In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers learn the hard way that getting high doesn’t always mean having a good time.

Part 1: At his friend’s bachelor party, Andrew McGill joins in on a mushroom trip that quickly spirals out of control.

Andrew McGill is a storyteller born and raised in Brooklyn, NY when not on stage is a English teacher at a high school in Brooklyn.

Part 2: In an attempt to calm his nerves about going on an Alaskan cruise, Will Clegg turns to marijuana.

Will Clegg is a filmmaker, storyteller, and new dad living in Westfield, NJ. He’s the co-creator and sometimes host of the long-running storytelling show “Awkward Teenage Years” as well as the writer and performer of two solo shows: “The Lonely Road” and “Syncope.”

Episode Transcript

Part 1

When I thought of the first bachelor party I was going to attend, I always had this vision of what it was going to be and it involved strippers. You know, strip clubs and hang with the boys and then like we bond and we have an adventure and we just become better friends by the end of this trip.

And when my buddy told us he was getting married, I was so excited. I was like, “Oh, the dream is going to come true. We're going to have some strippers. We're going to bond. We're going to be the best.”

And he tells us, this group of guys, he says, “Hey, we're actually not doing the whole strip club thing. That's like haram. We're actually going to the woods.

I was like, “Sick! Strippers in the woods, like that's going to be really fun. We can do tic‑tacs. Hey, that's going to be cool.”

But he's like, “No, we're going camping. “

Andrew McGill shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in April 2025. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I'm not really a camping person per se and he's like, “No, it's going to be great. We're going to drink. We're going to play some games. We're going to build a fire.”

I was like, “I don't want to do any of that stuff.”

Then he's like, “We're also going to take some mushrooms.”

And I was like, “I don't know, man. I'm not really a mushroom guy. I've heard some crazy things about mushrooms.”

Then one of my buddies chimes in and he's like, “Guys, it's going to be amazing. If you haven't taken mushrooms before, I took it last year and it changed my life. It changed how I was in school. It changed my mood. And I also had this conversation on shrooms that was one of the greatest conversations in my entire life.” And he's like, "This is going to be amazing."

I was like, "All right. I'm sold."

So we get out to the campground and there's probably about like eight of us. We get to the campgrounds and the first night we're like, "Oh, should we do the shrooms now?"

Our buddy is like, "Nah, it's too dark. We want to do it in the sunlight. It's going to be beautiful. We can see all the foliage. We can walk around. We can chill."

I was like, "All right, cool."

So the next day comes. We're sitting around the campfire and my buddy says, "All right, let's do it."

I don't know if you guys know anything about mushrooms, but they are disgusting. So what our buddy did is he grinded them up and he put them in peanut butter jelly sandwiches. Everyone had like one triangle, because we cut them into triangles. Very cool.

And the guy that was getting married, he takes an extra triangle. He's like, “Guys, this is like my last hurrah, so I'm just going to go for it, full send.”

We're like, "Cool. Do what you got to do. You’re a grown‑ass man.”

The first 10 minutes of mushrooms are so fun. It's the best thing ever. You can't stop laughing. You're just giggling. I remember looking up at the trees and they were so green. I was like, "I've never seen trees look like this before." I was like, "Oh, my gosh, they're everywhere." I was like, "Yo, this is amazing." I was like, "I'm here with my best friends. We're having such a great time." I was like, "This is awesome. Like, there's no other place in the world that I'd rather be right now."

My buddy was wearing this hat and it was a weird‑looking hat because he kind of looked like a slave owner. We didn't want to say anything because we were on mushrooms. We're like, “Hey, man, you got to take that hat off.” And we took the hat off and the mood changed.

I was like, “Okay, this is weird that our mood is changing because of these shrooms.”

One of our buddies says, “Hey, the mood changed just now and it might happen again if your thoughts aren't clear.”

And I was like, “What do you mean by if your thoughts aren't…”

He's like, “Yeah, you know, it's like fractals. Once you start thinking about a sad thought, it'll just lead you on and on and on.” And he was like, “I came up with this thing. It's like a safe word. In case your mind starts to teeter off, here's a safe word for you to get back.”

We're trying to figure out what the safe word was and what do we want to say, and then we started talking about Joe Rogan. This was Joe Rogan, Bernie Sanders, Joe Rogan. We were like, “Who has time to watch a three‑hour Joe Rogan podcast?” And we were like, “That's our word, Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is going to be our word.”

So when people just started doing weird stuff, we're like, “Hey, man, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan.” And it was like, oh, this is actually working.

Then one of our buddies, Abe, started throwing up. He started profusely throwing up. He was like, "Nobody look at me. Nobody look at me. I'm dying. I'm dying."

I was rubbing his back, I was like, "Joe Rogan, Abe. Everything's going to be all fine. Joe Rogan. It's okay."

I get up and I was like, "I'm going to go to the bathroom." I leave to go to the bathroom and I was in the bathroom for a long time because it was a porta‑potty and there were no lights. I think I was trying to figure out where the lights were. It was very dark.

And I come back to my friends and this is not the same group of guys that I had originally left. Everyone is off doing their own thing. I went over to one guy, I was like, "Hey, what's happening?" And he just pointed at his mouth and he was like…

I was like, “Can you speak?” And he was like…

I was like, “All right. Where is everyone?” And he kind of pointed people out.

I went over to one of my buddies and the shirt was off. He was wearing this, like a raccoon type of hat. He was sitting on the chair and he was like, “It's like a roller coaster, brother. It's like a roller coaster. You just keep going up. You keep going up. You keep going up.”

I was like, “Oh, no.”

I go to my other buddy. He has a rock in his hand and he's trying to move the rock from one hand to the other side, but he doesn't want to move his body and he's like, "Check this out."

And I go to my friend, the one who told us that shrooms changed his life. I was like, "Hey, what is happening?"

And he's like, "This is shrooms, Joe Rogan." He's like, “This is what it is.”

And I was like, “But you said it would change our moods. Who was the guy that you talked to that you said it changed your life?”

And he's like, “Oh, that wasn't a guy. That was a tree. I talked to a tree on mushrooms and it was the greatest story I've ever heard and it really changed me.”

I was like, “What is happening? Joe Rogan, please.”

I walk away because I was like, “I just can't do this anymore.” I was like, “I got to just go.” And I walk and I start listening to music. The song I listened to was Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry. It was the live version. It's like 1970‑something. It was the first time I ever heard music before.

And as I'm listening to this song, I think to myself, I was like, “I want to cry, but it's No Woman, No Cry. Can I cry, Bob?”

And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking to myself and I'm like, “I kind of want to cry.” But then I'm like, “I think I'm going to throw up.” But then I thought about Abe and he threw it up and he thought he was going to die and I was like, “Joe Rogan, you don't need to throw up.”

I get back after listening to music and all the guys are doing their own thing. I'm kind of hungry so I was like, “I'm just going to make some burgers.”

I start putting these patties together, and I'm like, “Dang, I'm doing pretty good. I should take shrooms all the time. I'm not even affected by this.” And I look down at the patty and it's like smiling at me, and I'm like, “Uh-hah.”

I put it on the grill and I was like, “Did I just kill that burger?” Joe Rogan, what am I doing?”

I'm making all these burgers and I'm starting handing them out to people. I'm trying to find the guy that's getting married. I'm looking for him. I'm going to give his burger. He's not around. I was like, “Okay, let me check his tent.”

So I go over and I look inside the tent and he's naked. He's not just naked, he's masturbating. And he turns around and we make eye contact, and all I can say is, “Joe Rogan.” I was like, “No, no.”

I walk away, I go back to another buddy of mine. I was like, “I don't think this was the mushrooms but he was just beating off in the tent.”

And the guy was like, "No way. No way he's beating off in that tent."

And he goes in and he's like, "Oh, my gosh, he's masturbating in that tent."

He comes out of his tent and he's naked, fully naked. And he's like, "Nothing matters, nothing matters."

By this time, we are at the peak of our high of mushrooms. Everyone is like, even the guy who couldn't speak was like, “Oh, wow, I don't know what's happening.”

He's like, “Nothing matters.”

And we had the fire pit and he goes over and he jumps over the fire pit. We're like, “Put your penis away, please.”

And he goes to Abe and he's like, “You've never changed since high school.”

We were like, “Joe Rogan, man, what are you talking about?”

And he goes over to our other buddy, and he says, “Hey, at my engagement party, you hit on my wife. And you know what? I didn't really respect that. And you're uninvited to my wedding.”

We were like, “What is actually happening?”

By this time, we are still very, very high but we're also very, very sad. We don't know what is going on, feel like the friendship group is just breaking by the seams.

The clouds start getting very dark and it starts to rain, like torrential downpour. So we all run back into our tents. I didn't want to be in the tent with the guy who's penis I saw. We spend the night in our tents because it just rains the whole night through.

We wake up the next morning and the trip is done. We were like, “Okay, we got to just go back home. This bachelor party that we thought was going to be amazing has been ruined.”

The car ride is silent. No one really talks about it. And then comes the wedding.

At the wedding, the guy who was uninvited, he ends up showing up. Surprise, he ends up showing up. And we're all out on the dance floor and we're dancing. We're having a good time.

I'm looking out at my friends and I was like, “This is probably the last time that we're all really going to be together in the same room.” Just because of just what happened with the shrooms and seeing this guy's penis and the Joe Rogan, I was like it was just so many things that happened. I was like, “This is probably the last time that we're going to be together in this space as friends.”

And as I'm dancing, I'm dancing, the groom comes up to me and he grabs my hand and he pulls me in and he says, “We're bound for life.”

I whisper back in his ear, "Joe Rogan."

Thank you.

Part 2

It's August of 2018 and I'm in a hotel room at The Hilton in Seattle. My wife is in the shower. It's midnight and we're really tired from having traveled across the country.

Will Clegg shares his story at QED Astoria in Queens, NY in March 2024. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I'm sitting on the edge of the bed holding in my hand a marijuana vape pen. I put it up to my lips and I pressed a little button. I've never done this before, but I think this is how you do it. I take a deep inhale and then I cough and this huge plume of smoke or vapor or whatever is inside this comes out. I lie back on the bed and close my eyes and I wait for the promised calm to wash over me.

I need to chill out because tomorrow morning, I'm going on a cruise to Alaska. I do not want to go on this cruise to Alaska at all, because I'm terrified of deep water. I have been ever since I was a little boy and I learned about riptides that can just carry you off into the ocean. I'm also very frightened of freezing to death. When I was a teenager, I got hypothermia on a hiking trip. I almost died. So I really don't want to go on a cruise to Alaska, of all places.

But I never shared these deep‑seated fears with my mother‑in‑law, because it just didn't come up. In the previous Christmas, she had decided to buy for her entire family, including me, a cruise to Alaska. I can't really say no to that, so I'm going. She's also booked us on some excursions, conversations I was not included in, where we're going to be going horseback riding and ziplining and on a small seat plane.

I like a little bit of adventure in my vacation. I do. But this all just feels dangerous, you know? If you haven't picked up on it yet, I do have an anxiety disorder. And prior to 2018, it was really bad. Sometimes I would have panic attacks every single day. But I've been working on it, working on it really hard. I had a really good therapist that I would see at least once a week, and I also had a good psychiatrist who had given me a prescription for Xanax.

Xanax was like a wonder drug for me because I could take it very low dose and it's just enough to interrupt the panic spiral when I was in it. Like, in 10‑15 minutes, I would just feel relaxed. It also had the side effect of sort of turning me into a zombie for a few hours, which is not ideal on this cruise to Alaska. I can't take a Xanax and then go horseback riding, for instance.

So I don't really know what to do, like how to handle this. What you're probably thinking is, “Call your psychiatrist and ask him if there's something else you can take.”

But instead, what I do is I see that we're going to leave out of the port of Seattle. In 2018, Washington State is one of the only places in the country where you can get legal marijuana. And so I decided, well, I've heard of CBD, which is the 21st century snake oil, the cure for whatever ails you. You can even give it to your dog, so it's got to be safe. So I decided I should look into that.

I have to be careful, though, because I used to smoke a lot of weed in college, and then also for the 10 years after college. This may or may not have contributed to my anxiety disorder. We'll never know, but it got to the point where every time that I would get high, I would also freak out. So I had to really stop doing that altogether. There's a lot of compounds in marijuana, THC being the one that gets you high, gives you the munchies and it makes your heart race. And if you're me, it makes you think your death is imminent.

I don't have a doctor to talk to about this, so I instead turned to Google. What I'm able to glean from the internet is that if you get a product that is like a 15 to 1 ratio of CBD to THC, that's the perfect way to do it. A little bit of THC won't get you high, but it activates the CBD even more somehow. That's what I'm looking for.

I find a dispensary that's right near the hotel where we're going to stay in Seattle, and they have this vape pen that's got 60% CBD and 4% THC. It's perfect, right? So I bookmark it on my phone.

We fly out to Seattle and we go to the Pike Place Market and the Space Needle and all the touristy things. And after our fancy dinner, we split off from Kerri's family and we go to the dispensary. I walk up to the counter and I show the budtender, it's what I'm told he's called, my phone and I say, “This is what I want.” He retrieves it. I give him $50 and it's a legal drug deal. As a child of the '80s and '90s, this is remarkable.

So we go back to the hotel, and while Kerri's in the shower, I decide I should try this now so that I know how it makes me feel in case I don't like it. That's not something that I want to learn out on the high seas.

So I'm lying there and I feel my whole body start to vibrate. Then I sit up really quickly and I open my eyes and the whole room starts to close in on me like a trash compactor. And then I can feel every blood vessel in my head expanding and contracting. I realize that I am extraordinarily fucking high. This is the most stoned I've been in like a decade. I grab the packaging for this thing and I'm looking at it and it says right there, it says 60% CBD and 40% THC.

I look back at my phone, it says 60 and 4 there, but not on the package. It's too late now. There's no going back. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to leave this hotel room.

Then I hear the shower in the background, and I think, “Oh, okay, Kerri. Kerri will know what to do.” Because this is not the first time that she's dealt with me being way too high because we've been together for a long time.

So I go and I knock on the door and I push it open just a little bit. Then she pulls back the curtain from the shower and she gives me this stern look. She's like, “Come on. I'm exhausted. I don't want to have shower sex right now.”

And I'm like, “Oh, if you think that's a bad idea, wait until you hear what I've done.”

But, thankfully, Kerri does know what to do. She comes out and then she strokes my hair. She tells me that everything is going to be okay in like two hours when you come down, just like it always is. And that does make me feel a little bit better.

But now my mind is racing. I just feel like I have to start talking, get some of these thoughts out of my head. So I decided to tell her about the sci‑fi novel that I've been thinking of writing. Actually, it's not just one novel, it's a trilogy. I don't know, it could even be like a TV anthology. I'm open to all of the possibilities for this project.

Then I look up and she's asleep, because she's very tired and what I'm saying is very boring. But I can't go to sleep now, so I try listening to music and watching TV and meditating, but none of it is really working. My mind just keeps coming back to this cruise that I have to go on the next day, like all the awful things that could happen. You know, if I'm riding on this horse and I fall off and bang my head on a rock or I'm on the zipline and the carabiner breaks and I fall into a ravine, or the sea plane crashes or maybe just the most obvious thing, is somehow I will end up over the rail of this boat. I don't even know if I'm going to drown or freeze to death first or which would even be worse.

I had to sit with these thoughts for two hours until, finally, the fog starts to lift and I drift away into a deep, deep slumber.

The next day, we go on the cruise. My nerves are shot when we leave that afternoon. And what nobody tells you about the first day on the cruise is that you can't do anything that whole first afternoon because, until you're in international waters, the casinos are all closed, the bars are closed. It's just you and your in‑laws and 2,000 strangers on a boat.

And so after a very disappointing buffet dinner, I go back to our cabin. Thankfully, my mother‑in‑law has sprung for a nice one. We have a little balcony there. It's totally enclosed in plexiglass so I feel safe on it.

I walk out and I look out and I see the most unbelievable sunset I've ever seen in my life. It's just the ambers, crimsons and lavenders and blues and the little cotton candy, wispy clouds, all reflecting off of the very still ocean. It's just I'm gobsmacked.

I just stand there and I stare at it for like 10 minutes until I notice that my entire body and mind are perfectly calm for the first time in many days. Then I remember something that my therapist keeps trying to tell me that I just can't seem to put into action. Anxiety is really just anticipation of what might happen in the future. The best antidote is not any drug, really, prescribed or not. It's just being present. It's living in the moment, just like I'm doing right now, looking at this sunset and appreciating this divine beauty of nature.

So I promise myself that as much as I can this week, I'm going to do that. I'm just going to be present and try to live in the moment. And when you know it, I ended up having one of the most incredible weeks of my entire life.

Thank you.