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By Root 871 0

was an excellent time to meander over into the woods behind school, where everyday the potheads gathered to get baked. Xs and Ys were a buzz kill, so during the lesson, as I surreptitiously consumed my corn chips, I’d retreat to my own world, quietly giggling at the silliness of it all. During my senior year of college, I lived in an apartment in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, and at noon every day, when my three roommates and I woke up, the streets would become redolent with the sweet smell of cannabis as the bongs were lit for a morning pick-me-up. Wondering how else we could enliven our day, we soon discovered magic mushrooms, which we’d consume on our third-floor fire escape, and as the sunset played havoc with our sense of time and space and the people below began to resemble mutant anteaters, we’d have profoundly philosophical discussion on the nature of reality, questioning why was it that I saw anteaters whereas they saw turtles.

By the time I turned thirty, however, I had lost touch with the people who used to call to enquire whether I’d like to drop some acid with them and maybe spend an afternoon at the planetarium, or possibly just hang out at their mom’s house and maybe watch The Wall—again. I wondered what had become of them, until I realized that they could probably still be found at their mom’s house. Smoking weed with any kind of regularity also seemed like a rather juvenile thing to do, and after I made the near fatal mistake of wandering into a hash bar in Amsterdam, where I told the pot dealer to just give me the strongest stuff he had, I was cured of any desire to ever smoke weed again. There is stoned and there is comatose, and when finally, toward dawn, I was able to pry myself upright, I stumbled into the wreckage of the red-light district during the misty hour when the prostitutes and the addicts have had their fill and all that remains is waste and regret. Seeking to fortify myself, I bought a bag of frites and soon found myself greeting the new day on my knees, heaving my excesses into the gutter.

That was some time ago, and while I have found much to enjoy in wine, I remained amenable to finding other ways to tweak my experience with the world at large. In the U.S., exploring different ways to get stoned is a cumbersome and difficult thing to do. It is generally illegal, and this lends the enterprise a furtive, desperate sort of air. It is also dangerous. I am wary of consuming a concoction of chemicals “cooked” by an emaciated user with profusely bleeding gums. That’s a red flag for me. Indeed, just about anything that involves cough syrup or complex formulas of chemical mixtures holds no interest for me. What I desired was the organic high. I think a little peyote in the desert might have worked, perhaps with the Navajo in New Mexico, around dusk, followed by some inspired drumming and chanting, but alas, the opportunity never presented itself.

Fortunately, I was now in Vanuatu, where getting profoundly stoned every night is a venerable tradition. In the golden hour before sunset, the men of Vanuatu gather in a nakamal, typically a clearing under a banyan tree, where they consume kava, which, to the uninitiated, is the most wretchedly foul-tasting beverage ever concocted by Man. Kava derives from Piper methysticum, a pepper shrub that thrives high in the hills of Vanuatu. Traditionally, the kava is prepared by having prepubescent boys chew the root until it becomes a mush of pulp and saliva, whereupon it is squeezed through coconut fiber, mixed with water, and swallowed all in one go from a coconut shell. Pondering this, you have to wonder And whose idea was that? I could not think of any circumstance where it would occur to me that consuming some kid’s globby spitball might enhance my well-being. But we humans are a mysterious species, willing to try anything for a buzz, and fortunately for us, a long time ago, somewhere in Vanuatu, an enterprising individual discovered the secret to the most satisfying narcotic available for our pleasure.

That I would become such a connoisseur of