Graham Cullison
About six months back, a Penn State student going to major in mechanical engineering was found in Fredrick Maryland, 3 hours away from his Mont Alto campus. Police say he was discovered disoriented, running the streets, barefoot, heckling pedestrians, only after abandoning his car.
This specific Penn State student just so happened to be my cousin. I remember receiving a text from my mom notifying me that he had been admitted to a Fredrick hospital. The drug screening the hospital ran came back negative for everything. When I heard of his symptoms and knew that nothing appeared on a drug screening I told my aunt that it sounded like he had eaten some bad acid and was experiencing a bad trip.
However; after a few days I figured that he would’ve come down. A search of his car revealed that a leafy green substance had been discovered. But, according to my aunt, it didn’t smell or appear to be weed. She said it smelled like perfume. As soon as I heard that, I knew it was spice.
Luke had always been the star student in school. This is the kid who barely fell short of being his class’s valedictorian. This is the kid who picked up a banjo and could play it in a matter of hours better than my dad could after practicing for weeks. He was going to be an engineer at Penn State. My point is, he was the type of kid who you could tell was smart just by talking to him. No one saw this coming, not from Luke.
As the first few days after the incident passed, my family urged for an answer. His paranoia was through the roof, looking over his shoulder relentlessly. He couldn’t focus on anything, getting up out of his seat, walking around for 30 seconds, and sitting down again. He was convinced his own mother was a shape shifter like in the matrix. The evening I arrived to visit him the first words out of his mouth were, “So you guys are the last resort?” I didn’t know what that meant. Throughout the visit, lasting over an hour, he would interrupt himself mid-conversation, and say, “I’ve got something I need to tend to,” get up, walk around for 30 seconds, come back, sit down, and greet my father and I as if we had just gotten there with a “Hey what’s up? How are you guys?” It’s as if he had Alzheimer’s mixed with some sort of schizophrenia. He’d say things like, “It’s amazing up here.” He thought he was invincible. He thought he was in another dimension. He’d sit and repeatedly ask me, “How old am I?” I’d tell him the truth, “Luke, your 19,” to which he’d respond, “Man this time traveling sh*t is messing with me.”
Personally for me, seeing someone think they’re traveling through time in another dimension for over three weeks is enough to keep me away from the substance. Keep your brain, your sanity, your conciseness in check. Stay away from synthetic drugs.
