I was on a beautiful beach on a day of backpacking through the Lesser Antilles. Decided to get a hotel room instead of a hammock in the woods. The hotel room had no locks and was quite isolated and all I had was a satellite phone with a low battery. I got there on a beautiful afternoon and decided to trip on LSD through the sunset. Before the L kicked in, I was having beers with the locals/owners, all of whom turned out to be US ex-pats involved in sex trafficking of young girls. A policeman showed up so I felt better, but it became clear that he was there to participate or assist. A violent scuffle broke out between the bartender and his girlfriend, clearly about a captive girl who was not cooperating. I heard everything and decided to GTFO, and of course that was when my heroic dose started kicking in. Almost instantly, I was coming up so hard that I couldn’t really make it back up the cliff, so I sat alone and tried to not hear anything else when the girlfriend left to tend to whoever they were arguing about. The men joined me at my table with a bucket of beers. They were nice, but kept asking me personal questions like where I was from, who was I with, did anyone know I was there, and finally, had I ever been at a hotel with no locks on the doors. It was obvious that I was tripping balls by that point, so I left my beer and slowly navigated back to my room with no locks, no idea how to use any kind of electronic device, and nowhere to go other than sitting in that room waiting to be snatched up or killed.

It was hell, and the trip took that form. Imagine Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I was naked in a corner, the room and I were covered in “bugs”, and I was close to taking my own life with a knife made of sharpened tile. Pretty scary. It’s another story how that ended up being the wildest VIP-mob-boss-funded night of dancing, being served fresh fruit and top shelf scotch, playing pool with armed gangsters, drifting cars in the rain, all to end up safely back in bed by morning. Still also the most scared I have been.