Gaming Pains: A Vegas Cocktail Of Phish, Acid, And Alan Thicke

It sounds counterintuitive, but I firmly believe that the first time a person gambles in Las Vegas, the worst thing he can do is win. It's even worse if success repeats itself on the next visit to Sin City.

But the best thing someone can do in Vegas? That'd be dropping five hits of liquid acid at a Phish concert and bumping into Alan Thicke and a harem of gorgeous women in the Treasure Island lobby.

All of these things happened to me in my 20s. This is their story.

Easy game

The first time I went to Vegas, I was freshly 21. I recall it costing about $99 round trip to fly there and that my friends and I stayed at Bally's. Fortified by a diet of Sbarro slices, the beer flowed seemingly nonstop and the $5 blackjack tables at the Barbary Coast ensured that I would go home with more money than I came to Vegas with.

The same thing happened, more or less, the second time I went to Vegas. This trip involved me, two pals I'd had since high school, one of their older brothers, and a bunch of the older brother's friends. We stayed at the Luxor, where one of my pals nearly set our room on fire with an errantly flicked cigarette.

One of the members of our group's mantras was, "You gamble until you win." I admired its tenacity but did not take it as gospel. Still, back at the Barbary Coast in the wee hours of one morning, I gambled until I won, returning home a richer man.

The third time I went to Vegas was a little more than four years later, in late September 2000. I was serving as deputy press secretary for a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate named Maria Cantwell. As she was a hard-charging technocrat, days — or even nights — off were scarce on that campaign, but I managed to finagle a long weekend to fly to Vegas with three friends and attend a Phish concert at Thomas & Mack Center.

We stayed at Treasure Island because the rooms were dirt-ass cheap at a time when a significant portion of Vegas was in a similar realm on the affordability spectrum. This was also when Treasure Island put on an hourly pyrotechnic show on a pirate ship in front of the resort that faced passersby and shot fire into the sky outside the windows of those who were staying on an upper floor.

This would come in handy at a later juncture.

Phish, for the unintiated, is reminiscent of an edgier, nerdier, more electric version of the Grateful Dead, possessing an affinity for nonsensical lyrics and jazz-metal jams that go on forever. As with the Dead, Phish concerts lend themselves well to the ingestion of psychedelics prior to any show.

Seated in the upper reaches of the Thomas & Mack Center, my friend Wes produced five Sweet Tarts, each of which contained a lone hit of LSD — or so we thought. By the time the band reached its third song, "Frankenstein," Wes turned to me and said, "This stuff is really strong, and not in a fun way."

He wasn't wrong.

The plot Thickens

The rest of the first set was something of a blur, and I soon found myself wandering the halls of the arena during intermission. Another friend of mine, Damian, turned to me with a look on his face that communicated exactly what I was thinking: We needed to get the hell out of there, and fast.

Wes and our other friend, Robby, were nowhere to be found, so Damian and I wandered out into the parking lot, which felt dangerous. Bottles were breaking everywhere and the environment had a strange feeling very different than the usual good vibes of a Phish parking lot. We managed to hail a cab and told our driver to take us back to Treasure Island.

I remember having trouble focusing on that drive home, the lights of Las Vegas swirling together in a manner that made me feel like I was a passenger in the video game Tron. When we got to Treasure Island, Damian and I stumbled out of the cab and into the lobby — where we encountered Alan Thicke.

Thicke is best remembered for playing Dr. Jason Seaver, the hunky, folksy dad from the '80s sitcom Growing Pains. In the show, he projected masculinity, virile monogamy, wisdom, and a devotion to family. Maybe this was why it was so surprising to find him with three beautiful younger women on each arm in a town known for coaxing bad decisions out of people.

I didn't know what these women's relationship with the then-53-year-old Thicke was, other than they appeared to be competing for his affections. I do know that seeing Dr. Jason Seaver in the role of stone-cold womanizer made me double over in laughter on the Treasure Island carpet. In my altered state, I was incapable of reconciling fact with fiction, and the in-between space had me in stitches.

Damian had a similar reaction; our elevator-mates must have thought we were on some potent drugs and, well, they were right. I have no idea how we located our hotel room, but we did.

Coming down

While, on the one hand, it's smart to ride out a wayward acid trip in a safe environment, a hotel room can be a little claustrophobic. Thank god, then, for the hourly fireworks show on the street below. Between that and the elasticity of Jay Leno's face on the television set, which we'd turned on upon entry, we were able to keep our dumb asses amused until we regained the slightest sense of sobriety as the sun came up.

Around dawn, Wes returned to the room. He had stayed for the entire concert and was clearly spooked, muttering something about how he'd met the devil reincarnate. We ventured downstairs to the casino and ordered drinks at one of its bars. Wes ordered only orange juice and informed us that he'd be heading to the airport soon, returning home to Seattle a day early.

Eventually, we ran into Robby. I don't recall the specifics of this interaction, other than he had a big smile on his face and no shoes on his feet. Whatever happened in Vegas, his sneakers stayed there.

Absent Wes, the three of us had one more night in town. We eschewed all narcotics, instead nursing beers and playing the tables — badly. Those profits from my first two trips to Vegas? I gave them all back. You know how they say the house always wins? They're right.

I only dropped acid one more time — at an Allman Brothers show at the stunning Gorge Amphitheater in Central Washington, about as perfect a band and setting as can be combined with that drug.

I have returned to Vegas roughly a dozen times since 2000, mostly in a professional capacity as a journalist who covers the wide world of wagering. As for my own gambling, it's been extremely conservative, as though Dr. Jason Seaver was sitting on my shoulder, dispensing fatherly advice with every roll of the dice.