That Night...continued

“An Idle Mind is the Devil’s Workshop.”
-- Sister Ruth Marie

There is one uglier, wickeder, fouler
than all! He does not strike great
attitudes nor utter great cries, but
he would happily lay waste the earth,
and swallow up the world in a yawn.

It is Boredom!—an involuntary tear
Welling in his eye, he dreams of scaf-
folds as he smokes his hookah. You
Know him, reader, that fastidious
Monster—hypocrite reader, my fellow-
Man, my brother!
-- Charles Baudelaire

That night (Thursday, January 17th, 7pm) happened to be the evening “Trees” had scheduled for a rehearsal. Lindsey, Jesse, and their percussive confederate, Nicole Falzone, were in town to play a gig at “Johnny’s Speakeasy” on Friday the 18th, a very cool underground music venue in Ann Arbor. At about 4pm I took one whole suboxone tablet.

At about 4:30pm it hit me, the stuff he gave me in the office and the one I took after that. Never mind the tolerance I had built up over the last 8 months, I was suddenly higher than I had been since the early eighties, and, as I remember it, the buzz was totally heroin. Unlike those salad days, however, it was no fun (it probably wasn’t then, either, foolishly, I didn’t know any better). I started nodding out, projectile vomiting, sweating profusely, and scratching like a hound. It was too much for me. It slowly dawned on me through the narcotic haze that it’s somewhat of a guess to know how much an addict needs, and Dr. B. had overestimated my tolerance. Put on the Charlie Parker jams, I was gone.

The chickens had come home to roost. I decided the show must go on, and I had to attend the practice. I looked like warmed over death. They recoiled in horror at the gaunt, wraith-like figure I presented. I could see the grayish blue pallor of my skin, and the sickly glow it affected, reflected in their eyes as we hugged in tearful reunion. And I do mean tearful. It was like the pharmaceutical apocalypse had come to my little private Idaho. Praise God!

In spite of our collective doubts, I wasn’t sure how my hands would work and they probably wondered if I could play that high, it sounded great.

Next: The Birds, the Trees, and the Suboxone wean.