I understand, Barry. I really do. Because Barry Bonds, I'm just like you.

In third grade, I was at a local high school football game with a friend, hanging out with some older kids I didn't know. They opened a can of Copenhagen. I put it between my lip and gums and let things get all juicy. I couldn't spit very well, but I did my best not to swallow. Dipping gave me a nice tobacco & nicotine buzz, but I swear to the grand jury, I didn't know what I was taking.

When I was twelve years old, my brothers and I pulled out a bottle of Creme de Menthe from under the sink. It was green and smelled sweet. My brothers took a swig, so I figured it was okay. The liquid made my belly warm and tasted like mint candy. Did I know what it was? Not really.

At fifteen, I went to my first high school band party. An older and fellow saxophone player named Maynard gave me a can of Milwaukee's Best. He was drinking them. Other people were drinking them. It seemed like everybody was doing it. I popped the can and nursed my first whole beer. It tasted weird, but it made me belch. Was this what everybody cool drank?

The next year, I was hanging out with my brothers in Wichita, Kansas. These two guys I didn't know were passing around a homemade cigarette called a joint. I took a few puffs, and my body buzzed. I started thinking I was invisible and no one could see me. In truth, they just weren't paying attention to me. What had I taken? What had I done? That was no regular cigarette.

On my nineteenth birthday, I was alone after working the swing shift at the Frontier Restaurant. I went to the local Smith's with my fake I.D. and bought my first bottle of Jim Beam. I don't know why I picked it. I wasn't sure what whiskey was. I knew it would get me drunk, and that was good enough. My roommates later found me on the floor, listening to CDs set on random, birthday cookie crumbled over my shirt, a half empty bottle of Jim, and chaser of iced tea. Mr. Grand Jury, I swear I didn't know what I was consuming.

She was a really nice girl, and she liked me. That didn't happen too often in college. Really nice girls didn't like me much. When she tapped out and carefully sculpted a really nice white line, I took her rolled up dollar bill and snorted. I knew what it was, but I didn't know what it would do. I knew it would do something. Then, we talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. And you know, she stayed the whole night. No girl had ever spent the night. That was really nice, even though I didn't know what I was doing.

I always wanted to be strong. I wanted girls to like me. I wanted to be big. I lifted weights, I did the cardio, I sweat. I bought this stuff called Creatine. That's what real athletes took. Even Barry Bonds, and back then, he played for The Pittsburgh Pirates. One day, I lay in my bed, taking a well deserved nap, and I got a wicked charley horse on my calf without any provocation. I rolled to the floor and begged to every higher power imaginable for the pain to stop. It finally did, and I got off the powder. What was in that stuff?

The mushrooms were old and crumbly. I took the recommended dosage from the dealer. And I waited. And waited. I took some more. And waited. Then, it happened. The slow thick euphoria. Thoughts just kept coming, and everything seemed important and irrelevant at the same time. I had done "research" on psilocybin before I ingest those shrooms, but let's face it, you never know what you're doing until you do it.

This last Thanksgiving weekend, I took some "trippy" pills this guy gave me. A guy like me, he said, should take two. I popped a couple, and sure enough, a couple hours later, I had sunk into a giddy emotional mess. It didn't last long after the peak, and I returned to normal the next day with a slight headache and some stiffness. I wonder what was in those capsules.

So Barry, I'm on your side. You've been beefing yourself up with god-knows-what for who-knows-how-long. You can hit the baseball really far. What's in the stuff they've been filling you with? I don't know. You don't know. In front of the grand jury, you said you didn't know you were taking steroids. You didn't know what you were doing.

Me too, Barry. Me too. Many times in my life (even more than I mentioned), I took substances and didn't know what they really were. You know what, though? Even though I didn't what I was taking, I always knew why I was taking them. So did you, Barry. So did you.

Chris Jungle passed his one and only drug test.