Kyle Gordon Learned Why You Should Never Mix Acid and Adderall - Tales From the Trip

Kyle Gordon’s Story

Kyle Gordon recounts moving to Brooklyn, sleeping in a friend’s perpetually flooded basement, and feeling like a comedy star after taking one improv class. At a party, he took Adderall and spent an hour and a half enthusiastically discussing Canadian politics with a guy he still has saved in his phone as “Canada Joe.”

Around 2 a.m., someone offered him acid. Though he had never tried it and was already exhausted, Kyle agreed. Instead of colorful visuals, the trip sent him spiraling into thoughts that he was alone in the universe, with no God to save him.

Desperate to sleep, he went to the basement and told a silent, scrawny kid curled up on his bed to leave. The kid looked horrified and walked away.

Kyle fled to his parents’ empty house, where he felt relieved just to be home. Weeks or months later, he watched a documentary about children who had been kept inside their apartment and realized that the kid he’d kicked off the bed was one of them. The revelation made him feel awful: he had been the boy’s first real encounter with society—and he had bullied him.

Kyle ends with a rueful lesson: be kind, because someone who seems strange or out of place may be just as frightened and unfamiliar with the world as you are.

Personalities Featured

• Kyle Gordon — Comedian and storyteller
• “Canada Joe” — A party guest Kyle talks Canadian politics with
• The silent, skinny kid — A vulnerable boy Kyle later recognizes from a documentary
• Kyle’s friends and the party guests — The people hosting the gathering in Brooklyn