Mallory's Camera

The generic name for Wellbutrin is "bupropion," and to an addled brain that has been surviving on three hours of sleep per night for four days, "bupropion" does look like "ibuprofen." The pills look like ibuprofen, too.

Why the pills were in a pharmacy vial was something my exhausted brain was ill-prepared to reason through. (Lucid answer: They wouldn't be.)

Anyway, that's why I took them.

Sleepiness is not one of ibuprofen's on-label or off-label effects—except that ibuprofen does make me sleepy—and at that point, I would have done anything to sleep...

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Afterwards, I thought about the actor Heath Ledger. Who died of a drug overdose at the age of 28 in 2008, not because he was trying to kill himself, but because he was trying to fall asleep.

"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. ... I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going," he told a New York Times journalist shortly before his death.

I could relate.

Like me, Heath Ledger had lost the ability to fall into unconsciousness.

He could not let go.

More or less, this has been my ground state, too, since Brian died. I could not fall because I could not lose control. Brian was no longer there to have my back if I lost control. Brian had been my emotional lodestar, the only person who really, really knew me, the good and the bad, and loved me anyway. I did not have to tap dance to keep Brian's love; I only had to be.

After Brian died, I was in a great hurry to bundle up the grief and dispose of it, but, of course, grief does not work that way; it is that thing in the ghost story that's impossible to give away.

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Anyway, it took me an hour or so to figure out what I had done. Poison control was alerted: I needed to go to the ER. It was too late to do activated charcoal, but I needed to be on a lactated Ringers IV to flush the poison out of my system, and I needed to be observed for 24 hours in case I had a seizure.

First time in my adult life I'd spent time as a patient in a hospital without giving birth. Hospitals are unpleasant environments. Every 15 minutes, someone is coming in to take your blood pressure or run an electrocardiogram or use you as a prop while they discuss your case with medical colleagues. Ironic! You won't die from the drug OD, but they won't let you sleep, and sleeplessness was my real issue.

Wellbutrin in high doses turns out to be a hallucinogen. Fortunately for me, I did so much LSD as a young 'un that I am perfectly comfortable with hallucinations. The drug also fucks with your short-term memory & cognition—and that was interesting: At one point, I was trying to explain something to someone, and they were staring at me with this absolute lack of comprehension, and I realized, I am not making any sense.

And I thought: This is what it must feel like to have dementia! Things that make perfect sense to you make no sense to anyone else, and when you express them, they look at you with a panicky expression on their faces.

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I was released after 24 hours of observation.

Thank God I have health insurance!

Naturally, I am feeling deeply embarrassed, ashamed, & demoralized by the whole episode. What an absolutely fucking stupid thing to do.

But I decided I was not going to cover up the experience, humiliating though it was.

I mean, I'm not going to go up to random people on the street: Guess where I spent the day-before the day before Thanksgiving!

But I'm not going to hide it. And I'm writing about it here.

RTT left me a phone message while I was in the hospital: Silly things happen so don't beat yourself up. I feel like my biggest concern right now is that you're beating yourself up. I love you lots. You are amazing.

Ichabod was more circumspect. "I would like you to get some sort of cognitive testing through your primary care provider," he told me, and I agreed to because doing something like this was just so fucking dumb, and if I am beginning some sort of mental spiral, I need to know.

Jeanna was the one who understood what happened best. "That is absolutely the worst, isn't it? That moment when you realize you can't maintain."

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On the way back to the AirBnB from the hospital, the BoyZ took me by a dispensary where I loaded up on CBD (anti-anxiety) and cannabis sleep aids.

They seem to be working.

We spent Thanksgiving at Allyn's.

Allyn was working at New Roots when RTT was a student there, so technically, I've known her for 15 years, but this was the first time I'd hung out with her at any length. She's a chef and put on quite the spread, and we all cozied up in her living room eating three differently prepped turkeys and five kinds of pie and watching mindless football.

She could not have been any warmer or more supportive. "I feel such a strong connection with you!" she told me. "When it's time for you to move, I will help you find a place up here." Allyn is very well connected.

Friday, the BoyZ & I went to the movies and then hung out at Personal Best and played board games where you ask questions like At a restaurant, I resist the free bread because I don't want to spoil my dinner and If I don't get enough sleep, my whole day is ruined (sic!) and then guess if the person the statement is about would say it is true or false.

Then Saturday, Ichabod & I departed, and RTT went back to real life.

I arrived back in the Hudson Valley just before it started to snow. The first serious snow of winter: Thanksgiving is the official “Welcome to Winter” calendar moment, after all. That snow didn't stick.

Today's storm will though. We're expecting seven inches.

I am (understandably) feeling very fragile. It will take me a while to recalibrate emotionally. And Brian is still dead. But at least I can sleep, which means I can take care of what needs to be taken care of. It would be nice if "self-care" were on that list, but in fact, it seldom is.