Drugs

I know that the title of this post has a lurid allure, & I will try my best to adhere to a strictly scientific description. I'm just kidding; that would be boring as shit, & disingenuous. In college, I completed the litany of drugs listed in the Queens of the Stone Age song, "Feel Good Hit of the Summer." Unsurprisingly, I went to rehab about six years ago. (Quizzical addendum: upon my release, my then-girlfriend took me to a bar. A bar! That same day! I remind myself of this frequently. Seriously, a bar!) One of the tenets that I was taught was that all drugs were bad. I subsequently adhered to a strict regiment that followed this dictum. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter I was diagnosed with MS, & that rubric went out the window.

First, I was prescribed amantadine for fatigue, which did absolutely nothing for me. Then, I was given Provigil (a "wakefulness" agent that is regularly given to fighter pilots in order to keep them alert), which helped for a little while, but it soon became clear that it only precluded sleep. I wanted to nap, but couldn't. It did nothing to the lingering need to sleep; it simply stopped me from doing so. After it became clear that the crux of the underlying fatigue was not being treated, my doctor prescribed Adderall. It's an amphetamine that combats the awful fatigue that's one of the most common symptoms of MS. Over time, I've been forced to increase my dosage because this lack of energy has grown. Besides that, I did not enjoy the same allure that it offered recreationally. Without it, I'd remain unconscious for the majority of the day. Not voluntarily, mind you. The need to lie down has grown even stronger over the last year or so. Adderall doesn't make this need abate, because the impulse also stems from a lightheadedness that it does not specifically address. Nevertheless, it provides me with a steady infusion of energy that allows me to function reasonably well. (The extended release does this; a regular tablet provides a short burst of energy, followed by...nothing.) Whereas before this had been used recreationally, now it's used pragmatically.

The same can be said about marijuana. Yes--marijuana. In college, it had never been a major part of my day-to-day. It was available, mind you, but I never particularly cared for it. After all, alcohol was prevalent, so I stuck mainly with that. When I was diagnosed with MS, I familiarized myself with literature about it, & nearly everything I read mentioned marijuana as a beneficial supplementary form of treatment. I gave it a whirl (my exposure to it was gained by a now-forgotten avenue; interestingly, I make bizarre connections without really trying very hard), & experienced firsthand the medicinal attributes that I had read about. It really did help spasticity, & dramatically helped my appetite, which disappeared once I began the stem cell rigmarole. (I was hospitalized for two weeks, & there was a period of about a week where I ate no solid food, & subsisted on Ensure solely. How crazy is that?) While in the hospital, one of my doctors prescribed Marinol, an unimaginatively-named pill that contained synthetic THC. Imagine marijuana without any of the psychedelia, ie fun.

Mainly, it just made me sleepy, which I was anyway. An insurance change made Marinol unavailable (because the price was exorbitant), which was fine because I didn't much care for it. I was subsequently forced (really, "allowed") to go back to the non-pill kind of marijuana.

That brings us pretty much up to date. I still rely heavily on it to deal with the everyday minutiae that is actually onerous to me.

& I still hate reggae.

R

"And--Finished knowing--Then"

(I had to check the capitalizations, because they're rife in Emily Dickinson's poetry, & are assigned, seemingly, arbitrarily. "Is" can be capitalized at one point, &, at another, it's not. What you think may be capitalized, isn't, & vice versa. Perhaps it's best not to dwell on such trivial matters, but I can't help it--I notice these things, both because of an almost-autistic, pathogenic attention to detail, & because of my hyper-vigilance born of my degree in English, which demanded an acute eye due to its repeated use of close reading. This is not altogether a good thing, because something as fickle as a capitalization takes on way too much meaning. "Why are those two words used here & not here?...& why is it not capitalized there, but not here?" Welcome to my life--at least a little snippet of it. Imagine that carrying on in perpetuity, sporadically, each day, everyday. I dare you.)

I know it as "Sunday"

I've always said that I loathe "New Year's," & since I've stopped drinking, it stands in high relief as "Amateur Night." It's an excuse for people who don't drink to drink & act like idiots, & for those who do drink to overindulge. It exposes previously dormant issues to be revealed by the night's overcharged spirit of bacchanalia. This can translate to physical violence, which outside of sports looks very boorish. (This is my problem with the UFC. I can never take it seriously, because without heavy boxing gloves, it just looks like two drunk guys fighting. Yes, they wear gloves, but they're comically light--they're almost unnoticeable. I don't want to sound boorish, but it has always seemed to me to be very homoerotic--two men without shirts grappling.). And, anyways, the history of the calendar disinterests me as much as the explanation of Back to the Future, Part III, which simply makes no sense to me because... I stopped caring, already. I know the names "Julian," "Gregorian," & "equinox," but my knowledge ends there. & I think that is more than most people...ooh, LNE just told me that True Grit is on Netflix Instant. More later.

I just wrote an entire post about subjects as seemingly disparate as the Republican caucus in Iowa, the NFL, The Hurt Locker, Full Metal Jacket, my complete disinterest in science & math, & the total arbitrariness of the concept of recorded time, & now it's gone with the wind, as my great-aunt would have said. Oh, technology, it does have its drawbacks.

I know it'll anger me, but I can't resist watching the results of the Republican Iowa Caucus. The candidates are all insane, & the wholly bland Mitt Romney is a perfectly vapid-enough person to lead the pack. Newt Gingrich? He sounds like a Dr. Seuss villain. Ron Paul? A story about his past statements on race will rightfully sink his fledgling campaign. Rick Santorum? The dead baby thing can never be extricated from my mind. Rick Perry? Please--I think we've had enough of Texas governors this century. Michele Bachmann? She makes Rick Perry look like a Rhodes scholar. If there's anyone else--oh yeah, Jon Huntsman--he doesn't have a chance, so it's not worth mentioning.

Do you know how frustrating it is that that post is gone? Ugh.

R