The very first drug that I ever took wasn't marijuana or alcohol, or ever nicotine. The very first drug I ever took on a regular basis was Phenobarbital. My pusher was my doctor who told me to take a teaspoon every morning and every night from the time way before I can remember until I was 13 because I was epileptic, bad epileptic. I had it so bad as a kid that there were times they thought that I might not live through the seizures. Continuous seizures for two and three days at a time, and there was nothing anyone could do except watch and hope and feed me drugs. From the time I was a baby until I was 9 or 10, I spent a lot of time in the hospital. Of those early seizures I remember little, just one minute playing then the next waking up in either the hospital or someone's bed with people asking me how I felt. After age 10 the seizures lightened up, no more series of them, just the occasional one until I went through puberty when they seemed to go away. I still had the petite mals but they were nothing other than a minor annoyance. At age 13 the doctors told my parents to take me off of the Phenobarbital to see what would happen. They cut me of cold turkey and I didn't suffer any more grand mals, but I did become a problem child and had to see kiddy shrinks.
I went through high school and the army with no more seizures and not much more that the usual male teenaged angst but in my mid 20's the seizures came back, and they came back with a vengeance. The doctors said they had a new and better drug to control my epilepsy, a downer called Dilantin. Before taking it I talked to some other epileptics who took it, then decided I’d either live with the seizures or die from it but I wasn't going to live the rest of my life on downers. If I was going to take drugs then they'd be of my own choosing, drugs to get high on, have fun with, not some prescription downers that all the epileptics I talked to hated taking even if it was saving their lives. I did have one friend, Ann, a woman in her late 30's die from seizures. They came on just too strong, too close together, there wasn't anything anyone could do for her except have a party for her after she had gone
At first the seizures I had were like the ones I suffered from in childhood. One moment I’d be doing something, the next there'd be people around asking what happened, should they call an ambulance, but I’d be just spaced out, disoriented, sometimes wet, so I would tell them just to leave me alone for a while, that I’d be okay. Then I had a seizure while on LSD and that changed everything.
I was high and feeling extremely strange. At first I just put it off on the acid, maybe it was a bad batch. My mouth tasted like I was sucking on pennies but I could smell citrus flowers and it looked like some one was sprinkling silver glitter around my head. Whenever I moved I felt real weak, if I stood up I’d' feel faint for a second. When those feeling passed I started getting rushes, but from my feet up instead of from my tailbone up like with acid. Plus the rushes unlike acid ones which have an even duration even though they d get stronger, these started out lightly and far apart then got more intense and closer together until I went into full seizure where all my muscle locked up and were vibrating at a tremendous rate. However, for the first time I didn't entirely lose conscienceness. I was able to retract my conscienceness into a small light in the center of my brain and even though I couldn't see or hear what was happening around me, I still knew what was going on and who I was. When my body stopped it spasms I brought my conscienceness back and opened my eyes. Again the faces, "Are you all right?” but I was better than "all right." I was higher than I had ever been in my whole life. I was calm, I was clear and I was totally silent. The acid wasn't even effecting me anymore, no trails, no paisleys, no tripping. I looked out at my universe and I was at Peace. I didn't need to think or talk or act. I only needed to be, for I was Alive!
After that I always knew a few minutes before hand when I was going to spaz out. If I was at someone’s home I’d tell them what was going to happen, and did they have a bedroom or some other place I could be alone for the next half hour or so. No, there's nothing you can do for me except leave me be. When the seizure would end I was always high for a couple hours afterward. Sometimes funny things happened too
On two different occasions when I was with a girl and we were having sex, I felt them start to come on. Both times were later when I found I could even control them to a small degree. I thought, 'Fuck it. I am not going to let them spoil my fun' and just kept going. Both times I completely blacked out and didn't wake up until the next morning. I asked the girls if anything unusual happened. They both said that I got real wild at the end then went instantly to sleep, but other than that everything was fine. Why, they would ask, was something wrong? I told them no, I just wondered how it was for them. Another time a girl and I were hiking in a forest and I felt one coming on. I told her what was going to happen so she should walk on ahead and wait for me. She said, no, that wasn't necessary, she would stay. When the fits started and I lost all muscle control, she simply took me into her arms and held me to her breast for the whole episode. When they were finished she still held me until I could walk. She never said a word, she just held me. It was one of the kindest things anybody has ever done for me in my entire life.
Besides the seizures I would experience walking black outs that were not drug induced. One minute I would be doing something, like walking down a street, through the woods or just sitting and talking to a friend, and then in the blink of an eye it would be five, ten, or even twenty minutes later. And I would have no conscience memory of the intervening time period. It's funny to be walking down a street then suddenly be six or eight blocks further ahead. My body must have known what it was doing because it had to cross streets, wait for traffic lights and negotiate other pedestrians and I never once got hurt in any way. I asked my friends what I was like during these times and they told me that I was just real quiet and watchful. If they would ask me something sometimes I would “wake up” but mostly I was just silent.
As I said the seizures started in my mid 20's. They started slow, maybe once a month but by my late 20's I was sometimes have two or three a week. By my early 30 they had dropped back to once or twice a month. I am almost 50 now and seldom have one any more. I still do have the waking blackouts regularly but now only for a moment or two. Maybe they will get bad again or maybe they won't, it doesn't matter to me either way, I don't mind having them anymore, after all, we're old friends now. They've even been one of my life teachers.
While most people, and certainly almost all children, never think about their own personal death and act like they never will die, I have always known even from me earliest childhood that someday I will die. This has tempered me and taught me the value of my life. It has taught me to enjoy this precious gift that we have been given for this short time on this wonderful earth, and for This I am truly grateful.