The Formula for Happiness

 

Soarin’

Is this allowed?

I sure bet my daddy proud

A little nigga wit a Shaker smile

On top of tile dreams is where I’m found

Some figured I was Satan bound

Until I came back with a style I found

When I’m zoned,

I’m feelin’ alrlght!– –Kid Cudi

 

 

As days of the summer came and went Eric’s birthday came around. I got together a couple of the guys that I smoked with weeks before. On July 19th I woke up at around 9:30am and wished Eric a happy birthday.

 

“Happy birthday dude! What do you have planned for today?”

“Nothing really, I thought I would just stick around and play video games for most of the day. Why do you ask?” I gave Eric a smile and held up a lighter. He knew what was coming. We didn’t say anything to each other until the guys came over at 10:30.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIC!” The guys just walked in and made themselves at home knowing no body other than Eric and I were around. We had been planning this for about a week. There was no way we could go wrong.

“So, Eric this will be your first time?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of nervous.” Eric has had a history for anxiety, and you could tell it was over the roof.

 

Knowing this I tried to convince him that it wasn’t a big deal at all. I told him that most of the time your first time you don’t even feel it. So, we grabbed the athletic bag that had the weed, bong, and lighter in it. We made our way across the street into the woods and at the time I was the only one that knew the right way to the top of the hill. The woods across my street was a maze. If you took the wrong turn you would find yourself in three feet of swamp or thorn bushes but coming back here countless times to play air soft with Eric and the neighbor, I had known the way easily. We got to the spot where we were going to light up and let the birthday boy take the first hit. As we passed the bong around, we tried doing smoke tricks like making O’s in the air with the smoke. One of my buddies started coughing because the hit he took was huge. His eyes were bright red after that one which was about his third or fourth hit.

 

“Holy shit, I’m stoned…you guys can skip me I’m done.” My buddy was gone with the wind. The bong came back around to me for my fourth hit and I could hardly hold onto the lighter I had been so high I almost fell over, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t coming back down to Earth for a while. I breathed in the cloudy smoke and held it in. I looked at Eric and gave him a thumbs up, to the side, and down. He looked at me and said he couldn’t feel anything yet. I remember the first time I smoked ii all hit me all at once, so I told him take one more hit and be done. He did. As we packed up, I was walking up the hill and trying to remember the way back home, but for some reason I didn’t know.

 

“Hey guys I hope you know the way back cause I sure as hell don’t know where I’m going.” We all laughed. I think they thought I was kidding until Eric said he would lead the way. He was quite a way behind us, so I waited for him to come to the front of our line and lead the way. “So, Eric you really don’t feel it do you?” I was yelling behind me to see if he would answer.

“No man, I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like, but I can’t feel shit.”

 

There was a long pause, and everything went quiet. I remember looking at a fern beside me and I started counting the lines on the leaf. I thought that the green that this leaf was seemed more vibrant than any other time. this made me smile and want to kiss the fern. I just rubbed it against my face and smiled. Then I heard what I thought was the funniest thing I had heard in the longest time.

“HOLY SHIT! KYLE I’M FEELING IT DUDE! I’M REALLY FEELING IT!” I looked back at Eric and he wore a grin across his face that went from ear to ear. This incident brought everyone’s mood as high as you could get it.

 

I looked in front of me and noticed that my feet had been walking and I had not been trying to walk. This was the weirdest feeling I had ever had. Before I knew it, we were back on the street across from my house. I didn’t know how we got there, but we were there. At this point I couldn’t even remember how long ago we smoked. It felt like an hour had already passed, but from my last experience I knew it could have only been about five minutes. Once all of us guys got downstairs, we turned on some music. Eric sat in a reclining chair with his eyes closed and the smiled still etched into his face. We all talked about how great we were all feeling and tried to think of reasons why weed was illegal. We started telling jokes and at that point I whipped out my iPod and started recording. We were all stoned cold.

 

“Hey Kyle, what lime is it?” Eric woke up from his trance and looked worried for a second.

“It has only been fifteen minutes since we left to go smoke man. Don’t worry

about the time.”

“Kyle don’t shit with me. I wanna know the time.”

“Eric, I shit you not.” I threw him my phone and he jumped out of the recliner and started laughing, jumping, and dancing around the room. This got all of us guys going, and we had a dance off in our basement.

 

About four hours later we were starting to come down and get the munchies.

Luckily one of my friends had brought bags of chips we could eat. Those were

devoured in no more than five minutes between us four guys. I told the guys they had to get going. Once they left Eric and Iran downstairs back to our spots where we sat.

 

“That was the best birthday ever! I didn’t even know you could feel anything like that before. I literally felt like I was flying at one point. I could hear four other songs in the one song we were listening to. It was amazing!”

Eric wouldn’t stop talking, but I was happy he had a good time. “I thought it was a day well spent.” I looked at him like I had something else to say and I did have something else to say, but it felt like I was being selfish if I decided to say it. I said it anyway. “Eric, promise me you won’t ever smoke unless I’m with you.” I was scared that Eric would get into trouble or get too high that he does something that he regrets. If that happened, I would feel responsible.

 

“Yeah, I promise. We should think about doing it again though.’

“I agree, but I have been thinking and weed gets me really happy. Sometimes I want to see things that I read about. See unicorns flying through the air or something. I want to leave this world completely!” I went out of control with my thoughts with Eric, but it was what I was feeling and wanted his input on it.

 

“Like, what are you saying? You wanna try harder drugs?”

“Yeah. Not too hard. I mean I’ll do research on them to make sure they can’t do permanent damage to me. I’m not gonna be stupid about it either. Don’t worry.”

“Do your research ‘cause I don’t want you going too much harder than weed.” I could tell Eric was already worried about what I was thinking about doing next, but I never told him why I started smoking weed in the first place. I never told him how unhappy I was, and how much I despised the world we lived in.

A week later I had been doing my research on different drugs. I looked at Ecstasy, Molly (MDMA), DMT (dimethyltryptamine), Magic Mushrooms {psilocybin), Acid (lysergic Acid Diethylamide), Morning Glory (Lysergic Acid Amide), And Salvia Divinorum. I was willing to take the risk for happiness. It looked like the rest of my summer was going to be one big trip.