Withdrawal

Like, when you were so used to yourself puffy, and hadn’t noticed when the puffiness began, and within days you can see the bags under your eyes disappear.

Like, when after not taking the first one, you stay awake the whole night, saying to yourself that this is what you expected.

Like, when you lose ten pounds not doing anything, but remember how the doctor had warned that you might gain some weight.

Like, after not sleeping at all for four consecutive nights, you become fed up with it, drink a bottle of wine and sleep the dreamless sleep of a drunk person, only to realize in the morning, the withdrawal is causing some serious side-effects.

Like, after a day of trying to stay very still in bed, swearing that it didn’t add up to your feeling this sick, and you are not getting your period, and there is no other explanation, but the cold turkey.

Like, when there is no such thing as peace at home anymore.

Like, when you swore to never eat another pill again, because you are now losing your health in every other part of your being because of them, and then the sleeplessness is immediately so bad you feel like you don’t even remember what it was like to sleep through the night, and that was just last week.

Like, when you lose the writing, like you lost it once before, and this is serious now, this is something that really scares you.

Like, it has been a week since you slept, and already your resolve is fading. You think, last time it was a gradual descent, now it is this horror show straight off, and you have no idea how to get it back without starting to medicate again.

Like, you think, what if the pill became the glue that was holding you together, and now, every aspect of your life that meant anything to you, unravels before your eyes.

Like, whether to restart the medication and lose your teeth and god knows what else, or not take the pills, relapse into full insomnia, discontinue writing, deconstruct yourself, destruct yourself.

Like, when you see a sleeping mask for sale and buy it, thinking at least there can be some hilarity to this new and improved not sleeping.

Like, when you reread the instruction and caution booklet, and realize there might be other consequences too, because of your allergy medication, prescribed by the same doctor, and it was on the Never to Be Used Simultaneously -list, as well as benzodiazepine.

Like, were you blind, because you have read the warnings many times, because you are not unlike Mickey Sachs, the hypochondriac, from Hannah and Her Sisters.

Like, when the first night it stays on, because you were awake for the duration, but on the second night, when you go under for forty minutes, to have a nightmare about a rolling car tire, you have taken it off, and feel like the strap is drilling into your brain.

Like, when it has been a week and one night, you phone an old friend the second it gets to a decent hour to make a call, and still they are sleeping, because everyone else is, but you.

Like, your heart is pounding, and you are emotional, and the daggers behind your eyes are back, and the ringing, and when someone yells at you hard enough, your defenses give totally, and you don’t know who it is that you want to kill more, him, or yourself.

Like, because the list of possible side-effects runs in small print and reads like a phone book, and weren’t you a little arrogant, thinking none of these would happen to you, because you were so fucking special?

How long? Is it gone again, forever? The forever of a single night can be as long as a lifetime.

What is it that is troubling you, the doctors asked, every one of them. You answered I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here. What you really said was that you feel that you can’t turn your brain off.

And like, that is what the drugs were doing, shutting it off. No more sleeping pills, no more turning off the brain. But all else is being turned off.

Get up, stiff upper lip, sunshine, hospital corners. Laura Marling’s A Creature I Don’t Know, your prettiest pink bra with orange hearts, scrambled eggs, because that is what Frasier is having, your new Adidas basketball trainers from the flea market, green and white and pink, and they were such a bargain, while the bra was not, but you can wear the bra with the shoes and look the part of a crazy person, sleepless not in Frasier’s Seattle, but in the horrible carnival, the otherworldly Joyland kind of like in King’s novel, of your own making.

Get up, stiff upper lip, sunshine, hospital corners.

Hats off to Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, their first album, which contains The Anthem of All Time for the ones with head troubles, Creep