"The only drug I was interested in was LSD but I look at my nine-year-old son now and he gets scared shitless by his dreams and nightmares and I think I was the same as a young man - I didn't really want to amplify what was already vivid to me. But I was curious and I've got drunk, I've smoked dope but not regularly. One time I was trying to write lyrics and I was stuck. The road crew had baked a hash cake and I thought that might help. I had this empty page staring at me and I thought, 'What the fuck do I do?' I started eating it and I was thinking, 'This just doesn't do anything.' So then I ate all of it. Ha ha ha. Then I thought, 'It's still not doing anything, I don't understand it.' So I sat down at my desk and there was this surge of silver metal that came shooting up my spine and exploded in the front of my head and I started hallucinating. I was absolutely certain I was going to die. I had a cassette recorder with me for lyrics and I thought, 'Ok, well I'll keep this with me to record my last words.' I started heading home to where Jill [his wife at the time] and the kids were. It was about a mile across some fields and a stream. If you listen to the tape now you can hear me fall into the stream and start swearing. I was trying to get my last words down but then I fell in a bramble bush. Eventually I got home and my wife saw me covered in blood and scratches and mud, she thought I'd been in a car crash but still holding onto a tape recorder for some reason."

http://thequietus.com/articles/07003-peter-gabriel-interview