How Many Grams?

Content warning: drug use, panic attack, and brief body horror.

“How many grams should I take?”

“I don’t know, man, just take a gram.”

He didn’t intend it to be, but to me, it felt like a dare. Sort of.

So many colorful options, left and right. Pink hearts, red and yellow spirals, smiley emojis, molecule shapes… Buddha. My eyes roamed over the tiny squares of paper. Is that Buddha, or is that a Hindu god? I’m not that cultured.

I took one last look at the Could-be-Buddha stamp on one of the tabs, then walked over to the coffee table, eyes trained on what felt most real, albeit less pleasant-looking, of the two options.

“I’ll just take these.” The feel of their thin, shriveled stems, the bruised, bluish skin, the musty odor… It made my mouth water with disgust more than anticipation.

“How many grams should I take?”

“I told you, dude. A quarter. Just take a quarter.”

“Didn’t you just say to take a gram?” I stared at him, astonished - the understatement of the century.

I shook my head and pulled out my phone to Google it for myself.

How many grams of shrooms should a first-timer take?

I waited a second.

No straight answers. No Reddit posts. Instead, I got a bunch of research papers I was too lazy to skim through. I was already in a very foul mood, getting laid off from work and whatnot, at the big age of thirty.

I should’ve lived more in my twenties…

A quarter it is, then. A quarter ounce. Seven glorious grams.

I gagged a little at the taste. It felt like I was swallowing the mold from under the sink. Maybe I should’ve gone for those tiny colorful communion wafers. Buddha sure couldn’t taste this bad.

We sat on the couches, facing each other in the dim light. His living room was the size of my entire flat, and the minimal furniture made it look twice as large.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“Now you wait. Shrooms aren’t as strong as acid, y’know.”

Doing drugs with your nephew, someone you’re supposed to be a role model to… Well, that wasn’t on my Bingo card for 2026, but here we are.

“A role model, huh. With a two-year age gap, that’s really ambitious, dude.”

What? What did he just say? Did I say that out loud?

“Yeah. You did.”

If a truck tire could speak, it would’ve sounded just like him. I guess he was about to start tripping.

The next time he spoke, it was a mumble. I craned my neck to hear him better in the dark, not that one sense had anything to do with the other.

Why did the lights go out, again? Right. Cheap floor lamps. Very stingy for someone who makes six figures.

“Speaking of figures…”

I jumped at the sound of his voice, now a little higher in pitch.

“Don’t you think… She looks… she looks. Looks just like that… Samaya… Salma. Salma H-Hayek from that Tarantino movie?”

I felt my brow crease at that. “Who?”

“Look.”

“What?”

“Look at her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about… Look at what? You’re not showing me anything. Where’s your phone?” I asked, annoyed.

After a long beat of silence, a wave of heat rushed through my body. It felt like I was being licked by lava, from head to toe. The heat bubbled in my chest before nesting in my head.

I lifted my hands, heavy as rocks, to cover my face for whatever reason. My heart was in my fingers, and it pounded fast and loud. There wasn’t a single speck of light.

“I can’t see!”

I felt my ears twitch like a cat’s, and my tongue… it tasted like… hair.

There was hair on my fucking tongue.

My lungs…

Someone, something, reached into my chest and tore my ribs open, pulling my lungs apart. I heard the sound of cartilage, of muscle tearing, and felt fingers squeezing and twisting my intestines, crawling, gnawing, clawing at my throat, until all I could hear was white noise and all I could taste was bile gushing out of my mouth and spilling onto the floor.

I was barfing my guts out, in pitch blackness.

I wanted to scream. Wanted to call my nephew’s name. Anyone for help. I think I’m overdosing, I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream at my nephew and beat his ass for getting me into this and for being so goddamn lucky, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, for having it so easy in life. Wanted to call my boss, ex-boss, and tell him to go kill himself. I wish I had stolen his data while I had the chance. I wanted to say and do all that. And I wanted to bolt out of the house.

But my mouth was twisted to the side, my tongue lay numb, and my body was at the bottom of the… sea.

I choked. Water rushed into my nostrils, cold and stabbing, piercing my eardrums. I couldn't see. I couldn't hear. All I could taste was salt, a sea of blood. I heaved, feeling my heart dangle out of my chest and fall to the ground with a thud, like a ship’s anchor.

This is it.

I’m dying.

I don’t want to die.

But I’m so tired. Really tired. Maybe I will just take a nap. But how does death tell the difference between a nap and a long slumber? What if death can’t tell the difference, just like how I couldn’t tell the difference between Buddha and the Hindu god? What if I nap, death can’t tell the difference, and misunderstands my napping for giving up on life…

What the hell am I even thinking?

Snap out of it. You really, really need to snap out of it right this second. This isn’t real. Whatever and wherever this pitch-black pit is, bottom of the ocean, isn’t real.

Whooshing…

I hear a whooshing, very similar to sand being carried by an ocean breeze. I’m starting to hear again. I’m starting to see, through my blurred vision, a distant beach, and… a distant figure. A woman, maybe. A monk draped in an orange robe. She is kneeling before a statue of what could only be Buddha.

“What did you see?”

Her voice sounds like… foam on a cup of cappuccino. It’s the closest comparison I can think of. Soft, light, and smooth.

A zap went through my head, as if I had been electrocuted. My eyes squeezed shut in pain.

“So?” An all too familiar voice now pierced my ears. “Which one is it?”

I blinked twice. A couple more times, willing the shock off my bones.

“What?”

“What?”

I’m confused.

I’m back in the low-lit living room, at my nephew’s place. I fumbled around me for a trace of vomit, of water… I knew I was tripping, but… barfing my guts out wasn’t real?

“Did you clean up after me?”

“What?”

“I thought I vomited.”

“Are you tripping?” said my nephew. “Tripping already before taking anything is crazy work.”

He walked over to the table and picked something up, then walked back and opened his palms. Two tiny tabs, one in each. One had a tiny Buddha stamp, and the other had a Hindu god.

So there were two of them?

I don’t remember seeing two, otherwise I would’ve been able to tell the difference. Seeing them now, I can tell.

I stared over at the jar of shrooms, unopened, and looked back down at his hands. My hands shaking, I picked up the tiny Buddha tab.

Cold sweat ran down my back. My heart beat in my ears. The tell-tale signs of a panic attack.

“One tab or two?” I heard myself ask.

“Half. Just half a tab this time. Acid is stronger than shrooms, y’know.”

What? Who said anything about shrooms now?

He looked at me, smiling, almost tenderly. My nephew… What was my nephew’s name again? My nephew.

I took note of the light from the floor lamps, swimming in my nephew’s eyes, taking on the shape of two large anchors.

His voice reverberated, deep like the roar of thunder inside an empty arena.

“You’ll see me better this time.”