Burning Man has a reputation as a drug-soaked hedonistic brew-ha ha of excess. This may be true. In fact, I had the worst drug experience I’ve had in YEARS at Burning Man 2003.

Dear readers, I had a bad trip on Ambien.

Yes, Ambien. I had my own personal drug holocaust (and yes: it was that bad) on a prescription sedative given to me by a well-intentioned campmate who uses it to deal with the effects of jet lag.

The stage was set: I took a nice shower. I was clean. I curled up in the RV. The air conditioning was on. It was going to be a nice six hour snooze through the day, leaving me refreshed and ready to kick some ass that night. Prepared for an afternoon of dozing bliss, I took that little Ambien pill.

…And was immersed into a seven-hour hell that took me to depths I’d never experienced.

Nightmare after nightmare lurked for me there in my Ambien-induced coma. There was no escaping! No awaking! There was much shifting and rocking in my mind, and all the dreams seems to revolve around being sucked into some anus-like black hole. I was semi-lucid — could I control it? Could I stay away from the black hole? No, I couldn’t. It’s sphincterescense pulled me closer and closer. No, hole, no! Let me go!

I awoke six hours later, just before sunset. I was nauseas, shaking, wobbly, disoriented, and felt like I’d just been raked through the coals of hell. Friends coaxed me into weakly slurping down a little noodle soup as my campmates tip-toed around me whispering, “She had a bad trip on that sleeping pill.” I awoke more exhausted than I’d fallen asleep. While the playa around me woke into dazzling lighted celebration, I toddled around confusedly licking the wounds of my own sedation. I felt like I needed to inhale the goods of an entire seedy Columbian cartel just to come back to some moderately normal state of mind. Thankfully, I didn’t. Regardless, it was awful. Oh yeah: and then I got a massive bloody nose.

Note to self: stick to Valium.