![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My First Drug Experience
Sep. 25th, 2006 03:39 pmThat got your attention, didn't it. I think I may be forced to downgrade the journey where I was unexpectedly given a business class ticket to only the second-best flight of my life, because for the one yesterday night, I was only conscious for about half an hour of it. That's almost as good as not having to take a flight at all.
I had been dreading taking the night flight back (charmingly called "Red-eye" in America) because I didn't sleep at all during it, and the following day was full of moving furniture about and getting lost in the dark. Whitney had told me before I left on this journey that she had left a couple of sleeping pills in the house. I have always been slightly scared of things that mess with the mind (hence my continued teetotal status) but this time, seeing no other option, I asked Malcolm if he knew where they were.
What I was given was a significant amount of prescription temazepam, which I've just found out is used in the treatment of insomnia and has potential hypnotic/hallucinogenic effects, though I didn't realize that at the time. (Oddly, on the packet it mentioned that it "may cause drowsiness".) I was rather apprehensive at the idea of taking someone else's prescription medicine, but having decided that the worst it could do was kill me and that this was still marginally better than being awake on a night flight for six hours, I decided to take it.
After getting on the plane and squeezing in to my middle seat, I waited until the refreshments were handed out before swallowing the small yellow capsule with water. I then put on my sleeping mask and noise-cancelling headphones, slumped down in the chair and tried to get to sleep. I didn't feel any different at first, and did the normal thing when trying to sleep on an aircraft - shift to a position that feels perfectly comfortable, lie there for about thirty seconds until a pain emerges from leaning against the seat side or table, and repeat the process until the end of the flight. I was aware that I had dozed off, and was more dimly aware that the captain was making an announcement, which I assumed was about the turbulence that had woken me up - I thought that if I had slept for an hour that would at least be some progress. Then I heard the word "landing".
I opened my eyes and didn't see anything unusual. That was because I still had the mask on. Taking it off, I leaned up to the nearest air-hostess and asked where we were.
"On a plane," she answered, taking the question a bit too literally. She then went on to confirm that we were indeed about to land in Boston, putting me in a very good mood for the rest of the morning. A short series of crowded train rides later and I was home. Then I went to bed and slept some more.
It's only now that I'm beginning to feel some of the side effects. The most significant of them is that I seem to have forgotten where I live. When I left Whitney at the bus stop I came into the building on the third floor, went down to what I thought was the first floor to get the laundry and found myself on the second. Then I descended the stairs, picked up the right clothing, went up a flight of stairs to our flat, lost count and found myself in the lobby. After eventually finding our flat, I got the next load, turned the wrong way out of the door, took the wrong stairs and discovered that the laundry room had disappeared entirely.
This is not a good frame of mind to be in when I'm supposed to be putting together a spreadsheet for a lawyer to keep track of positively obscene sums of money. I have to go now because the sofas have sprouted legs and are trying to eat me.
I had been dreading taking the night flight back (charmingly called "Red-eye" in America) because I didn't sleep at all during it, and the following day was full of moving furniture about and getting lost in the dark. Whitney had told me before I left on this journey that she had left a couple of sleeping pills in the house. I have always been slightly scared of things that mess with the mind (hence my continued teetotal status) but this time, seeing no other option, I asked Malcolm if he knew where they were.
What I was given was a significant amount of prescription temazepam, which I've just found out is used in the treatment of insomnia and has potential hypnotic/hallucinogenic effects, though I didn't realize that at the time. (Oddly, on the packet it mentioned that it "may cause drowsiness".) I was rather apprehensive at the idea of taking someone else's prescription medicine, but having decided that the worst it could do was kill me and that this was still marginally better than being awake on a night flight for six hours, I decided to take it.
After getting on the plane and squeezing in to my middle seat, I waited until the refreshments were handed out before swallowing the small yellow capsule with water. I then put on my sleeping mask and noise-cancelling headphones, slumped down in the chair and tried to get to sleep. I didn't feel any different at first, and did the normal thing when trying to sleep on an aircraft - shift to a position that feels perfectly comfortable, lie there for about thirty seconds until a pain emerges from leaning against the seat side or table, and repeat the process until the end of the flight. I was aware that I had dozed off, and was more dimly aware that the captain was making an announcement, which I assumed was about the turbulence that had woken me up - I thought that if I had slept for an hour that would at least be some progress. Then I heard the word "landing".
I opened my eyes and didn't see anything unusual. That was because I still had the mask on. Taking it off, I leaned up to the nearest air-hostess and asked where we were.
"On a plane," she answered, taking the question a bit too literally. She then went on to confirm that we were indeed about to land in Boston, putting me in a very good mood for the rest of the morning. A short series of crowded train rides later and I was home. Then I went to bed and slept some more.
It's only now that I'm beginning to feel some of the side effects. The most significant of them is that I seem to have forgotten where I live. When I left Whitney at the bus stop I came into the building on the third floor, went down to what I thought was the first floor to get the laundry and found myself on the second. Then I descended the stairs, picked up the right clothing, went up a flight of stairs to our flat, lost count and found myself in the lobby. After eventually finding our flat, I got the next load, turned the wrong way out of the door, took the wrong stairs and discovered that the laundry room had disappeared entirely.
This is not a good frame of mind to be in when I'm supposed to be putting together a spreadsheet for a lawyer to keep track of positively obscene sums of money. I have to go now because the sofas have sprouted legs and are trying to eat me.
