The nearly continual references to casual drug use littered throughout this column might lead more impressionable readers to believe that using drugs is about nothing more than enhancing your mental and sensual faculties and laughing at Showgirls. But this week, guest columnist John Morin takes us on a tour through the fascinating world of withdrawal, as he documents his kicking of the fourth greatest drug in the world (after pot, Percocet, and cheap sex with strangers): opium tea!
MONDAY, JANUARY 17 Today, with millennial resolve and under the vague aegis of personal pride, I bid a reluctant and bittersweet adieu to the loving embrace (i.e. addiction) of opium tea. I did this, as anyone familiar with the process of kicking might have guessed, by getting hopped to the gills on opium tea. Mea culpa! Seeing as I've already endured the ravaging discomfort, psychological displacement, and dyslexic paranoia of one unsuccessfully self-administered kick only six months ago, I'm fully aware of the long, hard road ahead -- the groaning and moaning and quaking struggle I must make up that wrong-way treadmill heading out from the pleasant darkness of intoxication and into the harsh, ugly light of sobriety. But, for the time being at least, I didn't care about any of that. I was high. After just a few atrocious sips (the stuff really, really, really tastes like shit), I could feel the poppy juice making its casual second pass through my liver; it grabbed me by the cellular short hairs and threw me gently over the soporific wall, into a wonderfully wakeful oblivion. There goes my mind! Bye! The buzz is exquisitely paradoxical -- warm and fuzzy and yet gracefully alert, a heavenly combination of lethargy, euphoria, and mental exhilaration. Which suddenly gave me pause: Why give this up?
TUESDAY, JANUARY 18 Chronic low-level constipation is the primary physiological side effect of habitual opium use. All in all, it's a remarkably painless form of constipation, and therefore not in the least unpleasant. The reversal of this scatological state, though, is practically intolerable. When I cold-turkeyed the opium from my system last night, my previously retarded bowels went into a spontaneous and rather shocking insurrectionary liquefaction. Yikes! Add to this my immediately coming down with that killer flu virus going around (quitting opiates devastates your immune system), and day one of opium withdrawals was highlighted by relentless diarrheal travail accompanied by cold sweats, minor anxiety attacks, and increasing muscle tension. When I wasn't involuntarily evacuating my bowels, I was immobilized on the couch, flipping through cable stations. I ate some tapioca pudding.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19 From bad to worse: Unhinged bowels were the least of my worries today. Everything went haywire. Complete and utter meltdown of nervous system. I felt like Gumby on acid. Just getting up from the couch required a Herculean effort of will power. Body tightened up like a rubber coil and jumpy as a June bug. Couldn't sleep. Watched Nickelodeon for 12 hours straight, scared out of my wits. Ate some tapioca pudding.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20The third day of getting off opium feels like jogging through a sea of rancid peanut oil in a polyester suit three sizes too small, with a pounding hangover and no end in sight. In an effort to alleviate this insupportable and unattractive sensation, I devised, in desperation, an over-the-counter pharmaceutical cocktail consisting of four Pamprin, two extra-strength Doan's pain relievers, two Tylenol cold and flu pills, and three tablets each of Valerian, Kava Kava, Male Multiple, and B-Complex. It would have been better had I simply hit myself over the head with a hammer. The excessive dose of niacin coursing through my veins caused a swooning hot flash, followed closely by a total loss of peripheral vision and the strange feeling that I was levitating and sinking at the same time. Well, so much for turning water into wine. It's a hopeless situation. And none of this would be so incredibly awful if it weren't for this one fact: I still can't sleep!
FRIDAY, JANUARY 21 I haven't left the apartment for three days. I'm exhausted and wide awake. The only two channels I can watch anymore without succumbing to horrendous bouts of depression and fear are the Lifetime Network and ESPN. A continual state of severe panic is interspersed with attacks of razor-blade anxiety. Every muscle aches. My sense of humor is running on fumes. I've taken so many vitamins I'm growing fur. Thought quite a lot more about hitting myself over the head with a hammer today. The tapioca pudding is gone .
SATURDAY, JANUARY 22 Day five: Decided to try to leave the apartment today in order to get some cigarettes and pudding, but before I did this, I thought I'd smoke a little pot just to take the edge off. This was a very bad idea, because I don't usually smoke pot, and once I did, I became indescribably scared of everything, and really paranoid, and spent half an hour walking between the kitchen and the front door, checking the burners on the stove to make sure they were off all the way. Once I finally got through the front door (and made sure it was locked by checking it five or six or seven times), I still had the two blocks to walk to the store, which seemed like two million miles, and I thought, "This is a fine mess you've gotten yourself into. Junkie! Idiot!" By the time I got to the store, I'd forgotten the pudding altogether, and I was sweating and shaking and acute-feeling, but my body wasn't working very well at all -- like I was a malfunctioning robot with crossed wires and no master-plan blueprint. All my physical movements encountered this kind of weird resistance. All my psychological movements were inverted and encoded, and the vulgar transaction of paying for the cigarettes was nearly incomprehensible. By the time I got back home, I felt not like a malfunctioning robot anymore, but a homesick alien stranded on an inhospitable planet in deepest outer space. Watched ESPN. Couldn't sleep.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 23Today I ran fresh out of interesting analogies for describing the manifold symptoms of opium withdrawal. I did, however, regain my previously decimated sense of humor when I suddenly found myself laughing at a rerun of All in the Family. Could it be that I'm finally over the hump? Billie Holiday once said that she knew she'd finally kicked heroin when she quit watching television, so it's obvious that I'm not quite out the woods yet. The luxury of a full night's sleep still seems only the remotest of possibilities, and the boredom and monotony of everyday existence as it's bought and sold on the godless market is still a painful drag on the brain. But who knows? Maybe in a week or two I'll actually be able to walk to the grocery store without jumping at shadows. Maybe in a couple of days I'll be able to look into daylight without squinting. Maybe there's room for unbuffered optimism after all. That Archie Bunker sure is funny.
Thank you, guest columnists.
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In addition to writing Last Days (or forcing other people to write Last Days), I also do theater. Don't be scared: mostly I just stand around and talk, and sometimes move my arms. My show STRAIGHT plays at Re-bar this Friday, Jan 28 at 8pm. Come see it.
