doctor G
05-18-2006, 12:56 AM
I'll be on the road for a few weeks so I thought I would leave a tale for my loyal readers. Very busy this month, my oldest is getting married and there are 2 grandchildren in the oven (August and September) That and I'm headed back to my mountain for a while. Damn life gets busy when you are over 60.
Devil Ether
Ah devil ether. I was watching â??Fear and Loathing in Las Vegasâ? tonight and suddenly I was remembering my own days of ether use. We were in college, I really donâ??t want to say exactly where, I will say it was Wyoming and it was the early seventies. There were several of us, all freaks in overlapping courses. A veterinary student, a couple of biologists and forestry major. As we were virtually the only pot smokers in the school when we found each other we became fast friends. There wasnâ??t much of a hippy presence in the state, much less some tiny Community college on the edge of the world. The local druggies were into smack and crank, perhaps a few hundred in a town of 45,000 people. Freaks were not easy to find there. The few of us in my small group were delighted when the biology department brought out a gallon of medical ether for use in one of the live animal dissection classes and we immediately attached ourselves to it. My wife-to-be was unable to partake because she was pregnant and for years afterwards she told me the smell of ether brought back strong morning sickness.
That was the semester we all carried a lunch. We would study for an extra hour and eat our lunches on the bio lab tables. When the professors would leave for lunch or a break we would dash into the lab refrigerator. This was not the one for lunches; this is the fridge for dissection supplies, chemicals, half dissected animals and other nasty things. We would fill pint bottles with ether from the big jug in the lab refrigerator and bring them home or take them out to the park where we could huff the stuff in peace. There was any number of funny experiences. Lloyd had huffed too much down in the basement apartment I was living in and he climbed up to the stairs to the outside to get some fresh air. He was so bent that he crawled out and kept crawling. When we finally got straight enough to look for him we found him in the front yard about ten feet up in a tiny tree. The tree was so small I really could not understand how he got up it without breaking it.
We were huffing ether in the dorm one night and Geoff got so fucked up he decided he was going to be sick so he headed into the washroom to make less of a mess. After half an hour or so we decided we had better go look for him and he was sitting up on the floor next to the sink. He had passed out and fallen like a cut tree and on the way down he clipped his nose on a sink. The blow had broken his nose and it was lying sideways across his face. Of course he was bleeding severely. We packed him up and took him to a local hospital where, after a packing his nose with cocaine to stop the bleeding, and relieve the pain, they straightened his nose and released him to our care.
Randee and Vicky had been huffing in the parking lot of the dorm and decided they had the munchies. Hardly able to walk, they staggered, laughing and giggling, into a local MacDonaldâ??s and stood in line to order some burgers. As they waited their turn to order the people behind them were conversing. As they listened, one person turned to the other and said â??Itâ??s just like the operating room, I smell ether!â? and the two girls tried to hold their breath until they were out of the restaurant. Of course it made no difference as there was a pint bottle in Randeeâ??s coat that had a bad seal and was slowly leaking into her pocket.
I remember one night bashing my landcruiser into a series of snowdrifts and every time I got stuck we would break out the bottle of ether and huff until we collapsed in laughter and then I would back out and do it again. We stoned more than a few people so badly they wouldnâ??t talk to me for weeks.
As flammable as ether is in retrospect; I do not know how we managed not to blow our selves up. The stuff really is much more flammable than gasoline; it really is right next to explosive. Of course we knew none of this at the time; we were too busy getting wasted. Huffing a pint of ether in a basement apartment next to the water heater and the furnace was about as dangerous as Russian roulette with five slugs in the chamber.
Devil Ether
Ah devil ether. I was watching â??Fear and Loathing in Las Vegasâ? tonight and suddenly I was remembering my own days of ether use. We were in college, I really donâ??t want to say exactly where, I will say it was Wyoming and it was the early seventies. There were several of us, all freaks in overlapping courses. A veterinary student, a couple of biologists and forestry major. As we were virtually the only pot smokers in the school when we found each other we became fast friends. There wasnâ??t much of a hippy presence in the state, much less some tiny Community college on the edge of the world. The local druggies were into smack and crank, perhaps a few hundred in a town of 45,000 people. Freaks were not easy to find there. The few of us in my small group were delighted when the biology department brought out a gallon of medical ether for use in one of the live animal dissection classes and we immediately attached ourselves to it. My wife-to-be was unable to partake because she was pregnant and for years afterwards she told me the smell of ether brought back strong morning sickness.
That was the semester we all carried a lunch. We would study for an extra hour and eat our lunches on the bio lab tables. When the professors would leave for lunch or a break we would dash into the lab refrigerator. This was not the one for lunches; this is the fridge for dissection supplies, chemicals, half dissected animals and other nasty things. We would fill pint bottles with ether from the big jug in the lab refrigerator and bring them home or take them out to the park where we could huff the stuff in peace. There was any number of funny experiences. Lloyd had huffed too much down in the basement apartment I was living in and he climbed up to the stairs to the outside to get some fresh air. He was so bent that he crawled out and kept crawling. When we finally got straight enough to look for him we found him in the front yard about ten feet up in a tiny tree. The tree was so small I really could not understand how he got up it without breaking it.
We were huffing ether in the dorm one night and Geoff got so fucked up he decided he was going to be sick so he headed into the washroom to make less of a mess. After half an hour or so we decided we had better go look for him and he was sitting up on the floor next to the sink. He had passed out and fallen like a cut tree and on the way down he clipped his nose on a sink. The blow had broken his nose and it was lying sideways across his face. Of course he was bleeding severely. We packed him up and took him to a local hospital where, after a packing his nose with cocaine to stop the bleeding, and relieve the pain, they straightened his nose and released him to our care.
Randee and Vicky had been huffing in the parking lot of the dorm and decided they had the munchies. Hardly able to walk, they staggered, laughing and giggling, into a local MacDonaldâ??s and stood in line to order some burgers. As they waited their turn to order the people behind them were conversing. As they listened, one person turned to the other and said â??Itâ??s just like the operating room, I smell ether!â? and the two girls tried to hold their breath until they were out of the restaurant. Of course it made no difference as there was a pint bottle in Randeeâ??s coat that had a bad seal and was slowly leaking into her pocket.
I remember one night bashing my landcruiser into a series of snowdrifts and every time I got stuck we would break out the bottle of ether and huff until we collapsed in laughter and then I would back out and do it again. We stoned more than a few people so badly they wouldnâ??t talk to me for weeks.
As flammable as ether is in retrospect; I do not know how we managed not to blow our selves up. The stuff really is much more flammable than gasoline; it really is right next to explosive. Of course we knew none of this at the time; we were too busy getting wasted. Huffing a pint of ether in a basement apartment next to the water heater and the furnace was about as dangerous as Russian roulette with five slugs in the chamber.