2004

I started worrying about the amount of Vicodin I was taking, so I started writing to my friend Dean each time I took one.

fri dec 17 2004

To Dean in Gmail:
Yesterday was a bad day. Near the end of the day I had no strengthleft and I felt a sore throat and a headache coming. I don't know if it was going to be an ulcerated sore throat or a migraine. I didn'tcare. I just wanted to go to sleep and not think about things anymore.

I believe my sponsor would have given me one from his own stash, truth be told.

[Pretty sure it was a migraine, not the sore throat. The end of a long, stressful week.]

wed nov 10 2004

Text message to Nell:

have the trembly tongue of the pre-migraine, so i am considering my magic bullet.

tue oct 26 2004

To Marc in mail:

I had a migraine tonight, in case I was fuzzy on the phone.

To Mom in mail:

Got a migraine last night and tried Maxtol, a prescription triptan. Took it at 7:55pm and at 8:10pm I had no headache. Not like the Vicodin, which masks the pain, just whoosh, no headache. Astonishing.


Sat oct 9 2004

To Dean in Gmail: 

I took three Excedrin tonight. I can't rype at all. Fuck you for it. I was headed to Clair'es fortieth birthday party. I had dealt with my mom being in town since Tuesday. I was maxed out for figuring people out and knowing how to talk. Took a nice shower. Got dressed. Wham. Giant steps on my head.

After the throat the vicodin make me a little dread filled when I think of it. So I took a couple Excedrin. Took the edge off the pain. A few hours later I took another. Kept the shooting have-to-be-horizontal pain down to a tolerable level where sometimes I could actually concentrate on what someone was saying. Most of the time I just talked, which is much easier than listening.

thu aug 26 2004

To Dean in Gmail:

I could feel another migraine coming. Something is fucked up. I'm not sure what. It's like there's a secret I know there is hidden from me, and I can't know it. I can't scrape the surface of what it is. I don't even know what it is about. I think Nell could tell me, but I have no idea. Now I am a crackhead. Paranoid, delusional, and whining. My tongue was twitching by mid-morning, but I had a plan: collect Nell's sister Alice from the airport, drop her at Claire's, have a late lunch with coke (ah, sugar, caffeine), and work at the studio until 4pm.

That way when I took the Vicodin I knew that it would take me all the way until sleep at 9pm.

That's what I did.

It took an hour for my scowl to relax, and my tongue to stop twitching. It had folded over, actually. It wasn't even full blown when I took the Vicodin. What the fuck.

I think I need some sort of vacation. I am scared to leave the boys, which is part of the paranoia.

tue aug 24 2004

To Dean in Gmail:

I came home last night with a migraine. More accurately, a migraine attacked me during Borne Supremacy, erasing a lot of my vocabulary and swelling my twitching tongue. My cell phone battery died, so I had just enough juice to call home and hear Nell say, "Can you bring me some water when you come to bed?" I sat in the car for a few minutes trying to decide what to do. I drove home with the window down, music on just enough to cover some of the road noise but not enough to really hear. I was refrigerated, which I think helped. But soon after I hit Sunset I knew I couldn't navigate home on my own, the lights and speed limit didn't make any sense and I could only see out of one eye. I waited at a light, blinking. Then I picked the car in front of me, tried to pay attention to its blinkers so I didn't wind up in the wrong part of town, and followed it all the way along Sunset to Brentwood. It turned off there, and I was on autopilot for home.

I thought Nell might be able to make the headache go away, which she has done once in the past, but she was mostly asleep. She brought me a vicodin when it was clear I was not going to drift off with my skull in a vise and a railroad spike being driven through the back of it.

sun aug 1 2004

To Dean in Gmail:

Last weekend (July 26th) I had spent the day with the boys. Nell was writing. In the evening we were meant to go to a party. Birthday dinner at a friend's house. Lots of people. Starting in the afternoon I started to get a headache. I took a twenty minute nap. Woke up, it was worse. I had a coke (sugar! caffeine!). It got worse. I gave up and took a Vicodin.

It was great. It allowed me to talk to an actress for over an hour. I doubt there's a better test for a drug.

thu jul 15 2004

To Dean in Gmail:

I started getting a headache around 6pm. I thought it might be lack of caffeine through the day, so I snagged a coke. It kept coming. I had some dinner. Still coming. I guzzled some water, had some pineapple for a sugar rush.

Still coming. Now pounding. Okay. Now I was stupid.

7:20pm took a Vicodin. Wondered when I would start taking two at a time.

It was 9:15pm before it actually wiped out the headache. That was a bummer.

Take them sooner. Why can't I learn that?

mon jun 21 2004

To Dean in Gmail:

I am in Las Vegas. I have a headache. I have another six hours of my day ahead of me. I am taking one. Fuck you.

sat jun 5 2004

To Dean in Gmail: 

Sponsor,

That worked perfectly. Around 4pm my tongue was quivering if I pressed it to the roof of my mouth, which so far has been the best indicator that a migraine is coming. At 6:30pm I took the vicodin. At around 7:40pm while I was at a dinner party I felt the migraine try to sneak in under the vicodin.

Right now, at 10pm, I can feel it pressing on the back of my skull, low on the right side, and in a straight line through to the front, to the left of my nose. There's some tension in the muscles across my head, but I can only feel the slightest, dullest pain.

Excellent.

Carry on, crackheads.


Copyright Colin Summers 2006 and other years.