Jan 4, 1997....

For my 17th birthday my friend from History class gave me my first ACID trip. We sat down in her lounge room on a perfect summer night in her small little weatherboard unit in the sharp mountains of Belgrave Heights. Surrounded by multi-coloured walls which she and her partner had painted they handed me a small piece of paper and I swallowed.

I'd never heard of ACID before. I hadn't heard of terribly much before. My parents had sheltered to the point of not really even having during high school. People terrified me. Dorkiness felt like it was nowhere but me when I was at Bree's house. I didn't usually say what was on my mind - I said what I thought they wanted me to say. After taking the trip it was like I melted into the chair. There was a kind of little buzz around me and the space filled with wacky noises and weird stuff to see. Like a child, the world became all sensation and it was...mesmerising.

It's feels like the ultimate miscalculation when everybody seems to find you funny and can't work out why their laughing.