Highs and Rushes

Andrew Sullivan speculates about how high Rush Limbaugh might have been on OxyContin. I can tell you how high I was on Oxycondone since that's what they gave me this summer when I got that deep puncture wound to my foot at the SuperNova Conference in DC.

Different from Limbaugh, I was in a excruciating pain and the meds were appropriately prescribed for that reason. Also perhaps different from Limbaugh, I can't stand taking drugs -- even when I'm sick -- so I stopped taking it after about a day because I was so totally wasted on the stuff, I remember thinking at the end of one dosage, as my mind cleared, if my foot went gangrenous and fell off, I wouldn't even notice if I had enough of this drug in me.

It think this is a leftover from being really ill when I was a kid and being given a lot of weird mediicine, including Perigoric. I can't stand feeling so out to lunch. All it brings up for me is feeling panicked, not relaxed. Some how, even as a kid, I got the notion that if they're giving you the big drugs, you're in big trouble. My idea of a rush is getting OUT of a hospital and getting OUT of bed and getting well.

I remember Joi Ito and Liz Lawley at the conference leaving me voice mails, inviting me to join them for drinks or a meal in the hotel, or just checking on me and as I listened to the messages, thanks to the drugs, I couldn't parse the words ... I would think, "hotel bar ... what's that?"

When I got home, I hid the stuff in my briefcase and put the briefcase, which I rarely use, deep into my closet, to keep the stuff away from me. It was a temptation, especially when my foot would start to ache -- it would also make me sleep for 12 hours that felt like 12 minutes and I have enough insomnia to find that pretty attractive.

Over the months, I forgot about ithe pills completely. Weirdly, I dug out the same briefcase for BloggerCon -- it holds a lot of papers and I needed to drag a bunch along for my presentation.

That morning, I was looking inside it for a pen and found the Oxycondone -- jumped back from it -- like it was a snake ready to bite me. I had just enough time to visit the Ladies Room, and down the toilet all the evil little pills went. I was glad to be rid of them.