't seem to speak or move, so he just went back to sleep.
Soon as he left, around 11:30 or so, I also went to sleep. I woke up about four hours later, still feeling buzzed. I watched some TV, then decided to smoke a little more. I fixed the bong, took a few hits, and shot back up to the moon. For some reason I became terrified of setting myself on fire with the lighter, so I stripped completely naked and just sat on my bedroom floor, in front of my mirror, for like two straight hours. It was pretty fun. I was flipping out and on the verge of hallucinating. I pretended I was riding a horse, pretending I was skiing, pretending I was canoeing. At one point I thought I had merged with the floor, and it's like I couldn't see my legs; I was just a torso. I then tried to watch Pulp Fiction, because it's my favorite movie, and I'd figured it'd be even more awesome while high; but I was too tired, and ended up falling back to sleep.
My friend had said he would come over later that evening so that we could watch Lost together, but instead he pulled up outside my house at like two in the afternoon, said, "Get in," and off we went to the headshop to buy another packet of Serenity. We split the cost again, but this time we halved it before we started smoking and kept it in two separate containers. Basically the craziness just started all over again. My mom was kind of upset. She didn't like seeing me high. I vaguely remember her expressing her disappointment. She was like, "One son's an alcoholic, and now the other one's turning into a drug addict." And I was just like, "I'm sorry. I never claimed to be perfect."
I dug out my N64 and my friend and I played Goldeneye for awhile, still continuing to smoke. At some point we accidentally knocked over the bong and it broke, which was quite devastating to both of us, although we still laughed hysterically about it. Fortunately, my friend had purchased a pipe at the headshop, so we still had something to smoke from.
He finished his half before Lost came on at 9:00, but after it was over he still didn't feel like he was capable of driving. I still had a lot of my Serenity, and my friend offered to pay me a few bucks if I'd share a few hits with him. We went to Wendy's around midnight. I hate riding in vehicles when I'm high because I'm so terrified that we're gonna wreck. It always feels like we're flying, and I keep shouting, "Slow the fuck down!" even though we're probably only going like 20 mph. Anyways, this particular trip wasn't too scary since there was hardly any traffic. My friend said he'd pay for my food, and we pulled up to the speaker thing to order our food. I'm not sure if it's because the woman didn't speak clearly, or because my friend and I were stoned out of our minds, but we could hardly make out anything the woman asked. Eventually we managed to get our order through, and we pulled up to the window. That was when I started freaking out again. I was so fucking paranoid. I felt like the woman was just staring at me and that she knew I was high. Yet I couldn't stop grinning. Then I just erupted into a giggling fit, going on and on about how it wasn't a sin to grin. My friend thought that was funny, so then he starts laughing hysterically. The woman told us it'd be a few minutes before the food was ready and asked us to just pull up and wait. My friend told me that was probably so they could call the cops on us. I don't know how long we waited there--- probably only five minutes--- but God, it felt like hours. And it didn't help our paranoia any when a police car came speeding down the highway with its siren blaring.
Once we got back to my house and I ate the most amazing spicy chicken sandwich I've ever had, we resumed smoking. There's a track across from my house, and my friend and I filled the pipe and walked around outside for awhile, passing it back and forth. It was a little creepy being outside in the dark. I kept thinking something was going to attack us. Then we saw a white dog and my friend yelled out, "Oh, my God, it's a ghost!" and turned and sprinted away in the opposite direction.
We tried to watch Being John Malkovich, which I'd never seen. That movie was blowing my mind, and I remember blurting out, "John Cusack is God!" After that we started watching The Passion of the Christ, but we just fast-forwarded it to the scene where they beat the shit out of Jesus. For some reason my friend and I were just laughing our asses off, but then they just kept beating him and beating him and I started to become so sad and depressed that I was on the verge of tears. I was like, "He did this for us, man! He gave his life so that we could be free. And look how we repay him! By getting high!" I felt so guilty at that moment, and my friend said he couldn't take it anymore and went back into my room to play Nintendo 64. I kept watching the movie, and then there's the scene where Satan walks through the crowd while holding this freaky ass looking baby. That image creeped the shit out of me, and I wanted to show it to my friend, so I paused it and just sat there staring at that fucking evil baby for like twenty minutes or more until my friend came back into the room. We also watched Requiem for a Dream while high, and then, at like five in the morning or whatever time it was, I finally fell asleep.
My friend and I split another packet on Friday right before he left to go back to school. I never was able to enjoy it, though. The bong had broken into two perfect pieces, so I could still place it back together and smoke from it, just as long as I left it flat on the surface and stood over it instead of tilting it toward me. But, like a dumbass, while cleaning it out, I set the bowl on the bathroom counter and it rolled off and broke. So then I was only able to smoke one tiny pinch at a time, which was a pain in the ass. Then, like an even bigger dumbass, I ended up going to sleep that night without putting up my Serenity Now. Since this stuff is a "cannibinoid" or whatever, the active chemical, JWH-018, has been sprayed on. By leaving it exposed to the air all night, it completely lost its potency. After that, it didn't matter how much I smoked, I could barely even feel a buzz.
I've gotten high with this particular friend on quite a few occasions, and that week was by far the highest I've ever seen him. Usually whenever we'd smoke weed together I would be the one flipping out while he mostly just sat back and chilled. His high was always more relaxed than mine. But he was flipping out and giggling and talking about crazy off-the-wall shit just as much as I was when he smoked this shit.
But even though this stuff got me higher than I've probably even been, I still prefer weed. I've grown quite fond of the smell of marijuana, and this Serenity Now stuff, despite being "incense," doesn't really have much of a smell. It's nearly tasteless, too, and I like to actually taste what I'm smoking. The high is intense, but it doesn't last as long as the real stuff, maybe a couple hours at the most. Marijuana's been around for so long that people know what it can and can't do. That's not the case with Serenity Now, so that leaves me feeling a little wary. Plus it's expensive as hell. But I guess for people who can't get the real thing, it's a worthwhile substitute. Plus, Serenity Now won't show up on any drug tests.