Sometimes You Get Lucky

“Yes,” someone even casually acquainted with me might say, “sometimes you do. And sometimes you go through life with a shamrock-festooned horseshoe hovering over your head like a protective halo, allowing you to continue drawing breath as you continuously drop trou and waggle your pale behind at Death hisself, daring him to thrust his tripartite come-along into your fundament and drag you away to an all-inclusive cruise down the River Styx (derisive snort).”

It’s true — I have been fortunate in that regard. I haven’t won any lotteries or gotten to marry the girl of my dreams, but after spending countless hours ambling blithely down Harm’s Way and casually swimming in Shit’s Creek, I not only exist but thrive in a manner rarely encountered in a chap of my years. I’ve accumulated some scars and absorbed some trauma, to be sure, but I’m still spry as a ferret and curious as a cat. I have what people generally refer to as a “knack” for slipping out of precarious situations. Of course, I’m even knackier at getting into them, so it more or less evens out, but still. Lucky.

So I’m at work one day and feeling unaccountably fatigued. Not just tired, but every minor exertion feeling difficult and draining. I assume it will pass and soldier on, but it worsens, and so I go to the bathroom and cut myself a rail. This has the desired effect of getting me through the rest of the day, but I still don’t feel right. I’m short of breath and feel flushed. I get home and wisely decide to abstain and go to sleep, but as I’m laying there with a hand alongside my neck I feel what ought to be my pulse, that is, a rhythmic throbbing indicating the ebb and flow of circulatory pressure, but it’s not the reassuring cut-time ka-thump ka-thump I’ve grown used to, more like Gene Krupa trying to play at 11/8 while drunk. And fast, like tongue-trill fast. I remove my hand from my neck, take a few deep breaths and think to myself, Well, whatever that is, and it may not be my heart at all, could be a neck spasm or blood gremlins, it’ll either kill me or it won’t, and I’m fine with a coin-flip. After all, I’m lucky.

I wake up in the morning not dead, so I assume the danger has passed. Off I go to work, feeling more or less ok, more less than more, really, but able to get through another day, I think. But every time I bend over, something I have to do about every thirty seconds at my job, and straighten up I feel dizzy and the periphery of my vision darkens. I finally admit to myself there may be something wrong and inform my boss that I’m going to the hospital. At the ER they take a listen to my pump and immediately strip me down and commence poking holes and applying sensors, then arrive at the conclusion that I’m in a condition of atrial fibrillation.

They outline their plan of action to deal with it, an IV drip of some kind of medication that’s supposed slow the heart rate and reset the proper rhythm — I’m at upwards of 200 bpm — and wait and see. After six or eight hours of this my heart has slowed somewhat, hovering around the 140-160 range, but still about as rhythmic as a box of tennis balls being emptied out on a staircase, which is to say not at all. Further action must be taken, say the medical professionals.

What say we knock you out and zap you with the paddles? Let’s do it, I say, charge ‘em up and have at it. An alarming number of personnel comes into my room, wheeling in expensive-looking machinery and thrusting papers at me to sign, presumably absolving them of responsibility in the event I croak, and at this point I’m fine either way. I just want it to be over. The anasthesiologist steps to the plate and the first pleasant sensation I’ve had since this shit started ensues, that first few seconds of Propyphyl before the curtain falls.

When I wake up, my bed is ringed with smiling medical professionals. I look at the monitor and there, by the little heart icon, I see the number: 60. And just as regular as you please, ba-bump, ba-bump. “Everything went great,” says a doctor. “One application of the zapper set things right.”

When the sawbones and I have the post-procedural discussion, he tells me the echocardiogram revealed a good strong muscle with none of the attendant damage associated with chronic amphetamine abuse. How in the hell I managed that I don’t know, but knock wood. However, he continued, after an incident like this the atrial valve tends to get a little floppy and create turbulence instead of a smooth flow which can create blood clots, so we’re going to put you on a blood thinner to prevent your brain from exploding. Good enough, I say. Thin blood it is. Other than that, the advice is go forth and live your life.

The luck I spoke of in the initial paragraphs is not surviving this incident. I don’t know if it qualifies as a near-death experience. I’m pretty sure a creature of my mass can’t sustain that much cardiac exertion for too long — heartbeats of that rapidity might suit gerbils or hummingbirds, not me — but the neat and briskly effective manner in which it was resolved says maybe it was not such a big deal.

What’s lucky is the aftereffect of the issue. As I walked out of the hospital, I knew — I mean I knew, as deeply and certainly as ever I knew anything — that I was done with drugs. Permanently and forever.

Reader, I sense your skepticism. I remember reading an interview with Robert Downey Jr. after he got out of prison, saying he didn’t go to rehab, he didn’t twelve step, he just decided one day not to be an addict and presto-change-o, he wasn’t. Right, I thought. That sumbitch will be dead in a month. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Not just drugs, either. I decided to quit fucking around in any manner. To stop doing anything injurious to my health. To stop wasting time, and god, have I wasted a lot of it. To be productive, and focused, and goal-oriented. To be personally responsible, and pick up after myself, and pay attention to details, and be aware of how my actions affect others, and adjust them accordingly. And most importantly, to throw out the addict’s perverse need to avoid discomfort at any cost.

Detoxification from meth is not a pleasant thing, but it is not unbearable. You feel like shit for a week or so, and then you don’t. I was absolutely terrified of the prospect, but as it was happening I thought, What was I so scared of? Who am I to complain of discomfort? The reward for sucking it up and toughing it out is you get to come out the other side and live again. And that, I realized when I did it, is something of inestimable value.

I put myself on a 100% plant-based diet and a strict daily exercise regimen, gave up all sugar except fruit, and what’s happening now is I wake up every day well-rested and smiling, having slept through the night without having to get up and piss five times, and I’m ready and eager to start my day. I work long hours at a difficult and physically demanding job and I do it well, and I take pride and pleasure in that. What free time I have, and it’s not much, is spent productively: fixing, cleaning, reading, writing, playing music, helping others. I am bound and determined to live as I’ve always felt I was meant to but never could, and to try and balance the karmic scales as much as possible.

I am fully aware of Life’s love of ironic twists and the possibility of it answering my new-found appreciation of it with metastastic cancer or a speeding bus flattening me, but if so, I say at least I’ll finish with a clear head and an open heart. The idea of dying the ignominious and completely expected death of the active addict always depressed the hell out of me, and I’m happy to say it is no longer my future.

Finally, I’d like to say to the AVA’s readership, and especially to anyone who ever enjoyed my efforts there or expressed any concern for my well-being, and and those who wrote in with support and praise, I don’t have the words to tell you how much that meant to me, or how rotten and guilty I felt letting everyone down again and again. I do hope reading this will make you a little bit glad for me, because it’s true, it’s real, and I am me again.

Finally finally, I would ask Mr. Volt Voort to please contact me at lettersandsodas77@gmail.com. I have a thing or two to discuss with you.

Cheers, Mendocino County. I’ll be back there briefly next month and will stop in Boonville to pay my respects and allow the Chief to put a stamp of credibility on my claims.