There were nights during the bad time I'd pace in the attic where I lived for hours afraid to look up from the floor because I could feel someone behind me or the time one evening when a friend was hanging I was on my back on my bed wired staring at the rafters he was at the table I used as a desk with a typewriter and few books leaning back in the chair his feet up on the desk reading when out of nowhere
		there was an explosion huge booming and I leapt out the bed frightened and found myself standing tense in the middle of the attic and knew immediately from the confused look on my friend's face that there'd been no explosion that whatever happened happened inside my head though I'd heard it absolutely and actually after that things started getting better for me I started finding my way back into the everyday world and I said "It's cool, man," and he said "Cool," and went back to reading.

	First time it ever happened I was on acid though looking back now I suspect it had less to do with the drug than it did with fear after hearing all the stories on the news the scare campaigns about kids losing their minds on acid winding up in institutions and so on and so on which did occasionally happen but to no one I knew and I knew scores or hundreds of kids tripping all the time so when I took my first hit it was what I had heard a sense of merging with the cosmos a tangible sense of love's presence and when I took my second hit it started out like that but then it was as if I drifted out of my body and I was looking at myself from someplace else someplace above my body and that frightened me and then it wouldn't go away and what I think was happening was my first serious anxiety attack what they call a panic attack now and for months I was in bad shape very bad shape and from that day to this I've never done another illegal drug. Not one. Not ever.