About a month ago, I visited my therapist. I'd spent much of the month of January in bed in a Klonopin daze. I expressed conerrn that I was becoming a junkie. We agreed to a tapering plan, and then I asked him, "Am I an addict!?" My therapist, who in every other instance maintained a cordial, concerned objectivity, replied, "No, you silly, neurotic dope!" but more condensed. After our visit, I went straight home, took a full dose, and took a long nap. I woke up, ate dinner, and went back to bed. Before falling asleep, I said to myself, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." That was the real problem: fear of being fearful. I'm grateful that that is in the past.
I can't say that I've followed our tapering plan to the letter. I did the first several days; after that, I cut out the daytime dose on most days. I'm more engaged and alert than I've been in years. I was really alert when the quack who dressed like Colonel Sanders had me janked up on Ritalin. I'm grateful that that is in the past.
The next day, I began the tapering plan and made Nashville chicken. For those who don't know what Nashville chicken is, it's a devilishly hot concoction of fried chicken coated with a mixture of spices and too much fat. I used lard per the recipe I consulted, but I cut the cayenne pepper by one-third. For sides, we ate German potato salad and turnip greens. Everything had bacon or lard in it.
I don't know when the heartburn began; in fact, I thought that burning sensation was everything but heartburn. My first thought was that I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms and that they would subside quickly enough. I also considered appendicitis and, and I'm not kidding, the coronavirus. Whatever it was, I wanted it the hell out of me.
By 4 o'clock the next morning, I was in bed writhing in the worst pain I can remember. I hated to bother my wife, but my stomach didn't want to be in my body anymore. She took me to urgent care straight away.
For $65, they pumped me full of Gatorade and morphine, and gave me an MRI. The attending physician said I either had heartburn or gallstones. Gallstones were ruled out. I was thankful for that, but I would have gladly had a frontal lobotomy performed if it meant that the pain went away. I felt a little ashamed that I'd gone to urgent care for heartburn, so I asked the doctor if anyone else had ever gone for that reason. She said that some people thought they were having a heart attack. In my feverishness, I didn't consider that my heart was sick of me, too.
That would have made sense. I'd taken some steps to improve my health, but I still ate like I was at a Golden Corral as conceived by Caligula. During the week or two prior, many of our meals consisted of something deep-fried and spicy. A couple of hours after dinner, I would slip into HEB just before closing, grab a pint of their Snooze brand ice cream (which might be the best ice cream I've ever eaten), and polish it off before bed.
The doctor's orders were "nothing delicious." I decided, at first, to eat nothing. Eating was still like walking down a decrepit staircase at that point. I broke my fast with oatmeal and yogurt. I had nothing against oatmeal and yogurt, I just thought that they might be delicious. After my wife's assurance that oatmeal and yogurt are not delicious, I ate. It turns out that oatmeal and yogurt were delicious, and I told my wife that that worried me.
The next morning, I ate breakfast. For years, I only ate breakfast during vacations or when visiting my parents. I have eaten breakfast without fail since. I always eat oatmeal, whether adorned with fruits and nuts or plain, and sometimes I eat yogurt. We only have drinkable yogurt now, so I've been skipping yogurt. There's no rationale, but there are rationalizations that I can't articulate, other than to say thata drinkable yogurt is a crime against nature.
I've also made forays into eating lunch. That meal has proven to be a harder come-by. At first, I ate smoked turkey sandwiches on wheat bread with a dab of mayonnaise. I'd devour two sandwiches, so I'd quickly run out of turkey. Partly out of kicks, I started making quiche once a week. Quiche is the perfect lunch as far as I'm concerned, aside from its being a pain in the ass to make because I insist on homemade pie crust. Most store-bought pie crusts taste like they're made out of IKEA furniture after being run through a wood chipper, so right now I'm hungry.
Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, but dinner is still my favorite. The difference is that I don't treat this meal with the licentiousness that I had been. I don't follow a diet; instead, I eat meals that most people would probably consider reasonable. We still eat delicious, satisfying food. The difference is that I've cut out the deep-fried horse hooves floating in habanero salsa with a flag on top and Nashville chicken.
I also practice reasonable denial, which is my way of saying that I allow myself to cheat a day or two a week. During the past month, I've cheated five times: two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, two bags of Doritos, and several healthy handfuls of potato chips. I don't feel so bad about the burgers and fries because I considered those choices carefully. I ate the chips knowing fully well that it was a bad thing to do. Afterward, it hit me that I could have eaten a bowl of cereal, so I ate that, too.
Since this is getting windy and I need to make dinner, I'll wrap this up by saying small changes in diet have had a profound effect on my quality of life. I wanna rock 'n' roll, I want to run, I want to read, and I want to write. Those are things that I'd put off because I either didn't have the energy or I was too doughy in the head. I feel so good now that I want to feel better, so smoking's the next thing to go. I wish I'd never started, but since I did, I need to deal with it. Because I see the benefits small changes have made, I'm ready. I'm scared, but I'm ready. I'm gonna need all the luck I can get.
That's a picture from close to three years ago. I'm neither proud nor ashamed to post it. I had just kicked booze, and I was using four different hair products. I was thirty pounds heavier then. I thought I was damned to a life of corpulence, so I bought a bunch of bitchin' threads sized extra-large, including the Endless Boogie shirt you see me in. Anyone know a good, cheap tailor?
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