July 13, 2004

  • / / Updated,
    down below / /

    Long night,
    little sleep,
    big issues… or not so big….

    I got to sleep after midnight.  Around 2 AM Doug woke me.  My
    new sponsee had called and I’d told him to wake me if she called.

    We talked for an hour or so, until she decided she was ready to
    sleep.  By then, sleep was beyond my reach.   That’s in
    the self-perpetuating nature of this damned chronic fatigue:  the
    more I need sleep the less likely I am to be able to fall asleep, right
    up to the point where I cannot stay awake, and then what sleep I get is
    restless, brief and unrestorative until I’ve had a chance, piecemeal,
    to catch up on it some.

    I can draw an analogy to a vehicle with a faulty fuel system:  my
    accelerator sticks and I run and run until I start to run out of gas,
    then I sputter and quit.  When I get refueled and try to start up
    again, I run rough for a while, keep quitting and starting and quitting
    again.

    That’s the body.  I’m glad the mind works somewhat better than the
    body does, although I’ve been finding scant comfort in the thoughts
    that my mind has been entertaining as I lay there attempting to get
    back to sleep.  I do wish I still had some of the options
    available to me that I had in the past.  It would be nice to go
    out and walk off the tension, the way I used to do.  Now, when the
    baseline I’m starting from is fatigue, walking or any physical activity
    just increases the tension and worsens the fatigue.

    If calling me kept her from drinking tonight, then my sponsee was
    served by it, in the short term.  Our conversation did not suggest
    to me that she’d gotten any longer-term benefit from it.  One
    thing it did suggest is that I might be in for an extended series of
    these late-night phone calls.  She needs a sponsor.  I
    questioned originally whether I could do an adequate job with her, but
    when I realized there was no one else available to volunteer, I did it.

    One sleepless night will probably not do me any long-term harm, unless
    it impairs my ability to drive safely.  I have an appointment to
    take one of our remaining cats in to the vet today for shots. 
    That trip, on the heels of the Sunday emergency trip to town for the
    new keyboard, would have made it questionable whether I’d be recovered
    by Thursday, when I again need to go to town for the NA Group
    Conscience meeting and to drive the rehab van.  Now, this
    sleepless night removes all question–I’ll still be impaired on
    Thursday.

    Won’t it be supremely ironic if I end up needing to resort to stimulant
    drugs so I can function in my Narcotics Anonymous service
    positions?  Is my addict’s mind tricky enough to subconsciously
    set myself up to “need” speed?  Not that I’m even considering
    tracking down a source for meth, mind you.  The stimulants I’d use
    are herbal things:  green tea, gotu kola, and ephedra, but
    still….   The fact is, I’m already more caffeine-dependent than
    I was before I got into NA. The program may have a lot of tolerance for
    licit drugs such as nicotine, caffeine and prescribed poisons, but I’m
    not as hypocritical as the program.  I have some serious qualms
    over such a scenario.

    That’s one issue on my mind.  Then there’s the issue of dog abuse.  Or is it abuse?  I don’t know.

    It’s those gluten-free muffins I bake every couple of weeks, freeze,
    then pop into the microwave for breakfast, and occasionally as a snack
    later in the day.  When I peel the paper baking cup off, a lot of
    the muffin sticks to it.  Koji has gotten into the trash for them,
    stood up to snatch them off the countertop, begs for them, and beats me
    to the microwave when I’m nuking one. 

    This dog has been eating paper since puppyhood.  He sometimes
    picks Greyfox’s pockets for used paper towels, and one of his favorite
    snacks is a used Kleenex.  I try to discourage that behavior, but
    in the case of the muffin wrappers I reached a point where I just said,
    “What the hell?” and tossed him a warm juicy one.  He loves
    catching snacks out of the air.  Flying muffin wrappers are now
    his favorite prey.

    When I took him to the vet, she asked me what we feed him.  I told
    her about the expensive brand of natural kibble he eats, and his
    rawhide chewies, and “scraps, mostly meat,” but I was too embarrassed
    to tell her I let him seduce and persuade me to feed him paper muffin
    wrappers every day.  I’ve gotten myself into a position here where
    he expects it and shows hurt and disappointment if I refuse.  He
    loves the things and obviously enjoys the sport of snatching warm,
    fragrant, flying food out of the air.  But I worry that I’m
    killing him with kindness.

    Outside of those personal issues:  my caffeine addiction and the
    dog’s paper addiction, and the sad state of local and national
    government, and some larger global issues, I guess I’m okay
    today.  How are you?

    UPDATE:
    Right at this moment, I think I’ve got the fatigue fixed… or it’s
    fixing to jump up and bite me in the butt when the current EUPHORIA
    wears off. 

    I had tried two more times lying down and courting sleep, getting up
    and writing a check to pay the electric bill in between those
    times.  Then I decided to bring up the big guns, get out my Robert
    Monroe “Catnapper” CD and put these erratic brainwaves into Delta
    state, where I want them.  No go–I couldn’t find that CD. 
    But then I saw my “new” CD, a copy of a nine-year-old Ottmar Liebert
    release I’d picked up when I bought the new keyboard
    Sunday.   The first track, Lush, put me into Euphoria, and
    then he picked up the tempo and I was bouncing and dancing in my
    seat.  That way lies madness and even worse fatigue, and when that
    dawned on me I slowed it down to a gentle sway as the tempo of the
    music slowed…  yeah, Euphoria….

Comments (11)

  • HI sweety–I hope you’re doing better by now.

    Maybe it would help to tell the pigeons to call late ONLY in a dire emergency, but then, the program is so full of attention whores and  drama queens that a fucking hangnail would qualify as an emergency for some.

    BOY, do I sympathize about your critter dilemma (dare I say empathize?), having my own to deal with.  As far as the paper goes, it isn’t toxic, right?  And he isn’t getting constipated by it, so I’d say that cutting off his muffin wrapper habit would do him more head harm than body good.

  • Laughed at the ‘flying muffin wrappers’ image.

  • Oh my.  I can’t imagine intentionally taking ephedra.  I took it once, in the form of a diet pill, without knowing what it was.  Twelve hours later and my heart was STILL thundering in my chest, I still had jitters, and still couldn’t sleep.  And that wasn’t even the full dose.  Never again!

  • I would definitely suggest telling your vet about the muffin wrappers. Though, as Arms mentioned, paper isn’t toxic, the ingredients from the muffin found on the wrapper could be harmful to him.
    I think it’d be better to ask and be embarrassed than to let it slide and hurt your companion down the line.
    Just my opinion…

  • i am down to coffee as my last and final sin. and i will just hang with that.

  • wait, that was a big fat lie. i curse like a sailor and drive too fast. damn it, i have a ways to saint hood.

  • I’ve taken ephedra as well by mistake and I thought I was going to have a heartache (I was 20 at the time). I think the tea is OK and I found (and it could be just in my mind but it was doctor recommended) that vitamin A + D really rejuvinates me. I’m very happy that you decided to be a sponsor!

  • Interesting….

  • why were you in jail?

  • My bunny likes popcorn, Frosted Flakes, bran flakes, Goldfish crackers…I know I shouldn’t feed them to him, but he gets so excited when he hears the box!

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