In the interests of honesty and HR I need to post an addendum to my AMT/Desoxy report. After crashing on Monday afternoon I woke around ten in the evening and was awake all night. I put it down to a mixture of comprehensively trashed circadian rhythms combined with the tail end of chemical wakefulness. A night's sleep at the wrong time of day?
As it turns out this was a mistake.
The unpleasant requirements of Capitalism made the rest of the week's work unavoidable. I thought that seven hours unbroken snoozing demonstrated I was at least within touching distance of baseline. Presuming at least a little tolerance I swallowed a measured 5mg of Desoxy to wrap and bomb. This to make work possible and prevent falling asleep at the wheel en route. It was at 6AM on Tuesday.
This was also an error.
The day passed uneventfully. Somewhat surprised by a marked lack of appetite but foolish, foolish uncle Stinky ascribed it to a weekend of extremely reduced calories. By two in the morning I began to realise this was not the problem. I now believe "sleep" on Monday was more like unconsciousness of exhaustion. I had committed the cardinal sin with this odd stuff, the re-dose. More in hope than expectation I put out the light and attempted to will myself to a semblance of repose. At this point things got very strange indeed.
As I relaxed I began to get brain zaps. After a fairly long abstinence I have been whipping my serotonin production up more than is healthy, so this was not entirely surprising. (Yeah, idiot, I know.) Then, without any sleep, I suddenly got a heavy-duty dose of sleep paralysis. Surprised as hell, but after the usual few seconds of leaden immobile flailing attempts, movement returned. However, every time I began to relax the paralysis reasserted itself. After a few more re-animations I realised it didn't seem to be stopping any major autonomic stuff happening and the needs of tomorrow required at least a few dark hours, even if Morpheus embrace proved elusive.
Gave up struggling and let the immobility have it's way. At this point the occasional brain zaps began to generate a static crackling sound which matched each contraction. Still I refused to give up on sleep and just went with it. To be frank this point marks the onset of real fear, still muted, but there was, it turned out, to be ample time for it to grow. Imagine someone hammering. Now imagine a pneumatic drill. This analogy represents the acceleration of the zaps. It became a constant high speed vibration of my brain, accompanied by intense crackling which seemed to take on some vocal elements. I could feel the muscles of my face vibrating. Not sure now if that was real or hallucinated, though it certainly felt real at the time. Oddly, all pain free. Couldn't take it, struggled, moved and all was silent again. Can't really time-stamp things but it felt like several minutes duration. A diagnosis of seizure crossed my mind but there was no amnesia, which I thought accompanied a fit. (Correct my ignorance if this is a false assumption)
Evidently exhaustion combined with a grotesque degree of self indulgence had uncovered a new category, the ultra brain zap. For the good of science (yeah right) I let it happen again. The exact sequence repeated itself and I pulled out at the same point. The third time I resolved to see if I could go further. Again the same evolution of effects but this run through I let carry on. The voices began to sound like half heard names. Suddenly, to my huge surprise, it felt as though I melted through the bed into a featureless black void. Completely dissociated I guess. Panic, and onrushing fear convinced me I was having problems breathing. Adrenalin glands dumped their cargo and with that I fairly rocketed out of bed. Lights on, flood of sweat and cardiac hilarity ensued.
It was still only 3:20 AM. I was now doing a passable impression of the awakest man in the world. Weak tea, cigarettes and a handful of fish oil supplement placebo later I was calm enough to read but too awake and afraid to sleep. The Oliver Sacks book was a two-edged sword, convincing me my case was not so bad but also presenting many examples of my approaching brain injured future. 4:45AM and the spectre of tomorrow's gainful employment rose from it's unquiet grave.
Knackers.
Whilst upright, conscious and moving, none of the peculiar symptoms were manifest at all. Only gritty eyes and that odd tiredness that comes when the brain and body have differing opinions about how the future should unfold. I resolved to essay a couple of hours of supine rest. At least I could then approach the day's toil with a reduced chance of causing, or suffering, either injury or death.
This turned out to be a marvelous choice, in the original sense of the word, because real marvels were about to emerge.
Back to bed, lights out. I began, not without trepidation, to attempt to relax. Eventually I must have unwound enough, because the harbingers of the oncoming storm began to crackle and zap. Again the unsleeping sleep paralysis, again the ultra brain zaps with voices growing to a crescendo and again the peculiar liquid descent through the bed. Into the void again. I can't explain it but there was no fear this time. A little expectation and a lot of exhaustion perhaps? Although the space was featureless I became aware that I was moving. More accurately I was being propelled, since I was still immobilized. Blackness turned to grey and features began to emerge. Clarity and full light arrived, without noticing it I had entered a parallel world. A parallel suburb at least. At this stage I also regained the power to move.
I will go to my muddy grave denying this was just sleep. It certainly had elements of dreaming, that's quite undeniable but there was a lucidity and fixity of purpose which dreams lack. It was also beautiful. Everything was sharply drawn with none of the odd jump cuts usual to dreaming. A protracted sequence of events began, encounters, travels and sights.
Some were sexy, some frightening all felt as real as waking life. I'm not going to elaborate, pinning this stuff down will just make it sound like mundane dreamwork. Other peoples dreams are at best incomprehensible gibberish. It's the attendant mental state that pushes it into the visionary. (Although I will say, having to push your own fat-lookalike dead body out of bed was probably one for the Freudians. Worth it for the sexy reward.)
I also began to realise I could slide back and forth from my bed to wherever the hell this was. It felt like genuine movement too, not just mental effort. The passing time also felt real. I was aware of the growing light around my room and quite capable of making the conscious decision to rise, shower, dress and make my way to work.
As I scratch this account out it's now midnight on the subsequent Friday. No further stimulants have been ingested, apart from Coffee and a reacquired taste for regular nicotine. Cigarettes seem to keep my brain from slipping into idling mode. I have had nothing which could be described as normal restorative sleep. Each night I have been able to have a few hours of whatever the hell this not-sleep journeying is. Each night the clarity, duration and intensity diminish. I'm getting a lot of reading done, between the shortening excursions. My lungs hate me. Earlier this afternoon the normal, fairly infrequent post-binge brain zaps began to happen. Suggests a stepping down I guess. Since I accepted the oddness there has been nothing of fear, confusion, psychosis or paranoia in the day or the night. (Mind you, after the king-hell paranoia at the end of a four day crack binge, most other paranoia I ever experienced looks like cake. Another story for another day perhaps.)
Missed no work at all, and though waking life hasn't been unalloyed enjoyment, it rarely is anyway. The compensations of my nights entirely make up for the bone tiredness my body keeps moaning about. The desire for food has returned, supplanting by increments the dull necessity for mere fuel. I get the feeling that my brain will remember how to shut down properly soon. If not there's some old amitryptiline, prescribed as painkillers ages ago and usually good for an occasional knockout. Best get the organism on the wagon and off to the hermitage to eat vitamins and lift weights till balance returns.
Given the circumstances of the arrival of this odd week I doubt it will ever be reproducible and it would probably be dangerous to try. I don't know if I will ever get a handle on why we get these odd moments of grace. Bags of dirty water that temporarily reverse local entropy deserve all the help they can get I suppose.
If you made it this far thanks for your patience with my indulgence. As a wise man once said
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." Kurt Vonnegut