Is there anything to say behind the subject?
Sunday night, I made fucking bank at work. Enough to pay off almost half off the tuition I owe from last year. More than makes up for the rest of this year\’s coat check being shitty due to warm weather.
The above means I got home at five in the morning. I had class at one. Stuff in between. I\’m a diagnosed narcoleptic whose doctors say I need at least 10 hours of sleep per night, versus the normal 8. Obviously, I didn\’t get that. Between errands, chores, homework, and pain preventing sleep, I got about 30 minutes. Went to class: didn\’t do too bad there with the assistance of the Biofreeze. Went to my grandfather\’s, were I had dinner and spent the rest of the time on the phone with my healthy insurance (Medicaid) and the pseudo-sprog (now that her father and I have broken up, does that mean she is the former pseudo-sprog, or, say, pseudo-sprog 2.0). Headed to the home front. Note: home \’front\’, as in within quarter of a mile from my home.
Parked outside my local bar. Had a burger and a few drinks. Apparently (I say apparently because I don\’t remember, but an open prescription pill bottle was in my pocket) took a pill of some sort, mixed with my drinks. Add not drinking much lately to 500mg of Progivigil earlier in the day (1-3pm) to only having a burger and some salad to eat all day equals not the best idea.
See, because work was so good last night, I hurt like hell. Physical labor and all that. Add that to lack of sleep with a narcoleptic who has chronic fatigue syndrome. Doesn\’t make a pretty picture. I\’ve been in pain since the first hour of working Sunday night, essentially, but only now (Tuesday morning, 8am) is it starting to relent — and maybe that\’s just the toxins).
Because Sunday night was good for me, I felt like celebrating. Unfortunately, I also had my last drink alone, as in there was no one else there who knew me to observe my capability based on my personal situation (ie, disability with flares). I remember starting in one that last drink. Unfortunately, that\’s the last thing I remember.
Apparently, somewhere in there I cracked my \’help\’ pill bottle and took something. I\’m still not sure what that something was. I think it was a Soma (mixed with three strong liquor beverages) — a muscle relaxant, but I\’m not positive. All I know for sure is that the next thing I know, I\’m in the shower, and when I get out, it\’s almost 5:30am. Somewhere in there, I do know that my downstairs neighbor was banging her ceiling at me; it was related to me that this occurred around five or four-thirty in the morning, when I shut the bathroom door, and it created a cracking noise when I opened it back up.
In between all that, when I left my local Maryland bar at around 12:30-1am or so, the police saw me at my car, My purse had my textbook and notebook in it, so I was fumbling around those outside of my car, trying to find my keys. They deduced by that and my verbal skills (which is a separate, disability-related rant to me, because I can rarely explain myself well, particularly to authority, due to aphasia and other memory problems combined with stress that have nothing to do with drinking or prescription medication) that I was unable to get myself the two blocks home. They drove me home; somehow, apparently, I managed to give them my current address, which is funny to me, because there have been several times — even with something as mundane and sober as my health insurance — that I have given the authorities my former addresses.
Fortunately, the building\’s front door was unlocked, so I (and the po-po) walked right in. But on the first floor, I went back to trying to find my keys (which I just found, buried in my purse under another book — damn textbooks — and I actually have a small purse!) to let myself into my apartment, and I suppose I was unable to find them or something along those lines, because I ended up knocking on the door to my boyfriend, who was inside. He confirmed I lived there/here and opened the door (thank god he was here) to let me in, at which point the police left without a warning, ticket, citation, or anything (note: interesting/weird). Boyfriend said I had almost zero muscle control (as in, was barely able to lift my arms to take off my clothes on command, and yet I kept making repetitious, nonsensical actions with my limbs, particularly my arms. A neurological malfunction, which does happen to me occasionally, but at this extreme sounds exactly like something the Soma in my mish-mosh medicine bottle might do under these circumstances.
Boyfriend and I am guessing that I finished up my drink at the bar and decided to take a pill for the pain, knowing it takes about 20 minutes to settle in. As it takes five minutes to get home, another five to get washed up, and presumably another one to five to make niceties with the boyfriend, the meds still wouldn\’t have kicked in. It\’s not uncommon for me to take them with those expectant 20 minutes in mind, but I\’m thinking that perhaps I took them and then got engaged in a new conversation. Having forgotten that I took the Soma — which isn\’t hard to presuppose, as I forget things so easily) — I then remained at the bar for an additional X amount of time — god knows how long. The boyfriend left at 11, I ordered one more drink shortly there after. But according to the boyfriend, I got home at 1:30. Somewhere in there is the one drink I recall (maybe more, on the house, as there\’s no record in my wallet of paying, and I do know that I was the only customer in there at that point, so if there were more drinks that I was charged for, J would have said and I would have paid, but as it was, he tried to give me the last one I remember ordering for free) and taking one of the strongest prescription muscle relaxants available in the USA. Great combo. Then the police picked me up outside, and bam — next thing I remember is around 5:30am or so. That\’s about five or more hours of black out. Not just black out, but police-escorted black out.
I guess this is significant to me because of all the times I\’ve been downtown and have really seriously been intoxicated — as in, would not have passed a sobriety test. Last night, I would have passed a sobriety test, but that clearly was not the issue. But using the worst instance from work (April 21) that I remember as my example — 2 tequila sunrises, 1 shot grand marnier, 1 jack & coke, 1 shot jameson, 1 shot jagermeister, 1 shot something I don\’t remember, 1 yuengling… then I forget; In an HOUR. Yeah.\” After which, I drove the ten minutes home — very fortunately without incident1, went to bed, and regretted driving those ten miles (\”what if\”) in the morning. But I have never once been stopped by, or even looked at by police in DC, or on my way to/from DC. So I find it odd, uncomfortable, and yet, somehow comforting, that cops in the DC suburbs of Maryland looked at me and wouldn\’t let me get in my car when the thought I wasn\’t okay to drive.
Was I okay to drive? I don\’t know. Perhaps only a neuroscientist could really answer. At my car, I was juggling a small purse stuffed with two textbooks, a notebook, my wallet, my week\’s medication pallet, a medicine bottle, my Biofreeze rollon, my sunglasses, a pen, and my keys. It was cold. I have Raynaud\’s disease, which causes numbness in extremities in the cold; its symptomatic numbness hits quickly once exposed to low temperatures. This makes it hard to feel things and understand what they are through touch. Combine that with a very full purse, in which I am constantly momentarily losing things, and it is easy to see how I could have been fumbling for my keys. Add that to taking the Soma, or whatever else it was I took, and yes, I was disoriented. But I wasn\’t drunk. And I guess that\’s why they didn\’t try to give me a ticket (at least, as far as I and my boyfriend know, because I don\’t remember). The po-po could have Breathalized me on the spot, but my functioning problems weren\’t alcohol related.
Which makes me wonder — I was taken away from my car because I was incapacitated. I don\’t dispute that. I don\’t dispute that it wasn\’t a good decision. I don\’t dispute that I was a likely danger to myself and others. No. But I have a query, which I\’ve not found they answer to as yet: for those whose disabilities fall under the realm of neurology, is there a sort of \”driving while disabled\” clause? As in, usually this person is a-ok to drive, but upon flare-up, this person is not, due to neurological impairment. If so, how is this classified, and who decides this? All I know about this is that people with vision limitations are restricted from driving, as are people who are considered to have very low IQs and/or EQs. Legally, I know that people who are do not have papers that say they are in the USA legally cannot get a driver\’s license in most states. Narcoleptics (holla) and epileptics are forbidden (I don\’t know if this is by law or \’strongly discouraged\’ by medicine) to hold commercial driving licenses. Depending on the type and severity of diabetes, this is sometimes also true. But other than that, I have not found any legal limitations to driving. A driver\’s neurological state — as long as it isn\’t narcoleptic or epileptic — appears to be irrelevant to deciding whether one is legally capable of driving or not. Interesting.
I must learn more.
At some point I must sleep, but I have to go walk the mile up the road in the 40 degree temperature to pick up my car (hopefully it hasn\’t received a ticket yet) and then go to my previously scheduled psychiatric appointment. Funny, how all that works out.
1. YES, DRINKING AND DRIVING IS ABYSMALLY STUPID, IRRESPONSIBLE, AND PATHETIC; AND YES, I HAVE KNOWN SOMEONE WHO HAS DIED AS A RESULT OF D&D; AND YES, I KNOW THAT I AM NO DIFFERENT, NO MORE CAPABLE OF A DRIVER, AND NO MORE MATURE THAN ANY OTHER D&D DRIVER, JUST BECAUSE I HAVE NOT BEEN CAUGHT BY THE LAW OR BEEN IN AN ACCIDENT. BUT THAT MAKES ME NO LESS GUILTY THAN ANYONE ELSE; I AM STILL RESPONSIBLE, STILL DRUNK, STILL DRIVING, STILL BREAKING THE LAW & ENDANGERING COUNTLESS PEOPLE. SO WHY, KNOWING THIS — KNOWING THAT MY FORMER ROOMMATE\’S SISTER, WHOM I USED TO REMIND HIM SO MUCH OF, DIED OF A D&D DRIVER ACCIDENT — DO I STILL CONTINUE TO DO IT? BECAUSE, APPARENTLY, I HAVE NO SELF-RESPECT, SELF-WORTH, OR REVERENCE FOR OTHER PEOPLE. IT IS !NOT! BECAUSE I THINK I AM INVINCIBLE, BECAUSE I HAVE CLEARLY PROVED TO MYSELF MANY TIMES WITH MY OWN LUCK THAT THIS IS NOT THE CASE. THIS ALL BEING SAID…
