The year was 2012, and we were all supposed to die in December. It was my freshman year of college. I was settling in quite well. I made friends with a bunch of people in our residence hall, we hit it off immediately. We started going out on the weekends, starting with thirsty Thursday, which turns out is actually a thing. I had more than one room mate. We lived in a four person suite with two bedrooms. I had a full ride to my University, so I had a lot of extra money to spend on my living arrangements and meal plan. Oh yeah, I was also a huge pothead.

I made friends with the dealer on my floor and started buying him extra meals in exchange for weed. That's when one of my room mates came to me with a proposition. He asked me if I knew what bitcoins were. I did not. He explained the virtual currency and how it worked. Then he really laid it all out. He told me that he had quite a lot of bitcoins and that he wants to get into selling weed. It all sounded great, but I wasn't sure what he needed me for. He then told me that he doesn't really talk to anyone and that he always sees me with people and going to parties every weekend. Okay, this makes sense. He told me how the operation would work, and it sounded swell. For the record, I was eighteen and very stupid. Anyway, he would purchase the drugs from the Silk Road, a dark website where you can buy literally fucking anything. Our friend Noah would then get the goods delivered to his apartment, which had a mailroom with hundreds of mailboxes. This was good because it would be just a little bit less suspicious, also his apartment was not on our campus. Then we'd package everything there and move it to our dorm, which had it's own security. We lived in North Philadelphia, so the security and police were always looking out for the students. After we safely had the products, I would find the buyers.

Our first shipment went well. We ordered a half pound of weed, a gram of hash, ten hits of LSD, a small bag of opium (for us), and 1000mg of Alprazolam extract for my room mate's personal anxiety treatment. We got into this business to become weed salesmen. That weed took forever to sell. Everyone who sold weed already had good connections from their hometowns. The LSD though, that sold in five fucking minutes to one buyer who was interested in buying much more than ten hits. He asked us if we could sell him a couple hundred tabs. He said he'd pay $350 for each sheet of 100. We looked at the price per sheet on the Silk Road. It would cost us only $80 each. Yes sir, we can absolutely sell you a couple sheets. We told him we'd call him when it arrived. Later that night we brewed some opium tea and celebrated entering the LSD business. We bought the sheets for him, and we also bought two extras in case anyone else wanted some.

The next shipment came with no problems. Our friend came over and bought the sheets we had promised him. We made nearly $800 on that deal. We thought that was a lot, so we celebrated. Later that same day, while smoking a blunt in our courtyard, I made friends with some art students. They invited me to their dorm on the third floor. I agreed, went with them, and we listened to music and painted the walls of the dorm room which was super against the rules. They started talking about how they had taken magic mushrooms two weeks before and how it was life changing. I told them I had two-hundred hits of acid in my room. I've never seen people get so excited in my entire life. They bought all of it. They paid $400 for each sheet. Seemingly out of nowhere we made $600. Again, we thought this was a lot.

My room mate was really happy with my networking abilities. Dude, I was just getting high with some hipster art students. I didn't really possess the "networking skills" that everyone thought I had. We went online and purchased another five sheets. We started getting a bit more confident in our ability to sell this magic money making paper. That week I was in one of my classes and had to do a group project with a kid named Eddy. We went to his apartment to work on the project after class. Eddy had an apartment off campus because he was an upperclassman. On the way he asked if I smoked weed. Of course. He said he had something to show me. When we got there he showed me a small weed plant he was growing. It was an adorable little plant in a flower pot by the window. I asked if he needed any weed and he said that he did not. We smoked a bit and then her offered me a Xanax. I had never taken Xanax, so I googled the pill he offered me. Alprazolam. Huh, that's funny. I told him I had 1000mg of alprazolam in my room. This excited him.

I asked my room mate if he was willing to sell some of his private stash. Eddy only wanted to buy around 100 milligrams. He agreed and I brought Eddy to my dorm. We gave it to him for the cool price of $150, a slick markdown from what he was paying. After all we hadn't even planned on selling that stuff. He asked how we got it so cheap and if we could get anything else. We told him that we sell LSD. He said he loves hallucinogens and would love to purchase a sheet, so he did. Four sheets left. If we sell them, we can get a new and faster computer.

The weekend came and I was hanging out with two of my friends from our residence hall. Joe, who was really chill and loved smoking weed as much as I did. And Bianca, who was so cool that it frightened me. She was really intimidating. I had a huge crush on her, but she was "talking" to a kid that lived in Johnson and Hardwick hall. Bianca was the type of person you see in movies about cool kids doing cool things. A character who has a lot of depth, but it takes nearly the whole movie to slowly peel back the layers, and by that time you're in love. I told her if we sold the rest of our acid I'd buy her a new tattoo. She was covered in them. That night Joe was going to take us to his friend Jamie's house. We were going to try cocaine for the first time. I was terrified. Not only was I terrified about trying cocaine, but I was scared of doing it with Bianca. I just didn't know how I would act, and I didn't want to do something stupid.

We arrived at Jamie's house. Jamie was also intimidating. His house was what your typical trap house looked like at the time, with a bunch of really expensive music equipment. Everybody wanted to be a rapper or a D.J. that year. He introduced all his friends and offered us lines of coke. Here we go. Joe went first, he'd already done some before. Bianca went next without hesitation. Now it was my turn. I remember my hand shaking with the rolled up bill between my fingers. I chose the smallest line and sniffed. It did not taste anything like I expected. Five minutes went by. Oh, this is what cocaine is like. It was so underwhelming. It was also some thoroughly stepped on shit. I know that now because since then I've done some foreign blow that literally almost made my heart stop. Anyway, Jamie and I got to talking, mostly about his "music career". Jamie told me if I ever wanted to buy cocaine in bulk to hit him up. I laughed and told him if he ever wanted to buy LSD in bulk to hit me up. I was half joking. He looked at me with the straightest face and asked if I was serious. Honestly, this Jamie guy really scared the shit out of me. He was a good ten inches taller than me and the whole scene was really starting to freak me out. I told him I was serious though. He told me to come with him.

He brought me into his room and closed the door. In the room it was quiet. The walls were sound proofed. I looked around and the room was full of money, cocaine, and guns. Okay, he's probably not going to kill me. I hope. He then asked about my LSD connection. I told him I could get sheets for $350. He said he wanted books. Books? This guy wants books? I didn't know this at the time, but a book is a thousand hits of LSD. I told him I had to talk to some people and I would let him know the price, but that I could definitely make it happen. We went back into the party and he gave me line after line of cocaine. Joe offered him money for the lines, but Jamie told him not to pay. He said your friend here bought you guys as much coke as you want for the night. Honestly, that made me feel really cool. After the party I talked to my room mate and told him what happened. We looked up the price of a book on the Silk Road. $300. Not only could we have saved a lot of money if we had just bought a book from the start, but we were going to make a lot more money selling by the book. The days of getting excited over $800 were about to come to an abrupt end.

I talked to Jamie and asked how much he would be willing to pay for each book. He said he would pay no more than $3000 for each book. We decided we would sell him the books for $2,800 each. He agreed and asked how many we had. I said we can start with five books. He agreed. This was perfect. Not only were we about to make more money than we had ever expected, but acid was incredibly easy to ship. They were basically sheets of paper. Our supplier used to send it to us in between the pages of large children's coloring books. The books, or prints, as our supplier called them, blended with the kid's books very well. Our prints consisted of a large picture of Bart Simpson, The Grateful Dead bears, and a double rainbow portrait. If you didn't know what acid was, you wouldn't know these were drugs. We made nearly $14,000 from that first deal.

Over the course of a few months we would sell close to thirty-thousand hits of LSD. We had $75,000 in cash sitting in an empty bedroom at Noah's apartment. I stopped going to class. My room mate had filled his entire room with computer parts and instruments. Noah, well we didn't really see him much, but he was always present when we needed a shipment. We broke our cardinal rule of not getting high on our own supply. We took a lot of acid that semester. It was an extremely enlightening period for us. Things in my world began to take on entirely new meaning. I had a newfound appreciation for things I had never noticed. The connections with my friends became very strong and we talked about a lot of stuff that was just too deep for my other peers to even scratch the surface of. It was nice.

By my birthday in February we had over $200,000 in cash. We didn't die in December, not that I thought we would, but some people were legitimately surprised. They were mostly art students. Things started getting a little crazy. My room mate and I were taking a lot of Xanax by this time and a lot of nights celebrating were never logged as memories. We always told ourselves we would only sell LSD. We had sparked a huge psychedelic scene in and around Philadelphia. There were literally parties where everyone was tripping acid. Many groups of people began taking acid and doing really creative stuff that I admired so much. So much good music and art was around during that period. I felt like I was living in San Fransisco in the middle 60's. It felt like we were part of this incredible scene that nobody outside of the city knew about. Of course every wave has to break and roll back.

It was getting close to the summer. I hadn't been to class in months. We hadn't seen Noah since the previous shipment about a month prior. It was a regular weekday, but I wasn't going to class, so I took two hits of acid. I spent most of that evening and night writing and yapping into my tape recorder. I was on the subject of togetherness and how there are so many things that are so incredible that we never notice even though they're right in front of us. Acid talk. I was looking at a glass of water, thinking about its importance, and how so many of us take it for granted. That's when my room mate came home. This was my room mate though. Remember, we had a two bedroom, four person suite. My room mate, who was never involved in our operation. He was obliterated, and not from alcohol. This was something else. He limped into the room and collapsed on the bed. I immediately got the rest of my room mates together. That's when Christian told me what transpired earlier while I was locked in the bedroom tripping acid. He told me that my room mate had broken up with his girlfriend, took an entire bottle of lorazepam, and tried to cut his leg open with my biology scalpel. What the fuck.

I examined his leg and he did not try to cut it open, he succeeded. He had a gigantic cut all the way down his lower leg that was fixed up by his father who is a surgeon. His father then brought him back to the dorm. The condition he was in was terrifying. He was breathing, but not well. His heart rate was also very low and we had to monitor him for the remainder of the night, taking shifts to make sure he didn't stop breathing. I couldn't believe his father had brought him back in the condition he was in. The next morning I was exhausted. My room mate and I, the one with the bitcoins, left and went to Noah's apartment to relax for an hour. While we were gone Bianca was to watch over him with her room mate. When we got to Noah's we had a new problem. Noah hadn't gotten out of bed for what looked like weeks. He had ran out of his antidepressants and was in bad shape. At this point I checked out. I walked into the living room and opened a bottle of champagne. I poured a glass, popped a Xanax, and sat on the sofa. I was still a little foggy from my acid trip and I hadn't slept all night. That's when my phone rang. It was Bianca.

I answered the phone and her first words were: "Your room is full of police.". Well, it's been a good run. On my desk were a couple thousand hits of LSD and a handgun. In the other bedroom were numerous unopened box's of expensive computer parts, scales and drug paraphernalia galore, and a large pile of white powdered alprazolam. That room also smelled heavily of weed because there was a half pound out in the open. We had gotten very sloppy. I asked her if my room mate was okay. She said that's why the police are there. She said his mom was trying to reach him and he wasn't answering her, so she called the police for a wellness check. Bianca then started talking to someone and hung up the phone.

We pondered whether or not to flee the country and become outlaws. We did after all have all the cash here at Noah's. Close to a million dollars. Maybe more. Because we were getting sloppy, we had also started selling hash, Xanax, LSD, 25i-NBOMe, 2c-b, 2c-i, 2c-E, Mescaline, cocaine, MDMA, MDA, LSA, clonazepam, ativan, and other various designer drugs. We were going down for a long time. I started thinking about my life. It literally was flashing before my eyes. I thought about my high school crush, and how I should have been more upfront with her about how much I liked her. I loved her. I thought about the time we slept in the same bed and I couldn't fall asleep because I couldn't believe she was really laying next to me. I remembered how I never wanted to wake up next to anyone else. I thought about my trivial crush on Bianca and how shallow it really was. I thought about my parents and how they'd raised me better. How they did so much for me so that I could go away to college and have a better life than they had. I thought about sitting on the beach last summer without a care in the world. The "problems" in my life that seemed hilarious now. Will I go to prom? Is my car cool enough? My k/d ratio in Call of Duty. How could so much happen in less than a year? That's when Bianca called me again.

I was terrified to pick up that phone. We looked outside to see if police were surrounding the apartment complex. They were not. I answered the phone. She said the police were gone. She had put my gun and LSD in my desk drawer. The police never entered the other bedroom. It was just a wellness check. An ambulance came and took my room mate. He was going to be okay. I hugged my partner in crime and we cried. I wish I could tell you we cleaned up our lives after that. My room mate with the bitcoins developed a really dangerous drug habit after that. He spent most of his money on drugs over the next few years. I went back to class after that summer, but stopped going again because I wanted to party instead and start a career as a writer. I failed out of college. Throughout the years I went on numerous adventures all around the world. I have hundreds of stories, I just have to write them. Oh and I have to learn how to write properly. I don't use a lot of drugs today, and I don't encourage people to use drugs. I have unfortunately lost many friends during the opiate epidemic. Weed is cool though, I like weed. I wouldn't tell people to smoke it, but I'll never shame someone for enjoying some cannabis. Actually, I don't really shame people for anything, it's just not my place to judge anyone. Feel free to judge me though, about how my dorm room became a drug superhighway.

New Years is a time of celebration. It's a time of resolution. It's a time to look hopefully to the future, and say hello to the new you. This New Years though, I woke up on the floor with a bad hangover. The night before was a lot of fun. My best friend David and I had thrown a party. A small party, nothing too excessive. Except the amount of alcohol we drank. That was excessive. Oh, and Valium. Lot's of Valium. I looked across the room and saw my ex girlfriend also laying on the floor. I didn't even know she was here last night. Wait, it's still dark outside. Why am I awake? That's right. I'm awake because Joe just came bursting in the door with a bag of donuts in his arms yelling at us. Hello 2014. Nice to meet you.

Everyone woke up angrily asking why he was yelling. Too be honest, I too, could barely understand him. See, Joe had planned a ski trip in upstate New York for him and anyone who wanted to come. The trip was planned for the fifth of January. He was trying to explain to us that there was a huge snowstorm on it's way, and if they didn't leave now, they wouldn't be able to get to the lodge. Everyone scrambled to gather their belongings. I was not part of this excursion. Joe looked at me and asked if I was coming. I am now part of this excursion. I just needed to stop at a mall or something to purchase some skiing equipment. He told me I could buy everything I needed in North Jersey on our first stop along the way. Fantastic. On we go.

Everyone piled into Joe's Jeep and left. David is a slow mover, so him and I drove separately in his car. This was ideal because David and I were tasked with getting the weed for everyone on our first stop. The stop was at David's old room mate's apartment. We entered the apartment and were offered several different types of cannabis. He also said he just made some brownies. We agreed to buy two ounces of weed, fifteen edible brownies, and a small vile of cannabis tincture. On our way out, we were also offered twenty hits of LSD. That was not part of the plan, but it felt right. David had never tripped acid, but he knew somewhat about my accidental creation of an explosive LSD scene in Philadelphia. I didn't talk about it much to anyone outside of my small circle of friends at my University. We purchased the LSD and left.

We all met up at Joe's apartment and took inventory of all the supplies. Joe had procured a rather large amount of alcohol for the trip. We weren't sure how long we'd be at the lodge. He asked David, in a skeptical manner, how much weed we got. We showed him and he was very happy with what we collected. Now we were just waiting for Joe to get ready, so we all ate a brownie. Some time had gone by and we were watching Donnie Darko. That's when our friend Jason started laughing really loudly. I asked what was so funny, and he pointed at David. David's face was whiter than the snow we were trying to beat. He had gotten, "the whities", as Jason would call it. This is when you have taken too much of any form of THC, and you are not in good shape. We got him a trash can and he put it to good use.

We all piled into Joe's car. David brought the trash can with him. It was a rather large trash can. This was exceptionally funny to us. I fell asleep somewhere along the way. We had beaten the snowstorm by maybe an hour. It snowed so heavily that we actually couldn't leave the lodge for the first 36 hours. We settled in, smoked a bunch of weed, and watched movies during that time. The first real day we went snowboarding. It was my first time. It was some of the most fun I'd ever had on a board. A whole new thrill. We retired to the lodge and slept well that night.

Today is the day we take the LSD. Everyone was looking forward to it. Mr. Kim, we'll call him, was very excited. Remember Mr. Kim, he's important. Kind of. Anyway, we all said cheers and took the acid. Coming up was funny. Some people come up comfortably, some people are awkward, and other people just don't handle it very well. Those people were pacing around on the front porch and continuously coming in and out of the door with an incredibly concerned look on their faces. It was amusing. Mr. Kim sat silently on the sofa by himself. David and I were just talking while sitting at the dining room table. Once the LSD had almost fully kicked in, my friend and I had an incredible moment. David was my best friend. My best good friend, and even I know that ain't something you can find just around the corner. We started hanging out in high school and we did absolutely everything together. We both went off to different colleges, so whenever we got the chance to hang out we valued it very much. Now we were taking LSD together in the mountains of New York.

We had eaten bagels for breakfast and there were sesame seeds all over the table. I flicked one of the seeds at David and hit him in the forehead. The seed trailed the whole way over to him and it looked like a shooting star. In that moment it felt as if we were communicating without words. We were both speechless and just nodded our heads in agreement while laughing. We stood up and gathered everyone together. We decided we would go for a walk. It was beautiful outside. The shimmering white snow in every direction was tinted with all sorts of vibrant colors. Astounding. Only half of our group decided to go on the walk. The other half wanted to stay close to the lodge.

Ten minutes into our walk, Joe's friend looked up at the slope of the mountain that was most near us. He stared at it for a minute or two until we broke his concentration. "We have to climb this mountain.", he said. He then walked towards it. Nothing was stopping him. We all hesitantly joined him. Along for this journey was David, Jason, Joe, Joe's friend, Derek, and Myself. The others turned back. The slope was not an easy climb, it was actually quite rigorous. It was undoubtably magnificent though. The trees along the slope blocked the sky completely from our view. I had never been in an environment like this. About an hour into the climb we stopped to rest.

Jason started complaining, he wanted to go back. David agreed. I thought we were going to turn around. Joe's friend exclaimed, "You're either on this trip, or you aren't.". That statement sounds asinine now, but in that moment, I was on the trip. The Valium definitely eased my nerves. Jason and David turned around and went back. We continued on. Another hour went by. We stopped again to rest. On our break, Derek told us to come listen to something. One of the trees was blowing in the wind, so that the base of the tree was rubbing up against it's neighbor. It made a slight squeaky sound. The sound was adorable, like the trees were talking to us. I asked if they thought anyone had ever heard that before. We were on LSD, so the thought of that literally blew our fucking minds. We talked for a few minutes about some deep stuff. How we take a lot of things for granted in this life. How we were so lucky to be able to do things like go on a ski trip at will. How we overlook all of our close relationships and plan on being more attentive and appreciative of all the wonderful people in our lives. We promised the tree we would tell his story.

We kept moving up the mountain. I noticed that I was starting to feel cold. I couldn't tell what time it was by looking around. The trees covered the sky, so it was pretty dark the whole time we had been climbing. I looked down at what I was wearing. A pair of jeans with sweatpants underneath. A long sleeve shirt with two flannels overtop. Two pairs of socks and hiking boots. We left the house to go for a walk in the sunny warm weather during the mid afternoon. The conditions had changed. We were in upstate New York in January. It was starting to get dark. I asked how close we were to the summit. Joe's friend replied that I shouldn't worry, that this trip is a safe one. His word had become less reassuring at this point. I looked at Derek and he was dressed like me. That's when he asked if David and Jason even knew how to get back to the lodge. Shit. They left us hours ago. "Everyone's journey is their own.", said Joe's friend. Okay this kid is actually fucking nuts. He's leading the excursion too. I like to divert with humor, so I said maybe we are actually already dead. This was a mistake. This is not what you want to hear while climbing a mountain, with no reference point, on LSD. Derek confided in us, "I don't know man, I've done a lot of bad things.". We all started laughing. It was that kind of worrisome laughter everyone has before the ship goes down in rough seas because everyone knows they should have turned back miles ago. We pressed on.

At this point I was terrified. I couldn't feel my feet. I felt like Casper the friendly fucking ghost. It got late, it got dark, it got cold. Then he died. We were still walking, only now there was a weird machine-like noise in the distance. What could that possibly be? I looked at Derek and he was silently crying. The slope had started to flatten out. We finally emerged from the trees. The sky was dark. The noise was coming from a snow blowing machine on the summit. A huge one. It must have taken us four hours to climb this damn mountain. I'm not going to make it back down. We walked over to the other side of the summit. I had never seen a sight so unbelievably gorgeous. It looked like the top of the world. You could see for miles. The sun had set, but it was still bright enough to see the horizon. "Joe how the fuck are we going to get home?", asked Derek. Joe walked to the edge of one of the slopes and peered down. That was not the only snow blowing machine. Down the slope we could see that there were at least twenty of them. All blowing snow on this one slope, creating a run for skiing. Joe looked at us, and then jumped head first down the slope.

To my amazement he rushed down like a penguin. Then Joe's friend went. Head first, just like Joe. Derek and I looked at each other with gigantic grins on our faces. We jumped together. We went so fast. It was like riding with Woody, Buzz, and RC on the rocket catching up to the truck at the end of Toy Story. It was an incredible rush. We saw Joe stop somewhere down the slope and walk to the side, so we stopped where he did and followed him. Amazing. We were on the road where the lodge was located. It had taken us hours to climb that mountain, and we returned in ten minutes. I was in utter disbelief. I was going to live. I could hear Buzz Lightyear's voice in my head, "Not today!".

Returning to the lodge was a joy. David and Jason were on the sofa. We were so glad they had made it back. They, too, were incredibly happy to see that we were safe. Everyone else thought we were incredibly insane and irresponsible. We were. Then they told us a story. Apparently they all stayed outside near the lodge for hours just sitting around and talking. One of our friends had decided not to take the LSD and played Xbox all day. He told us that Mr. Kim had never left the sofa. We were gone for eight hours. Mr. Kim sat there, completely still, for five of those hours. Around dinner time, Mr. Kim silently arose from the couch and walked outside. They said he came outside, stared at the sun for a while, and then returned to the couch. When they asked him if he was ok, he replied: "I understand now.".

None of us will ever know what Mr. Kim had experienced that day. That belongs to him, and him only. He is doing very well for himself these days. The rest of us continued to discuss our experiences with each other throughout the night. We told everyone about the trees and our delusions of purgatory. It didn't hold as much weight when the words escaped our mouths. Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Trying to explain that experience before fully digesting it was like taking a picture of the moon and then becoming disappointed at the underwhelming image that the camera provides. It will never be exactly how you see it in that moment; that magical experience that only you have. Only you can grow that seed of an experience into something much more transcendent and meaningful. That is, unless, you flick that seed at your best good friend.