Chapter 28 - Mescaline On The BarbicanJeremy's vocation time was up, and he returned to Miami. I stayed on with a gang of hippies we had met in Plymouth, having nowhere else to go. Shortly after I settled in Plymouth a festival was held on the island in Plymouth Harbour. I went on the ferry with John, Simon and Brian Blood. It was a short and pleasant ride over, although the bay was choppy. The island was hilly, and the festival site was on a level plateau at the top of the island. Local bands were playing, and movies were being shown in some caves. Simon scored some mescaline, and we both took a tab.Mescaline is generally a softer trip than LSD, without as much of an edge, although equally as hallucinatory. We sat in the caves for a while, and then as the mescaline began to take effect, we roamed above ground to the festival site. The fluttering banners and the music and the colourful hippies were overwhelming, so Simon and I decided to explore the island. The mescaline was making us bouncy, and we scrambled around the rockface of the island enjoying the beautiful scenery. We didn't realize just how adventurous the trip had made us, until we looked down the steep rock cliffs and saw a troop of boy scouts practicing rock climbing far below us! At nightfall we took the ferry back to the mainland, where we docked on the Barbican, the notorious old sailors' hangout. To relax from our trip, we went into one of the sailors' haunts, and got loaded on cheap draft beer. Drinking is an ideal way to come down from a psychedelic trip. The booze eases paranoia, and eventually makes sleeping possible. The bar's habitués gave us a few stares, but they had seen far stranger sights in their lives than a group of longhaired kids acting stoned. The after-effects of the mescaline combined with the draft gave us a warm and glowing feeling, and somehow we made it back up the hilly backstreets of Plymouth to our flat.
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