Last night, I hit the pharmacy (no, not the bar) at ten to pick up my Effexor refill. Was told by the lady behind the counter that my health insurance won\’t cover it until the 19th because I last filled it on January 26th for 60 pills (2x a day), so therefore I have to wait thirty days, until the 19th, before it will be covered again. Problem is, somewhere between here, Detroit, three hotels in Seattle, Charlotte, and Florida, my bottle and my remaining meds in it was lost. I have not taken my Effexor in two weeks, which helps account for my lack of sleep, my nightmares when I do, my panic attacks, my depression, and my seemingly uncontrollable and unprovoked crying spells and fits of anger.

I saw my psychiatrist less than twenty four hours after I got back into town. The woman should be made a saint. She didn\’t chastise me for losing my prescription, in fact she calmly wrote me a new one and gently reminded me that I was also going through a severe Valium withdrawal after three months of strong dependency. Oh yeah, that. I had forgotten about that. Hooray for doctor prescribed drug addiction withdrawal! So she wrote me a new script to replace the old Effexor script, as well as for a few more pills of Valium to take the edge off the crazy legs I\’ve been teetering around on.

Got the Valium filled last night, no problems. The state has no problems keeping me doped to the max on opiates and sedatives, but when I try to fill my anti-depressant with a brand new handwritten doctor\’s prescription with the current date on it, I am thrown through the wringers and hung out to dry. I received a slip of paper that reads \”DUR MESSAGE 1: ER OVERUSE. WARNING. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: MAJOR.\” Never in my life have I ever heard of any one abusing time released Effexor. I don\’t think it is possible. Sure, you can break open the capsules and snort it, but it won\’t stimulate you, and it won\’t slow you down, so what\’s the point?

So the lady behind the counter told me to call my insurance company to explain the situation. I did so as soon as they opened this morning at nine. After fifteen minutes of being on hold with them and finally getting the story straight, the insurance company told me to call the pharmacy and have them call Health Choice because it is Health Choice that doles out the prescription use in the state, and not my insurance company. Okay. That was a lot of help. I called my pharmacy back, and after another fifteen minutes of being on hold and explaining the situation to another lady behind the counter, she told me I would have to call my insurance company. \”But I just did that, and they told me to call you.\” \”Hold while I connect you with a pharmacist.\”

Five minutes later after being on hold with their wonky music, I gave the pharmacist my prescription number and told her my prescription had been lost and that my doctor had written me a new one. Before I could say anything else, she said she would call Health Choice. Now, if they had taken care of that literally TWELVE HOURS AGO when they started futzing around with all this bullshit with me, making me jump through hoops I never needed to jump through when someone there knew the correct procedure all along, I could have had my prescription last night, as I had dropped it off yesterday afternoon.

This would have spared Will the weirdness of me waking him up at five o\’clock in the morning, yelling something incoherent about all the insects that were crawling all over the bed and walls, and would he please get the inspect repellent to kill them, because they were scaring the bejesus out of me. Apparently he turned the light on, and there were, of course, no bugs, and upon mentioning it later this morning, I have no recollection of this happening. But as Mark W. will testify, I have a history of waking up in the middle of the night and hallucinating giant insects when my sedatives are not working correctly.

So tonight, to hell with poverty, we\’re mixing substances and getting drunk on cheap wine at Heaven to bad 80s tunes because we\’re young, dumb, and able. See you there. If we\’re lucky, we\’ll end up with the Me versus the Bleached Blonde Sexual Harrasser Guy smack down part deux. And this time it won\’t be snowing and icing outside if it comes to taking him out past his security guard friends to give him the ass whoopin\’ he so righteously deserves. I am willing to put money on he and his friends being the crew who are slipping pills in ladies\’ drinks at Heaven and then taking them back to the Hilton and having their way with them. Well, not tonight.

P.S. Jackie O\’ Motherfucker @ the Ottobar, February 19th. $10. I\’m the D.C. car pool hookup. We\’re leaving at eight thirty.