Posts tagged with "intoxication"

Boxing Day '04-'05

Exactly one year ago today, I was doing this. Even though the annu­al par­ty at Chris and Clarmen’s actu­al­ly starts on the 25th, I real­ly see it as a box­ing day par­ty, the way a New Year’s par­ty real­ly starts on the 31st of December.

That night we used the excuse of going to Timmies for all the par­ents as a way out of the house to have a ses­sion. Unfortunately, this meant remem­ber­ing about a dozen drink orders, some­thing that proves dif­fi­cult under the influ­ence.

In chrono­log­i­cal order:

  1. We met up at the house, where Darren’s fin­gers brave the tur­tles
  2. A ses­sion occurred out­side, and on the way to Timmies we intro­duced Chris to Dreamtheater (hence the music selec­tion)
  3. An order is made for about a dozen drinks with great dif­fi­cul­ty
  4. We drove back to play Slap Hand, which is a vari­a­tion on Slap Jack, except the pile is hit every time the cor­rect num­ber is called (and for increased dif­fi­cul­ty we played with +/- rules where the pile is only hit if the num­ber spo­ken is an addi­tion or sub­trac­tion of a dif­fer­ent spec­i­fied num­ber)
  5. Darren ran­dom­ly deals every­one a hand of hold ’em and plays it through, and this caus­es me to make fun of his obvi­ous addic­tion
  6. Darren pre­cise­ly deals a full hand of 13 cards for a game of Asshole, while talk­ing, for which I count my cards in dis­be­lief and final­ly real­ize just how much he plays cards

Other signs of how stoned we were:

  • Darren and Chris’s voic­es drop an octave, while my voice rais­es two (two!)
  • I can’t keep my jit­tery hands under con­trol
  • The way Chris says, “Just awe­some guys. Awesome.”
  • At one point we have to stop to count to the right num­ber in Slap Hand
  • I laugh, a lot

This year, today, Lam joined us instead since Darren is off in Las Vegas.

Awakening: Cause

Worry does not emp­ty tomor­row of sor­row — it emp­ties today of strength.

—Corrie ten Boom

It start­ed with a sin­gle pan­ic attack, at work, in the mid­dle of the day.

Heart rac­ing, dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, par­a­lyz­ing ter­ror, fear that I was about to die.

If you’ve ever had a bad trip off psilo­cybe, or mag­ic mush­rooms, the effects are very sim­i­lar. Not that I’ve ever had a good one. Half an hour into inges­tion, I start to feel nau­se­at­ed. At the back of my head there’s a creep­ing sense that some­thing is wrong. My hands start to trem­ble, my mind feels like it’s shud­der­ing. Eventually, there’s a com­plete uneasi­ness in the body, both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly. Around that time, the body reacts quick­ly to rid the stom­ach of what­ev­er is caus­ing these symp­toms, and vio­lent­ly ejects them in the form of vom­it­ing. Stems and caps come out as dark brown flecks, and you won­der how eat­ing some­thing so small thing can make you feel so ter­ri­ble.

But with a pan­ic attack, there’s no expla­na­tion. No sense of pre­ven­tion. No float­ing fun­gus in the pool of your toi­let you can point your fin­ger at and say, “I’m nev­er doing THAT again”.

It comes with­out warn­ing, with­out obvi­ous rea­son. All you want is to end the attack. To crawl into a cor­ner and hide. To tear off your stran­gling clothes. To die.

Afterward, you’re not won­der­ing what you’re going to lis­ten to on the way home, or how to get the atten­tion of that cutie in the porce­lain depart­ment, or when you’ll have time to go buy more sham­poo. All you’re think­ing about is when the next one will hap­pen. All you’re left with is a bunch of ques­tions and a sense of insta­bil­i­ty. I have my sus­pi­cions, but I’ve cho­sen not to write about them until I’m cer­tain, some­thing which I believe will come in time. There’s no sim­ple diag­no­sis, no easy answer.

Recently, sci­en­tists have dis­cov­ered that the word “wheeze” can acti­vate asth­ma attacks in asth­mat­ics. The mind trig­gers an asso­ci­at­ed emo­tion­al response, and the body man­i­fests the reac­tion. It’s the same after a pan­ic attack. Sometimes, peo­ple with pan­ic dis­or­der can bring on an attack just wor­ry­ing or think­ing too much about it.

Not that I have a dis­or­der. The fear of an attack isn’t detri­men­tal enough to stunt me social­ly, and does­n’t pre­vent me from func­tion­ing as what the DSM IV would con­sid­er “nor­mal”. It was only a sin­gle episode, but habit of con­stant self-eval­u­a­tion means that the threat of it hap­pen­ing again is always there. It’s in the back of my mind whether I’m at work, or play­ing games, or cook­ing din­ner. Every minute of every day becomes a strug­gle not to think about it. And when you know you feel like dying dur­ing an attack, you start to won­der whether it’s worth liv­ing at all.

People face this ques­tion when they’re diag­nosed with ter­mi­nal ill­ness­es. Told that they have only have a few years left, they live more in those num­bered days than they do in their entire lives until then.

They awak­en.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer

Resonance

(This took four months to write)

I was kick­ing back on the couch with ____
with the lights out and the music on.

Wut wut.

Anyway, we were stoned out of our skulls and it was Naked As We Came by Iron And Wine. We sat there, lis­ten­ing to the dul­cet notes of a lone gui­tar lead into Sam Beam’s sug­ary voice, soon to be gen­tly round­ed off by his sis­ter, Sara, as the har­mo­ny. A sum­mer-morn­ing-dur­ing-har­vest song, or danc­ing in the mid­dle of a cool rain­fall.

She says ‘If I leave before you dar­ling
don’t you waste me in the ground’
I lay smil­ing like our sleep­ing chil­dren
one of us will die inside these arms

Eyes wide open
naked as we came
one will spread our
ash­es round the yard

And we sat there, lis­ten­ing, remark­ing to each oth­er about how mor­bid it all was, yet so beau­ti­ful.

How two peo­ple can be so inti­mate with each oth­er as to be com­fort­able enough to casu­al­ly talk about the dis­pos­al of remains. They were plan­ning it like an ado­les­cent cou­ple decid­ing the num­ber of garages or chil­dren they’re going to have.

Even John was moved, but how could he not be? One of them would die but there was solice in the fact that it would be in the embrace of the oth­er, as if nei­ther one would want to die any oth­er way, doing any­thing else.

And it felt like, for the first time in my life, John could under­stand a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent side of me.

Birthday Wishes From Home

I can’t even begin to explain how sor­ry I am. Would you even believe me, if I told you why?

If I was­n’t so exhaust­ed, was­n’t so achy, was­n’t so men­tal­ly drained…but I know they’re all just excus­es, and I gave you my word. Would you even under­stand, if you knew how much I want­ed to be there?

This med­i­cine is like a drug, a bad, cher­ry-tast­ing drug, that caus­es drowsi­ness and low­ers my inhi­bi­tions.

Paint Chips

Paint chips 1

Paint chips 2

Paint chips 3

Trolley and I went to get some paint chips. It was­n’t too long since my last ses­sion before we left. In the store I was sur­round­ed by colour, a pedestal of float­ing gra­di­ents.

We move in a lit­tle over a month. I think I’ll do my room in a dark blue, and two walls of the liv­ing room in light beige. Trolley’s think­ing either light grey or deep red for his.