I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind

There was something so present about that place

Even your emotions have an echo, and so much space

And when you’re out there, without care, yeah, I was out of touch

But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough, I just knew too much

Does that make my crazy? Does that my crazy? Does that me crazy?

Possibly…

Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy” from the album St. Elsewhere 

The sky was layered with color.  As the sun rose, I lay in bed, my mind momentarily stilled as I watched the pastel hues grow deeper and richer, then fade and finally settle into the startling blue of a hot summer’s day.

This was the third morning in a row I’d been up to greet the sunrise.  I hadn’t slept in 72 hours; or for the sake of accuracy, I had, perhaps, drifted off for about a total of 3 hours.  Those were stolen hours.  My brain, so abused for almost 6 days, would simply shut down as some primitive survival mechanism kicked in when my exhaustion became too great.  It wasn’t enough down time to restore me.  I craved more, bereft that I was unable to find the rest I was sure would calm my racing heart.

I was 6 days into withdrawal and I was hurting. 

I had no one to blame but myself for not topping off the medication I’d been daily taking for 14 years.  A bad case of Strep throat had floored me for two weeks, and I’d missed my appointment to see the psychiatrist who prescribed my various meds.  In the past, when I’d run out, I was able to call and have him phone the pharmacy for just enough pills to get me through until my next visit.  This time, I was hesitant to get in touch.  I owed him a lot of money, I was always missing appointments and he’d done this for me often.  His lectures had become more strident since this particular drug is a controlled substance and he feared I’d become dependent.  Shame kept me from making the call, certain he’d say no. 

My doctor, however, had called it correctly; I was completely addicted to this drug. 

Seriously, a person doesn’t take a medication for 14 years, especially a drug where the indications in the literature repeats over and over, danger of dependency, and then walk away from it cold turkey. Not without paying an incredibly high price.

In 1994 I took my first half a milligram of what I would call my Calm Your Ass Down pill, or CYAD.  I’d experienced a massive psychotic episode, or as I like to describe it, I took “My Trip to Crazy Town”.  It began in a very public venue among 400 of my closet business associates, included an action-packed thrill ride in an ambulance during which I opened a window and shouted “O.J.’s Innocent!” (I was out of my mind, remember?), much to the amusement of the paramedics and people on the street, or the hilarity that ensued when I entered the Emergency Room, threw up my arms and hollered, "Everybody, take the day off!"  I was, I’m proud to say, a fun-loving crazy person! 

Ultimately, I made stops ad two different facilities during my 19 days of travel in Crazy Town.  Finally, a medication cocktail was mixed that allowed me to pull myself together enough to re-enter society.  Included in the fistful of meds was the CYAD pill.

I had been gifted with an idiopathic diagnosis that I’ve since discovered is freely bandied about by doctors when they have no clue what the hell is going on.  Honestly, I didn’t mind.  It was the disease of choice among smart, tortured creative types, a group I was happy to include myself.  

Unlike many of those arty, smarty pants who spurned their drugs, (“They stifle my creativity!”) I never, ever messed around with my meds.  I took them every single day, without fail.  During the subsequent years, many of the medications changed as I paddled my way through a pond of doctors, all of whom had their favorite psychotropic fixes.  The only constant was the CYAD pill.  It kept me calm and calm was good for everyone concerned.

This past week, however, my pharmaceutical crutch had been knocked out from under me.    “Tough it out,” I thought.  Was that arrogance or foolishness?  A bit of both, I suppose, but that's me in a nutshell.

It wasn’t until Day Two, that I began to recognize the symptoms of being without the CYAD.  It started with a blinding headache, building anxiety, accompanied by long, blank moments while I processed information, and a growing restlessness.  I was able to sleep that night but only with the help of a sleeping pill.

Day Three saw me up at dawn, playing fiercely with my kats before it was time to go to work.  The anxiety had ratcheted up several notches but that was tempered by an intense joy that swelled within me.  I greeted my co-workers with noisy enthusiasm, bouncily welcomed the customers and led them by the hand to the Wasabi Mayonnaise. 

At the cash register, I was all about providing the best check-out experience ever. “How the heck are ya?” I’d cry, or comment, “Oh wow, this soy yogurt is the best!”  I couldn’t shut up.  One customer called me “Perky”.  “Perky”?  Only a few months earlier I’d had a discussion with my “mentor” that my sometimes frustrated countenance could be off-putting to both my co-workers and customers alike, even if I was unaware of my beetled brows and pursed lips.  Now, I was "Perky!" Three days without my CYAD, and my job performance had dramatically improved.  Hmmm.  Note to Self: Withdrawal as a possible career path?

My boyfriend knew I had run out of the drug, but I don’t think he grasped the ramifications of what it meant.  That night on the phone, I babbled unceasingly about every little thing that had happened that day.  Normally, he was incredibly indulgent and found my unorthodox behavior endearing (believe me, I know how lucky I am).  That night, however, I could hear impatience in his voice, and he cut the conversation short.  As wired as I was, I knew that wasn’t good.  “Oh God, don’t let me scare away the Best Guy Ever”, I prayed!

That was my first sleepless night, and I had to be at work at 6:00am on Day Four. I relinquished my struggle to sleep, left the house and by 5:00am I was sitting in my car outside the store, drinking coffee and eating a bagel.  When I finally went in, I was already cranking!

I took my cash till and literally skipped to my assigned register where I proceeded to WOW the customers, and then forgot to give them their change.  My cheerful but contrite apologies kept them from getting really angry with me as I called over managers time after time.  People started to avoid me.  Somehow, by sheer strength of will, I muddled through. 

When I saw my boyfriend that evening, I held him for 5 minutes, just breathing.  He has always exuded a pheromone that calms me down. I can't explain it but it works.  The roar of my heart wasn’t filling my head, I couldn’t actually “see” my pulse jumping in my wrists and my skin quit trying to crawl off my body.  I knew a modicum of calm for the first time in four days.  Those pheromones lulled me to sleep, but my bullet-train brain soon woke me up and I lay there, trying not to toss and turn.  He knows instantly if I get out of bed, and I didn’t want to bother him.  Eventually, I tried the Spoon method, tucking myself in behind him, and that was the last couple of hours of sleep I would know.

Day 5 was the first time when I thought I might actually lose it.  I was very, very close to booking a seat on that Crazy Train, and I knew it.   

Happily, I had an appointment with my Therapist, and I was hoping that she would prescribe just enough of the CYAD to get me through until I could see my psychomaracologist. 

It was an epic battle from the word "go".  Entrenched Freudian that she is she wanted to discuss why I was having so much difficulty dealing with my anxiety. “Are you kidding?" I asked, dumfounded, "I’m going through freaking withdrawal!”  In her infuriatingly calm way, she suggested Tylenol PM and Yoga.  It was all I could not to shake her.  “Listen,” I said through my teeth,” I’ll be happy to discuss over-the-counter drugs and I promise to take Yoga in a steamy room every damn day.  We can talk about my screwed up childhood, and about the stress I feel because I haven’t got a dime, and am working at a job that pays me a nickel.  BUT NOT TODAY!  TODAY I NEED THAT DAMNED PILL RIGHT NOW, OR YOU’RE GOING TO BE TALKING TO ME THROUGH A LITTLE PLEXIGLASS WINDOW!!!!!”  That did the trick.  With prescription in hand, I practically ran out of the office.

Already late for work, I dropped the prescription off at the pharmacy, planning to pick it up afterward. 

That was a very, very long day on the job.  I was moving faster, sweating profusely, babbling more, and shaking fiercely.  It certainly didn’t help that there were a mazillion people in the store and the lines were obscenely long.  I was in “Fast Forward” mode, blabbing a little too loud, I was a bit wild-eyed, and my laugh was a touch hysterical.    By now, I had full-fledged tremors, and when I handed change to a customer the coins actually jingled. There was no hiding my manic intensity.  One kind woman patted my hand and told me to slow down.  I appreciated it, but I really wanted to shriek, “I can’t slow down!  I’m a runaway train!”

I bulled my through it.  I hadn’t had much to eat for days and I was running on fumes.  I bolted from the store to get my CYAD!

The pharmacy was closed!  CLOSED!  Relief had been within reach, and because I hadn’t checked the hours, I had to wait until 9:00am the following morning.  Now my teeth were chattering and I was terrified!

I went home and watched as my football team got beaten severely about head and shoulders.  For those who care, I was aware it was a pre-season game but I was undone!  I had yet another unsatisfactory conversation with my boyfriend.  He probably couldn’t understand a word I said.  I knew at this point that he was concerned, but I was able to convince him that I was fine. In many ways, there's no one cannier than an addict or a person on the brink of madness.  I could also say that’s exactly what he wanted to hear.  Is that unkind?  Oh well.  I continued to shout at the TV, cursing my beleaguered team, my kats hid under the bed, and I knew for sure I would get no rest.  

All night, my mind played films of every screwed up moment in my life, with regrets following as special features on a DVD.  I began to feel ill, my joints ached, a small scratch on my forearm seemed hot and swollen, my shoulders and neck were so stiff I couldn’t roll my head without squawking. Stupid with exhaustion, I began to catch movement in the periphery of my vision.  When I looked closer, I couldn't see the person I'd spotted from the corner of my eye, or find that kat that had died two years ago and had meowed for my attention   The lines between what was and what they were to become were beginning to blur.

Sunrise on Day 6 brought the horrific realization that I was to have another 6:00am start at work.  Now firmly perched on the brink of disaster, I recognized that familiar feeling of falling with nothing to hang on to.  Since I had already taken the Crazy Train once in my life, I clearly remembered how I felt on the days leading up to it, and I knew I was in trouble.  I needed my CYAD ASAP.  I had to get to that Pharmacy!

My condition meant I couldn’t possibly operate my car as it now qualified as Heavy Machinery. By 5:00am I was scrolling through my contacts, thinking, "Who can I call for help"?  I was raving incoherently, and feeling utterly lost as I realized I had no close friends nearby.  I did not want to call the Best Man Ever because I was so terrified that I was now holding The Straw, and breaking that Camel’s Back would be the end of me.

I called my Mommy. 

I'm 51.  My Mom’s 86.  She has told me all my life that she will always worry about me; not so much because I was a mess (I was), but because I’m her baby girl and that’s a Mother’s prerogative.  So, as long as she was on this earth, coherent and willing to listen, I was going to milk that baby girl card as much as possible.

I called and cried the way I had wanted to for the past six days.  Gulping, gasping, stuttering, I managed to tell her what was going on. She listened calmly until I had wrung myself out, and then got right to the crux of the matter.  

“You have to take that pill.  Do whatever you have to get it.  Take a cab.” 

Sniffle.  “Mommy, I don’t have the cash to do that and pay for the prescription.”  (See?  A mess, I tell you!) 

“Then walk to the pharmacy if you must.”   

She also agreed with me about not calling the Best Man Ever.  We both feared there might be a threshold there, and neither of us wanted to find out. 

At last, it came to me to ask my very kind neighbors to drive me to the pharmacy.  Hubby took me. It was hard to make conversation, which I needed because my knee was jiggling at 120 RPMs a second and I required the distraction.  We settled on football, always a safe topic for me.  He had attended “The U”, The University of Miami, during the Jim Kelly era, and told me how Kelly used to randomly chuck rocks at other students.  That stopped my knee for a second.

And then, miraculously, I had the Calm Your Ass Down pill in my hands. I didn’t even wait until I got home to take them.  I’d brought a bottle of water, and standing right there in the pharmacy, I gulped down those itty bitty pills.  I know it wasn't physically possible, but within moments, I felt better.   

Once safely back in my apartment, I sank onto my couch, let my mind go, managed to eat something, and truthfully, I don’t remember what happened after that.  Apparently, I made it to the bed, and slept without moving or dreaming for about 3-1/2 hours.  When I opened my eyes, I felt as rested as if I had slept a full 8 hours.  I took stock.  My mind had cycled down, and my heart was no longer clattering like runaway horses. The greatest terrors had been beaten back by the miracle of pharmacology.   I was still shaky but I knew the worst had passed.

My absolute greatest fear had been averted; I wasn’t going to lose my mind again.  It was close, though.  Very close.

My therapist and I are going to work out a plan for a long term withdrawal from this malevolent drug.  In fact, she wants me to blog about my experience on her website.  Hey, it’s New York, of course therapists have websites!  We’ll see. 

In retrospect, it seems odd that when I went starkers in 1994, I wasn’t the least bit frightened.  I had no clue what was happening to me back then.  In fact, I had a lot more fun than I had any right to because I left a trail of destruction for a lot of people to deal with.  Yet, I can say with total honestly that letting go and floating about in the weightless space of insanity was incredibly liberating.  I might have drifted away forever but luckily, I came back down to earth.  Perversely, it was both the worst and best thing that ever happened to me.

In 2010, however, that past experience created a crippling fear that overwhelmed me.  I don’t think that Tylenol PM, Yoga or even my fierce will could have kept me from being swept out on the tide of madness. 

I won't take that chance again because I’m not certain I would come back.  I learn my lessons hard and this time it might have cost me a price I might not have been able to pay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6SjMh_w&feature=related

Couldn't embed it, but it's worth a listen.