Ignition

Well, well, well.

As a prelude I am posting something I wrote a few days ago but never quite had the concentration to post. Read that now and it might explain some of what this post is about...

So: what happened next?

More of the same, actually, more of the same faster. I continued with the lack of sleep, which was irritating and frustrating not because it made me tired (it didn't), but because I would have to lie in bed staring up at the dark before sneaking out to play Civilisation or surf the net for stuff.

And because a lot of the time I was easily frustrated and irritated.

Then get up six fortyish up to drive the niece to school, go to the gym, heal the sick (more on whom later), go to the gym again on the way back from work (unless it was judo night), then clean the house.

I should point out that a lot of what could get done with this glorious excess of energy I get does not get done. I get a bit distractible when high, and if I am working (I took a bit of time off, may be back this coming Wednesday, depending on professional advice, may not be) I tend to spend a lot of my energy rechecking things, or wasting time. I've put Florey on hold for the time being. The SMACHEAD job I could do with half a brain, but I spoke to my boss on Wednesday about taking time off and had a very light workload Thursday, and will hopefully be back there by next Wednesday, depending on advice received.

Anyway. About a week of increasing elation, culminating in last night's master-stroke: calling in "sick for the foreseeable" to Florey, suddenly ramping up the dose of valproate to full-strength (and for my next trick - buckling up my seatbelt as I drive through the red light...) and going out to meet my comic book geek friends for our usual few drinks down at the pub. Yepo, drinking and a dose adjustment in the same day - seemed like a good idea to me at the time.

Of course, lots of things seemed like a good idea at the time.

Anyway - the pub. The pub has the name of an imaginary equine creature, so in keeping with this theme I will call it the Completely Reasonable and Sensible Horse. I have yet to meet one of these, and many authorities beleive them to be mythical.

The comic book geek friends, by the by, are remarkably socially adept and pleasant company - a fact for which I was grateful later on.

Well, the pub didn't go well. Well, the pub went fine but the cumulative effect of inadequately medicated hypomania, five days of four-hours-a-night sleep, an indeterminate amount of wine and a potent psychotropic medication (they should put warnings on this stuff about mixing it with alcohol... hold on...) meant that the night, after a while, didn't go that well.

I think it started off okay, we read Ultimates and talked about feelings or something. Then I started to feel really weird, feelings that were not quashed by my usual one or two glasses of wine. Even when I started drinking the bottle of wine I had on me (I was intending to walk to a friend's house afterwards, and so I had the wine and I'd decanted it into a plastic ... oh, never mind, it made sense at the time) - that didn't seem to stop me feeling weird. In fact, I felt weirderer.

I will point out at this time it would easily be a year since I got more than slightly tipsy, and it would probably be five years since I got really drunk.

Tejhn it started. I started off with surprising and possible unwelcome confessions about my amatory past, intersposed with looking around for someone to fight. Then I think there was a brief, hopefully forgettable and ghastly to recall meandering monologue that touched upon the Incredible Hulk, my erotic ambitions, the sympathetic and honest way in which Mark Millar had written previously unlikeable characters such as Iron Man and Captain America, whether that dark-skinned girl over there was hot or not, the idea of the Godhead in Buddhism (Algernon's idea), smart brunettes and redheads, Nicky Winmar and racism in Australian football, girls with glasses and sexy hands, and whether following Fremantle Football Club amounted to an abusive relationship.

And there was talking fast and waving my hands and stuff, and remarkable insights, and all of my jokes were funny.

The night went on. For some reason I was lead out into the street by Chad and the increasingly alarmed Algernon. There had been some talk about kava, but even then I knew that that was a bad idea. I dissolved any remaining self-restraint in copious amounts of cabernet, drinking in the street, staring at street acrobats cavorting on the riverbank, and leering at frightened women. I started to feel a little bit like Fear and Loathing in Mordor. I told a wide-eyed girl in the dark that I liked her teeshirt.

Things deteriorated. Eventually I was led, almost incoherently drunk by my two comic book friends to another friends house, only stopping on the way to hug some other wandering, inebriated emergency doctor, who was also blundering around the streets.

What are the odds of that, by the way? is this how Ed doctors spend their time, or is it just the ones I know?

I will mercifully draw a curtain over the remaining events of the night. Suffice it to say that there is a question in the "Are you a pathetic piss-head" questionnaire, the one we have to use to determine if someone should be get their licence back, that asks about causing embarrassment to yourself or others while drunk. I'm going to be fairly unambiguous in my answer to that in future. Luckily, the friend whose house I went to is a pharmaceutical rep who has the anti-emetic (i.e.: anti-nausea) contract for half the Eastern seaboard. So I got a sample of a medication they usually only use to treat cancer patients (twenty two dollars a tablet, I ask you) and went to bed.

And here I am, sick and sore and with a head like a child's toy, typing this.

Anyway, I've noticed a tendency of mine to put morals at the end of some of these entries - this one's pretty obvious. Read the fucking label. Take your own advice. Remember you get sick too.

But I don't know. I don't know if any of it was cathartic or not - there's been a lot going on, but whatever was going on is still going on post getting drunk. I reckon that hypomania - and that's the first serious bit of it I've had for years - doesn't respond too well to medications you don't take, and I reckon valproate and promethazine (an anti-histamine I took to help me get some goddamn sleep) and shiraz cabernet is not going to become a standard treatment protocol for anything any time soon.

Having said that, no-one died. And given a few months I am sure one or two of my friends will start talking to me again. Perhaps.

Anyhow, work to do.

Thanks for listening.

John