Heebie-Geebies
Three
years ago I was hit by a hay bailer and had a full body whiplash and a blown
out knee. I got sick of limping and
decided to go bionic with a new knee.
I
was told that the surgery is only successful if you are aggressive with the
physiotherapy. Every day you build up
scar tissue and every day you have to break it down so you don’t get a stiff
leg. It is very painful and you must
take these small pink pills for the pain called morphine.
One guy in our physio class had a history of
addictions so he couldn’t take the morphine for the bending and stretching so
he regularly screamed and passed out from pain.
As the rest of us walked around him while he lay splayed out cold on the
floor, we thanked God that we could take our tiny pink pills.
Being
an over achiever in small and unimportant situations, I made really quick
progress, so I decided to cut back on the painkillers. I woke up pre dawn huddled in a corner of my
bedroom with severe nausea, vomiting, heart palpitations, sweating and
uncontrollable weeping. (The last time I wept was twenty-one years ago when I mistakenly
erased my contact list.) This crying was because I felt like every synapse in
my brain was on fire. If I tried to think of even the most mundane thing,
flames leapt out of that thought and singed whatever idea resided next to it.
I went back to my surgeon and told him what
hell I was going through. He said
casually, “Sounds like the hebbie-jeebies to me.” “What?” I asked. He said,
“Don’t you know the signs of morphine withdrawal?” I said “Who do I look like, Billie Holiday?” He said, “Who’s he?”
It
is not often an “addiction” to morphine drops in your lap so I gave it careful
scrutiny. I, unlike a lot of scientific researchers, had a chance to study the
whole phenomenon from the inside out.
I am a gregarious person. I love meeting new
people and getting together with friends.
Yet under the morphine, I had no desire to talk to anyone. I lost the to and fro of conversation. But
more than that, I didn’t care about people at all. People who were my best
friends seemed like mere acquaintances. It was as though I was at a cocktail
party stuck in a boring conversation and had no way to extricate myself.
Another
change was time slowed down. Spontaneity had left through the back door and
didn’t carry me through conversations. Now I could see myself at the table with other people and hear all the inane things I said. Socializing for an hour was as
much work as being in a one-hour play performance and I would come home and
sleep of two hours after any interactions.
Morphine
kills your appetite. I read there are no fat morphine addicts. I could munch on
a prune, which seemed as big as a turkey to me, for two days before I finished
it. I lost 22 pounds over two months. (When I complained to my friend about all
I’d been through she said, “You lost 20 pounds and you’re complaining? Shut
up!”)
I
never worried about the future. I didn’t
even think about my book tour coming up in a month. When I got emails about
author events, I thought everyone was being obsessive (a month translated to
ten years) and pressed delete.
So
morphine had done several things to me. It took away all desire to be with
others and I never planned for the future. These were previously two of my most
enjoyable activities. I was now in a medically induced solitary confinement.
I
now totally understand why some people would crave Morphine. They may have had
toxic parents and then gone on to have unsatisfactory adult relationships. These
relationships hurt but we are social animals so they keep going back for more
pain.
On Morphine you are not a social animal. You really don’t need anyone. So all the people who used to hurt you are no
longer important. Morphine slammed your
social needs door shut and you don’t have to let them hurt you anymore. The
best part is you are not lonely. Suddenly all the pain stops.
The
future for this kind of person, who has troubled relationships, is often
limited. They are faced with futures yawning in front of them that are filled
with all kinds of woes. Morphine takes care of the problem because there is
only the present.
The two things that tortured them,
relationships and the future, are gone. And the divine part of it all is that
you don’t miss any of it.
I
have no desire to stay on this drug now that the pain in my knee has
subsided. I look forward to wanting to
be with people again and getting back to planning my future. It is not that I
am not an “addictive personality”; it is that I don’t need or even want the few
qualities that morphine offers me. It was a bad fit.
One
person’s high is another person’s downer depending on need. If they had a pill
that would trim my troubles I’d be the first addict lined up to mainline it.
