More than a month has passed since I wrote anything. And damn, have I missed it. For me, being able to put down my thoughts in a semi-linear fashion is nearly therapeutic. It is almost like slowly untangling a clumped up mess of fine threads. One word typed is one untangled thread from that pile.
There was a solid reason behind my taking some time off. Unlike in the past, it was not some random mood change, nor was I lazy. Well, a teensy bit of laziness played some part in it, to be honest, but more so, I was occupied with life. Did some voluntary work here and there, focused more on trading, finished submitting three academic reports, exams and tried to calculate the route my life is taking me through. And found out I have it so easy than so many of my peers that I now feel blessed. Where I am now, I am a better human than I ever was. If I close my eyes, it seems only yesterday when I was going through a severe drug problem with no apparent exit. Blessed be thy soul that now I am a changed man. I say I have it good and easy for a reason. Except for the eating disorder that tagged along making me fatter every freaking day, I am habitually a clean man. And I am learning to appreciate all this more and more when I look at my friends, peers who couldn't change even a grain's worth.
Only a few weeks ago, a friend of mine died after ingesting LSD. I wasn't that close with him, but still, I have grievances that would only go away with solitude. A bright-eyed, kind career-oriented kid who was climbing up the ladder like a textbook success story when all of a sudden, one day, he decided to slit his throat. That too with a dull cleaver from a roadside coconut vendor. And the media is printing a story that is not completely accurate. They are tagging it as a suicide, but I know it is not. It is only a suicide when it's done with a clouded, shrouded but clear conscious.
What happened was, on the eve of Eid, this guy had a fight with his girlfriend. Not to that veracity where it had reached to procure and push out suicidal tendencies. Just a simple argument, a healthy quarrel every couple has now and then. His way of venting out such stresses was relying on drugs. But for him, it became so habitual that after a few years, he became heavily reliant on amphetamines. At this stage, I have to clarify one thing. Most of the youths of my country who are in the creative arts, like theatre and similar crafts, a healthy chunk of them use drugs to help with their stage performance. I have no empirical data to support my claim, but I have run with a similar crew, so I have seen stuff. And this guy was a mime artist and a bit emotionally challenged on top of that.
When he went out all stressed and bothered, he had another fight with a tuk-tuk driver over an overcharged fare. What he did was beat the driver to an inch of his life and fled the scene. A few of his friends had already decided that day they would get high on LSD and go on a trip while he would go back to his home. So when he went to his friends after and told them what had happened, they started telling him how it wasn't right, and he shouldn't have beaten that tuk-tuk guy, that too even in the month of Ramadan when any kind of violence is prohibited. As I mentioned earlier, this was an emotionally challenged kid, and so after he had ingested the drug, his base emotions started oozing out of him.
Based on the dosage you ingest, the high of LSD comes to people in different forms. But a slight bit of hallucination can not be avoided. I've heard stories from people who did LSD that many for a moment start thinking of themselves as a god, and an out of the body experience is fairly common.
For a moment, the three of them were buzzed out into the lands of fantasy. And my friend, who we are talking about, got so emotional, and the guilt of beating that man became so unbearable that he ran outside and started apologizing to every rickshaw/tuk-tuk driver he could find. As he made through streets after streets, barefoot, almost naked with only his shorts left, apologizing to anyone he saw, his eyes came upon a roadside coconut vendor. The sun had gone down by then, and amidst the covid lockdown, the usually busy streets became emptier. To that extent, the eve of Eid only fueled it more. So he walked to the vendor and started asking him for his forgiveness. In the vendor's eyes, he was another crazy homeless guy who might start asking for money. So he shouted and told him to go away. But to him, being all intoxicated, it was interpreted as his asking for forgiveness was rejected. The guilt at that point became so overbearing that he took the cleaver that is used to cut the coconuts and ran it through his own throat in the blink of an eye. The stunned vendor being in a not so well lit street, thought my friend was making a threatening gesture, and so he slapped and grabbed the cleaver from his hand only to find it all bloody.
By this point, I think his high had started to wear down a bit. Because even though he was out of his mind, after slicing his own throat, he left the stunned vendor and ran towards the direction of a nearby hospital. For 15 minutes, he ran and did manage to reach the hospital. But the people who saw him didn't come to his aid. Who would've? There he was, half-naked and his chest covered in a thick layer of blood; helping him would mean inviting unnecessary trouble, and as much as they were concerned, slicing throats are the works of organized criminals. As his body gave up, he sat beside the wall of the hospital for a time before the police came and took him inside. But by then, all had ended. He was listed as a Jon Doe, unidentified dead body for 9 days before his family found out where he was.
I think in the history of the world, he is the second guy to have sliced his own throat after a botched LSD trip. The last guy to do this back in 2017 had died, but his family immediately found out. But my friend here died all alone while hallucinating. The irony in all this is there is a video of this in social media shot by someone from a distance showing the police officers picking him up and putting him in a rickshaw. The mode of transportation that had started it all. It makes me wonder, is this how anyone wants it to end? Even though the video shows him expressionless, not in pain, but even then! Jumping out into the void, being out of mind, in bent reality and for my family to not even know where I am for so long. I hope not! If this does not motivate people to not do drugs, I don't know what will. And in the end, I pray that his soul may rest in peace.