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For the full story, read these first:
Part 1: Border Fuzz
Part 2: This is Hamsterdam

Greg had a rule about buying drugs at Bonnaroo.

“Always buy from people who are fucked up,” he said. “If they are, it means the shit is good and they aren’t a cop. And you can negotiate a better deal.”

It made sense. If you were looking to get drugs from complete strangers, asking people who were on what you were looking for was a good place to start. Even if they weren’t selling, they would at least be able to point you in the right direction — provided they still knew which way was up.

Best of all, you didn’t have to worry about whether or not the shit you bought was fake when you had an living, breathing, tripping testimonial right in front of you.

Unfortunately, Greg and Matt ignored the rule when a man who was definitely not tripping offered them an entire sheet of acid for an astonishingly low price. The deal seemed too good to be true and it began to look that way after Matt ate seven tabs from the sheet, then ate three more when he didn’t feel anything. An hour later he wanted to eat the rest of the sheet just to be sure.

We ate the rest on Saturday, hopeful that Matt’s experience the day before was simply an anomaly.

“Better give me 10 to start this time,” Matt said.

“How many do you want?” Greg asked me.

“Not 10.”

“Give him a few,” Matt said, “it’s probably not going to do anything anyway.”

I held the strip of four tabs in my palm. “So what do I do here, eat it? Do I chew?”

“Whatever you want. Chase it with a beer.”

Greg offered some tabs to Heather. She declined, “I’m going to stick with just weed today.”

Matt was skeptical. “Really? Weed makes a great side-dish, but where’s your main course? Maintaining a balanced drug diet is important.”

I finished my beer chaser as the paper snaked its way down my throat. “How long does acid usually take?”

“Well the stuff I took yesterday still hasn’t hit, so…”

A group of girls sitting in front of their tent overheard our conversation. “You guys know where we could get some acid?”

Greg looked over. “We bought a whole sheet yesterday. We can sell you some if you want.”

“Yeah? How much?”

“Cheap,” Matt said.

“Yeah, for cheap,” Greg continued. “It’s not very good though. Matt ate like seven of them and didn’t feel a thing.”

“I just felt like I swallowed a bunch of paper.”

“Yeah, so we’re pretty sure it’s fake. We’re about to eat the rest of it to see if anything happens.”

I laughed, “this is the worst sales pitch ever.”

We finished the sheet and lay in a field for two hours watching clouds do absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The acid was definitely fake. We cursed our relative sobriety.

Greg leaned up and turned towards Matt, “we should do that 2C-B we got.”

Matt tilted his head slightly. “Not yet. In a bit.”

None of us had any idea what 2C-B was. We had even less of an idea when Greg and Matt bought some a few hours earlier. It was next to impossible to decode most of the drug slang used by the dealers pacing through the campgrounds, offering nuggets, headies, reds, tabs and everything in between to no one in particular. These dealers traveled to Bonnaroo from all over North America, so in order to efficiently navigate this diverse marketplace of illicit substances, you had to be familiar with many different drug dialects. For all we knew, 2C-B was just another word for high-grade cannabis.

The dealer selling 2C-B — a burly man with a shaved head, a sleeveless shirt and a fondness for body art — likened it to a cross between LSD and mescaline. Greg and Matt were curious.

“How long is the trip?” Greg asked.

“One dose should last 4-6 hours.”

Matt wasn’t sold. “What if I took two?”

“Two?” the dealer chuckled, trying to see if Matt was serious. When it became obvious Matt wasn’t fucking with him, the dealer said, “I wouldn’t recommend it. One hit can get pretty intense.”

“Can we see it?”

The dealer reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a ziploc bag containing dozens of small red pills. “$30 each,” he said.

They pulled out the money. The dealer handed them a dimebag with two pills and bowed respectfully. He was definitely on something. Matt turned to me. “You in?”

I shook my head, “no thanks.” Tripping was still a foreign concept to me. It was something I wanted to try, but with shrooms or acid; drugs I had heard of before two minutes ago. The prospect of a bad trip loomed large on my unexpanded mind. I didn’t trust 2C-B.

A dreadlocked woman happened by a little later selling shroom chocolates out of a mini cooler slung over her shoulder. I bought one. I was going to trip today, fake acid be damned.

(read the conclusion here…)