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Responses (sorted by date)
russ: well done (1/10/08)
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It is 4:00 in the morning and I have the jitters. I’ve been sleeping long hours, with the use of some new pain medications, which is unusual for me. I have always hated that dull, ‘out of it’ feeling I get from taking Vicadin and other pain stopping drugs. I like to imagine that I am in control of my senses and this dulling of the senses gives me no pleasure, except that, when I am drugged out, I don’t feel the pain. Still, I’ve never liked the trade-off, the wooziness, the struggling to make my brain function, the struggling to deal with reality, the inability to ‘do’.
But this morning I woke up with the jitters. I am antsy, my brain is racing, and I have the shakes. I’m thinking about taking more pills, even though they are not yet available according to the prescription. I have always known inside somewhere that I could get addicted. That I could quickly fall into the trap of ‘needing’ drugs. My avoidance of things like drugs and alcohol and tobacco was never so much a moral decision as it was a decision driven by fear. Fear of being ‘out of control’. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of not being in my right mind. Fear of being judged and rejected.
Fear is a funny motivator. My friend, Patti, once told me that I did really good things for really bad reasons. That fear was one of my primal motivators. Fear is a bad reason to not do things, I think, but it is also a powerful friend if you want to stay moral. The problem is that the fear gets overcome eventually and then you have to find the moral underpinnings for why you do what you do. I have to choose this morning not to open the bottle. No one would know. Few would care. Lots of people would justify it with me. And taking more meds would certainly calm the jitters and I could feel that warm, cozy feeling you get when the drugs first begin their work.
I stared at the bottle for a while and then made the decision to live with this awful jittery feeling. I am not sure why. Part of the reason is that I want to live in submission to the doctor’s wisdom. I want to believe that God will bless that submission and that His presence will be made more real in my shakiness. Partly I want to understand the struggle of people I love who try to resist the compelling addictions in their lives. And partly, I confess, I am afraid of the consequences of addiction.
So I sit here and write about it. Which may be an addiction also. I wonder what this will read like when I am back in my ‘right’ mind. Whenever that may be...
Rod |
