My Dentist First Got Me High

If I had to thank someone for my ongoing quest to get high, it’d probably be my dentist in 1975.

Inclined and bibbed with a mouth full of cotton, I remember squinting at the overhead light he must have borrowed from his military interrogator pal.

“Mike, I need to drill out that cavity of yours,” he said. “So I’m going to give you some laughing gas. Have you ever had Nitrous oxide before?”

I shook my 10-year-old head because I was still many years away from doing whip-its with college friends and nitrous balloons outside the Grateful Dead concerts of my future.

“Well, it will help you relax while I give you a shot of Novocain and do the work. My nurse will get it started.”

To the sound of gentle Muzak, his smocked sidekick got busy twisting the dials of a metal machine that had a clear, thin hose running from it. That connected to a mask like the one I’d seen Jacques Cousteau wear underwater.

Using gentle hands, the nurse strapped it onto my face and made sure it fit snug over my nose. The air it pushed into my head smelled like cotton candy and ice. I sucked it in and filled both lungs with that cold, tasty breeze.

Delicious.

“Breathe deeply,” the lady in white whispered into my ear, “and I’ll come right back to check on you.”

I nodded and followed her advice.

That new air was thick, like breathing cool water. The laughing gas filled both lungs and began to spread to the ends of my body. It tingled my toes and fired up my fingertips as if they’d been asleep my whole decade of life and had finally gotten some blood flow.

Glorious.

My body floated towards the ceiling while an invisible man in my head used his wooden clubs to pound thunder out of my eardrums. My ten-year old body floated upwards until my chest and nose were about to touch the white tiles that had once been eight feet above me.

So, this was what being high felt like.

Mmm, me likey likey.

It was a sudden dip in the road and a deep yawn combined.

The angels were singing in my ears as the universe whispered her deepest secrets to me.

May this feeling never stop.

“Can you feel anything yet?”

The sudden sound of the nurse’s voice knocked me out of my first ever grand euphoria. My body came slamming back down onto the dentist’s chair with a mental thud.

My brain and buzz both cried, dang it lady, why did you interrupt us?

“Everything okay?” the nurse asked.

I could only nod because I was still way too high to handle words.

“The dentist will be back in just a minute to fix that cavity.”

It’s not really my dentist’s fault that ever since that first laughing gas high I’ve been searching for another buzz that might match it.

It was inevitable.

Jacques Cousteau once said, “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

Same goes for that first high.

I’ll never find it again, I know, but it’s sure been fun trying.