Eddy Says

Eddy Says: Drukqs Part III – Terror at 30,000 ft

By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 18 July 2011

At the most enjoyable dinner party for years the other night, I was reminded of this little anecdote, which forms part three of my ‘Drukqs’ series.

The year that Jay-Z headlined Glastonbury, my agent managed to get me an amazing slot at the festival, up against the greatest rapper ever, on Saturday night, in the cavernous East Dance Tent.

Afterwards, I hooked up with a wonderful and dear old friend, who was a singer when we met in the 1980s, and is now a botanist/chemist and writer. He was always into his drugs, deeply into them, to the point where he’d go off to Mexico and hang out with Hopi Indian shamans to try mescaline, or drop everything and stay with a tribe in the Amazon so he could experiment with iowaska, the most potent hallucinogen known to man. A voracious reader, he would no sooner have digested a book about some kind of drug and its effect on culture, as he would be ingesting the drug itself and writing about it for some left field publication like The Fortean Times.

To cut a long story short, he’d made a tincture of magic mushrooms (psylocybe simolenceata or liberty caps to some) in his laboratory. The last time a magic mushroom had passed my lips was once, a decade earlier. So, I thought in the euphoria of the moment, it was time to reacquaint myself.

In doing so, I made a terrible mistake. A classic. I couldn’t feel anything an hour or two later so asked for another, then almost immediately got hit hard by the first wave. In a nutshell, I ended up in that casualty tent near the Stone Circle, tended by a nun and my friend, who talked me round for hours after the second wave hit and knocked me for six. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I truly thought my time had come; I was a shivering, gibbering wreck until sunrise. The horror. Never again.

But that’s the just the background story to this tale. A week later, I was on an EasyJet flight to Ibiza, all was well, we had just taken off and were climbing to that point where the engines relax slightly while the plane levels its trajectory.

At that moment I was hit by a wave of panic. My heart rate leapt, instantly, to high drum n bass tempo, and this feeling of utter hopelessness engulfed me. My mind raced and questioned itself. ‘I haven’t had a drink, I’m not stoned, I haven’t had any caffeine, I gave up cocaine years ago, what’s going on?!’ I was at a total loss as the darkness took over. I was hyperventilating, trapped in the window seat. I pushed the button I never push, after which a jolly faced EasyJet girl approached, and I said something like: “I know this sounds weird but something is happening to me, but I don’t know what, I’m having some sort of attack, I’m so sorry but I think I’m going to faint”.

I know we all slag off EasyJet and Ryanair all the time, but to their credit, the stewardess was so understanding and comforting. “Come up to the front of the plane”, she said. “I’ll get you some water and look after you”.

I followed her to the front and sat down in one of the cabin crew fold out chairs. Once there, still feeling cataclysmic, she gave me a bottle of water, the only thing I’ve ever had on an EasyJet plane which didn’t cost ten times its ground value, and reassured me that everything would be OK, and if I needed anything to just ask.

My head was in my hands. I was so shocked, embarrassed and confused. After a while I looked up at the line of Speedy Boarders in the front row. The nearest one to me was a corpulent looking middle aged man with his wife and kids.

“Are you OK?’ he inquired. “You look like you’re having a rough time of it”.

I was still breathing heavily, my heart rate was bananas.

“I think (gasp) I’m having some kind of (gasp) panic attack (gasp) but I don’t know why”.

“Oh dear, I’ve had some experience of these things. I might have something that’ll help you in my bag”. He pointed to the overhead locker.

“Gosh, really? Do you have a beta blocker, or something?”

“Yes!” He said. “That’s exactly what I’ve got, I use them all the time”.

“Are you a stockbroker?” I asked, with as much of a smile as I could muster.

“Ha ha”, he retorted. “Very good. Close, I’m a banker, these things are one of the tools of the trade”, he quipped as he stood up and rummaged around his posh, soft, leather bag.

He gave me a beta blocker (if you’re unfamiliar, it’s a relatively benign drug that snooker players and marksmen use to help combat nerves, jitters, trembling of the hand, and to bring down the heartbeat in a very mellow, non-invasive way) and chatted to me, helping take my mind off the situation.

Slowly but surely my heart beat slowed down and I went from a pale green/grey colour to the traditional dark flesh tone.

All was well that ended well, but I was still very anxious about what had happened and more importantly, WHY. I just couldn’t work it out. Then a week or so later, and I told a good friend about the episode, and he instantly said: “It was the mushrooms, you had a flashback”.

Then it dawned on me… of course… it made total sense. I’d had such a similar feeling of total desolation, but much less virulent than the previous week. These things can echo. My conscious mind had not led me to this conclusion at the time, so my fear of the unknown probably made it worse.

I spoke about it to a well known DJ friend who never flies. Turns out he has mild agoraphobia and had an attack on a plane once, which was enough to put him off for life. After that little episode I can understand why, it is totally and utterly horrible being in that situation, surrounded by prying eyes, in a steel tube at 30,000 feet, but if it ever happens to you, just get the following message read out on the tannoy:

“If there is a stockbroker or banker on board, please could they make themselves known to the cabin crew… thank you”.

X eddy