100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95 . . .

Clonazepam – foto by smith

The doc gave Lady a prescription for Clonazepam to help her sleep to recover from her month of no sleep at all last year. It was supposed to be enough for two weeks, but she still has some two months later and let me try it last night because I couldn’t sleep and was keeping her awake.

According to Wikipedia, “Clonazepam (a.k.a. Rivotril or Klonopin) is a benzodiazepine derivative with highly potent anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant and anxiolytic properties. Clonazepam is a chlorinated derivative of nitrazepam and a nitrobenzodiazepine like nitrazepam. Clonazepam is the second most misused benzodiazepine in the United States.”

Being a semi-retired druggie–I’m down to cannabis, cookies and coffee–I was dying to see what it was like. For 42 years I’ve taken hundreds of drugs, and each time I sit and wait to get off, analyzing their subtle beginning effects to see if, when, how, why I’m getting high.

One of my biggest drug disappointments was in the hospital ICU back in 1991 when I drank myself to death. Before they shoved a hot wire down my throat to cauterize my hemorrhaging esophagus, they gave me some sodium pentothal intravenously and told me to count backwards from 100. I was ecstatic finally getting to try such a rich high I’d repeatedly read about and seen in the movies. I didn’t make it to 90. Somewhere in there I was awake, the next second I was gone, and the third second I was back and they were done. No high, no feeling, just a switch that turned me off, then back on again.

Clonazepam is like that. You put 8 drops in a spoon and lick it with your tongue. You can feel this powerful odd taste moving quickly through your head flesh and think wow, this is strong stuff. But there is no high. There’s taking, there’s taste, and there’s sleep – no in between. Within 30 minutes of taking it, you are asleep. If you want to stay awake and see what it’s like, too bad – you’re asleep. It turns you off like a light switch.

And it isn’t a restful sleep either. Whatever benefit your body receives from normal sleep doesn’t happen. You’re tired, desperate for rest, take the drops, disappear, wake up tired and groggy and desperate for rest.

I tell you, being a druggie just ain’t what it used to be. My body and my brain used to be one unified drug desire. Now at 63 years old with a tired weary worn experienced body and a weary worn experienced cynical sorry brain, it’s more like “what are you doing, and why?” Still, I’m happy to add one more stuffed head to my drug collection. But my body and soul are getting tired. As I wrote three years ago,

Junkie Business

I’m losing my last two crutches:
coffee
and marijuana.

In the old days
I could have coffee
after dinner.

Now no.

You know,
this junkie business
is for younger bodies.

You keep doing it,
and pretty soon,
you end up like Keith Richards,
falling out of trees
and landing on your head.

My biggest drug disappointment though was here last year when we trekked up the endless mountains to Huautla to do legal magic mushrooms. The amount of over-priced mushrooms the shaman sold me was not enough to get me off (although Lady had a wonderful warm magic trip – her first). I’ve tripped hundreds of times on mushrooms from 1968 through 2008, and this was the first time I never got off. Turned out it took two of their doses to give me a mild trip. This was massively disappointing because Huautla is where the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Donovan went in the 1960s to do mushrooms. Since we were going to the very magic mountain which was the source of it all, I expected to have the best trip of my life, and instead got ripped off. (If anyone else goes, stay away from the woman who is involved with the 13 Grandmothers Council of Indigenous Women–they’ve high prices and low quality product.)

I’m kind of glad my drug days are slipping away, especially since what was fun then is work now.

junkie business – foto by smith