I got in some trouble in high school (9th Grade), I was exiled from the musical theatre community for smoking pot.

Each group of students in my high school would have a dean. My dean also happened to be the head of the musical theatre department. On the day of the castings for “Damn Yankees,” I had snuck out over the weekend with some friends to smoke pot. I took a cab, as this was pre-Uber, to a friends house and smoked some pot. The older brother wound up getting in trouble with his parents and ratted out my friend; “well he had friends over too and they were smoking pot.”

Their mother happened to be the head of the PTA and she called the school. This happened outside of school, but she felt compelled to bring it into the school.

As casting normally goes for youth theatre groups, there’s some seniority involved. Because our high school was split into two school (7-9/10-12). I had done my time in 7th and 8th grade, I had been in all the plays and the musicals and had been working my way up from being in the chorus to being a supporting role so I was kind of slated for a lead. Damn Yankees doesn’t have many female characters. There wasn’t that much room, but I was still slated to get some role. Often in theatre they do drag, so I could have been a man.

Not only did I not receive a lead or supporting role, I wasn’t even cast in the chorus. Because of that I said, “forget you guys, I’m just going to do music now.”

I took mushrooms for the first time when I was fifteen and psychologically it had such a huge impact on my life.

The first half of the trip was amazing, classic psychedelic, laughing, seeing crazy visuals. It took a weird turn where I got really depressed, and almost suicidal - “there’s no point in living. Why do we go to school to get jobs, it’s so the pointless.”

Then as I was coming down I had this realization, that’s the point of life. I was terrified of death before this and it really helped me deal with my feelings towards death. It was a crucial change in my life and I believe a lot of people are afraid of death.

If they don’t confront it head on, they could succumb to it. That was a really dark moment (Trip), but then I saw what I thought was the lowest that you can be, and then realized that there was so much more. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment.

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