About 2 1/2 years since my last drink of alcohol. About a month since I quit smoking.
Oh, yes,I have will power. I can quit and stay quit once I decide to do it.
True,those good deeds were done for me,although they were also done for my SO,Barbara. We can spend time in my apt.,now that it’s smoke free. I still absent-mindedly reach for my Marlboros and lighter,especially when I’m on this site or Googling for something. Yes,at times I badly need a ciggie,but as I said,I can handle that. Never let it be said that I’m not a will-power junkie!
Now I just can’t seem to will away the almost constant HUNGER that 47 years of smoking has left in it’s wake…but that’s a tail of a horse of different hues for other times.
The thing is,I was hanging out with the cast of THE KIDS IN THE HALL one night, having non-nicotine smokes and jokes. I love hanging out with celebrities. The thing is,I stumbled out of bed,and that should have told me it was a dream,but it didn’t. Even when I was up,I couldn’t decide. I didn’t know if it was day or night. The clock read 10:00 and it was bright daylight and I STILL couldn’t tell. Time wasn’t acting in it’s usual way.
The thing was,my brain had given up and NOT gone home. I was not homeless,but certainly brainless.
After a while I figured out how to work the phone and called Barb. When she answered,I realized I couldn’t put words together in anything that resembled a sentence and besides,I stuttered.
She came over. I finally got out that time wasn’t working. And I had some sort of palsy. I’d reach here and my hand would wind up over there. And I was having hallucinations…I would suddenly snap back from where I had been and realize that where-ever or who-ever weren’t real.
I was on the couch and if I tried to get up,I was likely to find myself falling over the little table where I keep my keyboard and remotes. I had Barb move them to a safe place. I COULDN’T READ anyway.My eyes didn’t work,or rather my absent brain wasn’t about to decipher for me what any string of words meant.
I was afraid all of this was permanent,and then I’d hallucinate and forget all about it,or go on a laughing jag for five or ten minutes.
The next day was the same. Barb called and made an emergency appointment with my doctor. When she hung up the phone I struggled to ask her what happened,finally forcing out,“Wh,wh,wh,WHAT DOCTOR SAY?”
This sounded to me like some insane form of pidgin,and I literally laughed until I wept. And hurt.
UPSHOT: After 3 days it is mostly gone; the doc seems to think I have too much ammonia in my system. Who the hell knows? And,of course,no guarantees that it won’t be back. That’s frightening.
BTW,I had no drugs. Illegal ones,that is. Just the doc’s scrips.
Oops. I’m in IMHO.
Who else has done something seemingly wonderful and then immediately paid for it?
I suppose I needed to get all that stuff written somewhere and realized finally that being in IMHO,I would have to ask who else had done what they considered a good deed and seemingly been punished for it in some way. You take miles of flack just being a smoker in Ca. I was feeling pretty smug about quittng and was getting adulation about the fact that after all those years,I just stopped with no assistance but my own will power.
Then I was hit over the head with this unknown malady. It still isn’t completely gone; just better. It scares me to think the next episode might already be on the way.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear,but,truth be told,I’m just NOT as clear as I was.
Wow. That’s scary. One of my biggest fears is for my brain to stop working right. (or at least the way it normally works ) Hope everything clears up for you.
Wow! That happened to me once, at the height of a fever, where I lost that intangible and unspoken understanding that now is now, there is a before, there will be an after, and that one is moving slowly from before to after. It was one of the most disconcerting experiences I’ve ever had, and for me the loss was for a few hours (I think – might have been minutes, that’s the thing about it – how would I know?). My SO at the time recounted afterwards that I left my bedroom to come and find her and then babbled until she put me back again – I made her take out the LED clock that was staring at me, menacing and unfathomable.
I’m not trying to prove giving up drugs caused my malady. Just that the only drugs I was taking were prescribed by my doctor.
In his office,I was accompanied by Barb,and when between the two of us,we had related my symptoms to him, he looked at me and said,“What are you doing having hallucinations?”
Of course,he being the doctor,I had no answer,at least one that made any semblance of sense. I had to laugh,though. I felt sort of like some high school kid who had been caught passing around hallucinations in study hall.
Wow, glad you’re ok now. Something like that happened to my Dad in 2000. He was a heavy drinker plus he had Hep. Finally his liver gave out and flooded his body with amonia. Although I believe his first sign was internal bleeding which showed up on his arms and chest. I wasn’t there, we lived thousands of miles apart. For him however it didn’t go away. Not to scare you or anything but it really messed him up, like you said it made him so he couldn’t think straight and he’d do wierd things like trying to burn off his leg cast which got him kicked out of the hospital until we could find an assisted living facility. He only survived for 5 more months.
Well like I said I don’t want to scare you but you never mentioned your liver so I felt I should. Maybe your Doctor missed that, I don’t know, just felt I had to do something. I don’t deal wery well with things like this. It does sound like you’re doing everything right though. Good luck.
Yeah,my doctor is aware of my two-time conviction for cirrhosis and liver abuse and the rather lengthy hospital rap sheets that ensued.(A tiny joke,there…)
My doctor says that given the circumstances,my liver has made a remarkable come-back. I’m thinking of putting it in the light-heavy class and maybe going for a world title.
) Hope everything clears up for you.