CHAPTER 2
THE FALL…
A few years ago, I also had that same idea of getting a “supplier”.
It never happened because, I didn’t know any “traveling salesman” personally then and quite frankly I didn’t see myself being the wheel, slowly, very slowly crossing the bridge to the city some spring morning and walking up and down st. Laurent st.* with my silver sequined dress or behind the wheel with my fuchsia pink handbag bought on special of course, asking passers by:
« Where can I find that green thingy you can smoke to numb pain please?”. Furthermore, I wanted to do it properly and legally.
So, to my GP I went to fill a questionnaire to have access to the “compassionate club” which sells this stuff legally. bingo!
I first started using once every fortnight, when my son was at his dad’s. Then when the pain became unbearable (usually when it was either raining of snowing…).
You should know, that the « hallucinations » aren’t there when your using it to tackle pain. You don’t trip, nor go hungry… (you don’t raid the fridge every minute...) No. You just hurt less. Period.
Well, at least you think about it less...
That was, until the Compassion Club was raided while I WAS THERE! I got totally scared.
(Note from the author: Please do not mistake that club with other clubs which are nowadays quite popular here when people are like trading, exchanging… well, I’d say SERVICES, more than products… catch my drift? Know that I might have done questionable things in my past, but that type of exchange club I have never visited...
(Well, who knows if I once, by total inadvertence, might have accidentally backed up in their driveway to turn around but that is it! Promised!).
(It had been a while since I had been there that day. And in retrospect, I think they even waited for the red-haired lady walking with a striped walking stick to leave before they entered… without knocking or shall I say with a big bang!
then, naively, i still foolishly taught i was OK.
in my head my papers were legit. They came from a real doctor after all and I was getting my “stock” from a proper shop front store (even though I always wore my pink GLASSES) …
I even thought i was cool when that summer I smoked my groovy joint while enjoying my “private” Sir Paul McCartney’s concert (along with tens of thousands of my closest friends?).
That night I did see the Beatles, all four of them, live!
(Just kidding here. I did say that stuff didn’t make you hallucinate, follow please! but I thought IT was too funny an allusion to keep it to myself...).
The main issue now was that I had just decided one gorgeous spring morning to completely stop all my medication… In the beginning, I actually thought that the Cactus Cola was really working… So, I slowly slowed down my medication consumption until I fully stopped. I desperately wanted to go back to being as kind and nice as before…
and stop ballooning.
I’m convinced I am getting better, right?
I now, in retrospect, I realized that it was indeed a cry for help, a way to stop my nightly nightmares (my sleep apnea, my specialist later informed me, was also quite certainly one of the reasons my sleep patterns were so distorted)!
And I was still using cannabis as a way to numb my constant pain, like Dr. Maison* popped his pills like candies. And I was in pain very often, I certainly sought my smoky relief way too often: I started to bad trip…
February 20: I was in great pain therefore, more pain = more smokeable pain relief. That day, my son came to tuck me in. He could feel instinctively that I wasn’t going well at all anymore...
I was constantly crying, I was scared: “was I weaning from the medication, the drugs or maybe was it a bit of both? My son wanted to call an ambulance; HE knew I wasn’t going well at all. I didn’t need to tell him, he felt it.
A child knows when his mommy isn’t doin’ well.
“Don’t worry about tonight boy, your mom will see a doctor tomorrow morning!” I heard my husband tell him. “It will pass no worries. She will be better after a good night’s rest!”.
* Maison=house in French.
the next day, I was on highway (20), on my way to see my hunky doctor.
I thought to myself, just for a split second maybe but still…
in my STUFFED-UP head at the time…
“…what if I just ran out of windshield washer fluid… would it be seen as an accident if I accidently ran into an hydro** pole? ».
I told Dr. Mc Dreamy about it. And about the pills I stopped and about the paparazzi following me wherever I go. Well, somehow, it only took a split second that he was on the phone with my “mates” at the admin office of THE BRAIN hospital…
** Hydro Québec is the province’s supplier of electricity = Hydro pole.
...Right there and then, we were on our way to the “mental health” emergency ward, me and my salmon pink coloured blanket with its delightful satin outlay… where my husband gave in their hand, a letter from my doctor attesting that I wasn’t going so well anymore in my head...!
the decrepit and screechy doors of the poor branch of medicine in Québec (mental health) slowly swallowed us (maybe forever?).
Well no. Because after only a few days, they sent me back, just like a broken toaster brought back to life while under warranty…
Apparently, I was now fine (the fact that the effect of the cannabis had subsided most certainly help my quick recovery). Yet, as soon as I came back home, the paparazzi were back (the joints as well) but now with an added bonus: a new fear made its great entrance in my life…
Well, guess who came to my rescue with the first respondent’s team when my son (or me, I’m not sure anymore?) called the ambulance to bring me back to the loonie bin? Can you guess? A real science fiction, well fiction at least my life, written directly by the big guy above:
here we go… the POLICE!... hello guys?
It was like one of those burlesque comedy if it hasn’t been so tragic! It started very innocently with me on the phone with my lover who had once again, like he does religiously ever day at the end of his lunch, called me, to tell me he loved me, or was it just to make sure I was OK, or just to reassure me, make me feel safe, I don’t know.
Well we both became distressed very quickly when I told him (yelled loudly was more like it!) that THE POLICE (the real one, not the band, he probably enquired secretly in his mind at that time»?) was IN MY HOUSE! Talk about him feeling helpless as he was several bridges away from me then!
“I’m scared ch”$%less! THEY ARE HERE TO ARREST ME!?”.
I suddenly realised that there were marijuana joints (“graciously” pre-rolled by my “supplier” (pusher) all over the house (with my long girly nails I just couldn’t master the intricate rolling technique. A real doll!).
I even had some pot « butches » in my ashtray ON MY FRONT BALCONY.
(I can’t believe they missed it, they walked right by it on their way in! Or did they? They’re here to arrest me I’m sure now!
For sure they saw those in my living room ashtray!
HELP ME MOMMY! I’M REALLY SCARED! YOUR BABY IS GOING TO JAIL (THIS IS WHY I COULDN’T BRING MYSELF TO WATCH SHOWS LIKE “ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK!” AND “19-2 OR “UNITÉ 9”.
*** [yet, I admit however that I still followed the series via the many magazines in my upstairs bathroom (mainly for the actors, I am attached to many of them, real pure talents them actors…)]…
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Hey, should the ambulance be on its way after they call 911? I was totally gone.
Worse, while waiting for the police to arrive, I was chain smoking joint after joint at the same frenetic speed I used to smoke those horrible cigarettes years ago.
*** Similarly themed Québec’s French TV series.
Talking about game shows... I once cross paths with a popular local TV game show host named Jean-François Baril, who just happened to live in my town.
Quite easy really, we go to the same local supermarket...
Once at the check out, he was just in front of me in the line. I became all shy all of a sudden. I so wanted to tell him that his show, “3 time nothing” which he wrote with members of his ex-comedy trio which was called “les mecs comiques”, was in my own opinion, quite revolutionary at the time.
But all I could find to do was to turn my eyes away. Yet he was still there… on the cover of 7 days magazine… I looked elsewhere, there he was, on another cover! Damn! I just couldn’t talk to him, his eyes were too mesmerizing, and I didn’t want to look like the desperate house wife who has nothing else better to do than to watch his shows during the day…
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THE ONLY PROBLEM IS, IN MY HEAD, I WAS ASSOCIATING THE POLICE WITH NEGATIVE INCIDENTS IN MY LIFE; TO ME, THEY WERE ALWAYS THERE EVERY TIME I HAD AN ACCIDENT…
But suddenly, I understood that this time, they weren’t there because I was in pain but they were only there to help me…
I was so surprised by the turn of events that…
RIGHT THERE, RIGHT THEN, I FELT A SUDDEN URGE TO TAKE THE FEMALE POLICE OFFICER AND HUG HER REAL HARD!
There I was rambling on, telling her everything that came to my mind… Even though at that particular moment, I didn’t really have my whole mind. But I wasn’t crazy yet. I still knew how to detect the underlining message she wanted to convey. At this precise time, I clearly got the message:
“lady, don’t you dare approaching me!”.
Can I really emphasize here how unwell I was then…?
So, back to the “brain” hospital where they once again examined every inch of me. this time for a whole two weeks! i lost count of how many psychiatrists I spoke to but none of them ended up finding any form or pathology or illness. According to them, I was sain…!
The one good thing they ended up doing was a major cleanup in the of pills they are prescribing me… finally!
Apparently, many of the pills I was taking could induce Psychotic episodes as a side effect and a few of the pills were not meant to be taken in conjunction.
On top of it, I had to take anti nausea pills because when the pain was too intense, it invariably gave me nausea which didn’t help at all as you might imagine.
Add this mixture to the CANNABIS I was still regularly using and you found the origin of my episodic psychotic episodes...
Upon my request, they also took away some of the medication which made me gain weight. As a result, I have been losing some weight. Slowly, but regularly nonetheless, and for a change, without excessive privations or without a stupid diet. You just drink a lot of water....
That is one thing I learnt during my hospital visits…
When I suddenly noticed the mashed potatoes on my plate!
Such a trivial thing and yet I was left speechless!...
You see, I have been trying to lose weight forever and jumping from diet to diet, it turned out that the humble mashed potato had disappeared from my food list about 30 years ago.
(Paradoxically, chips and the humble “poutine” somehow remained... Yes, I cheated occasionally).
Well, how random but hey the damn mashed potatoes somehow made me cry like a bloody baby...
Fortunately, when you are in the mental health wing of the hospital, crying while you eat your mashed potatoes doesn’t seem to worry anyone somehow… Before that incident, when having dinner at home, I way eating next to nothing. But this time, since I returned from the hospital, well I sort of kicked out being a 30% vegetarian (I realized I wasn’t diligent enough to eat everything I needed to for it to work properly).
My return from the hospital coincided with the arrival of my CPAP machine (apparatus to help you sleep when you have sleep apnea). My “barely audible” snoring husband took several years to get used to the machine, I actually still encourage him nightly (today, a while later as I read proof once again my work... I can now say that he has become a real pro at it… finally?).
As for me, on the very first night,
instinctively, like a baby reaching for the first time for mom’s breast, I too hooked myself to this life-saving device. I breathed-in as if it was my first time, enjoying every bit of it,
like a dog with its head outside the car window on highway 138… my local highway, which will eventually connect the diminutive hamlet of Natashquan to the rest of the World... which probably will never be completed at the speed they are going, or at least until my book is fully completed (guess what. It took me so much time to complete my book that I recently learnt that the highway had finally been completed) …
That night, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I finally slept well. Even better, I didn’t have my recurring daily nightmare which has haunted me for ages either:
the one where i fight against a giant snake with the head of a demon (weird because personally I don’t really believe in demons, but I strongly believe in angels.
I will however learn from my winged friends that evil does exist, and much closer than we think).
In my dream, we are flying around the earth to always, invariably, ended up in a church where I had to fight with him with prayers, a female version of BRUCE WILLIS, in order to defeat him.
And yet, even though I relived this adventure countless times, I sometime still manage to be a little frightened when the light is on, as if I could somehow almost see him...
Most times, I also struggle with remembering the prayers as in my days, religious studies were not compulsory anymore. Therefore, I often ended up struggling to win, not to forget that the “being asleep” part made it a little harder to master.
Unfortunately, in Québec, because of our past experiences with a very omnipresent catholic church, we sort of moved away from everything religious.
As a result, I must admit that I failed to teach each and every prayer in the repertory, although, I managed to write many of them for him.
My Lord, why did we overreact that way?
Now, more than ever, we need some sort of moral guidelines for our millennial with whom we barely manage to communicate. Seems to me that it is the bare minimum they need to assimilate dammit.
Finally, over are the nights where I am “revving my engine with my open roof top”. One problem solved. My muffler has been repaired. I am full of optimism all of a sudden. Can I be fixed that easily? I go to the repair shop and, bit by bit, piece by piece, I get my 1966 model upgraded until the whole lot is just like new? Could I?
watch me go, I’ll make sure they honour my extended warranty ya’all...
Now that this year’s vacation is over, I find myself being overheating all the time these days. To the extent that there isn’t one descent picture of me taken during the holiday where my hair isn’t soaking wet. Quite ironic considering we had mostly cool and wet weather the whole time this summer. No way will I be posting these selfies on “Facedefriend”.
That summer, my vacation pics featured the arc-de-triomphe and the tour Eiffel instead of my pretty face. Oh well, “c’est la vie” as they say!
I finally managed to sleep a few hours in a row for ages which was most welcomed at this point. But eventually, the words woke me up: I was compelled to write, I promised the angels I would…
When I finally came out from my latest 2 week “holiday” in a psychiatric institute where they once again look for things that were wrong with me, well,
I was totally drained. Because I stayed in bed most of the time there (well, they can barely qualify as beds really, hospitals are so poor here, that they are more like a summer camp makeshift bunk if you don’t have full private insurance hospital coverage). As you know, my back is completely K.O. so I was pretty much in agony for a long while.
(They probably don’t want you to stay too long in the hospital, it would cost too much, the system is already stretched to the max already apparently!).
And haven’t they already closed all those mental institutions anyways?
One day, my ex sister-in-law who worked in a hospital explained that I was like an elderly person who just came out of hospital and had temporary lost some of my physical abilities...
At the hospital, when a specialist examined me to assess my level of pain, I invariably had to lay on your stomach. As a result, I noticed that, now that I am back home, in order to rest my back, I would unconsciously lean onto my counter to temporarily release some of my back pain by repositioning my centre of gravity which helped me understand the origin of my new pain.
So, now that I am home, I must now deal with a new problem where I have lost a fair bit of motricity in my arms, not to mention an additional pain to add to the everlasting list.