Regimen
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Regimen
Regimen
Bren Linto Morrigan
9-29-22
10 months out
Copyright 2022
In order to sleep restfully or at all:
Around 8pm, I make a Kava tea and sip this while my partner and I watch an episode of a show we like - this week it’s Dark Winds. A crime drama about Navajo people living in New Mexico in the ‘70s and the conflicts and devastations created by white people in their lives.
At 9pm, I take 300mg of magnesium, 10mg of melatonin, an edible that is 5mg of THC and 5mg of CBN (that’s some special sleepy part of the marijuana plant), another edible that is 25mg of just CBD, and 150mg of Topamax -this is technically to ward off post-traumatic chronic migraines I’ve had since 2019, but it also makes me drowsy. The ‘post-traumatic’ there, by the way, is a medical term and refers to trauma to my spine caused by my dog when she jumped up into the base of my chin as a 7-month old and altered the state of things about my skull and neck.
At 9:15pm, I turn on the infrared heat lamp next to my bed and swivel the long arm that holds the mineral plate head over my side of the mattress and turn the timer dial all the way over to 45 minutes.
At 9:23pm, I ensure my dog has finished licking up the last bites of her cat sister’s leftover dinner and I “Up-up!!” the dog into the bed, knowing her slow, easeful breathing next to me is yet another non-addictive sedative.
At 9:31pm, I lay precisely on top of the gray comforter flattened underneath me and pull over me two excessively soft throw blankets, one is green on one side and faux sherpa on the other and one is gray faux rabbit fur. I shimmy my body just so under the heat lamp and place one hand on my dog as she lets out a contented sigh.
This week, I realize I forgot something. I get all the way to here, and I forget.
None of this works the way it used to because something truly wild and unreal and haywire is working through my body and preventing me from rest.
My lungs breathe at an elevated rate throughout the night lately, my entire skin shell feels like I’m sleeping slightly damp next to an exposed socket - bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt. All night. All over. I wake up lately and my jaw hurts but I wasn’t grinding my teeth. My torso is hot from my belly button to my throat. My ribcage from my solar plexus around to my shoulder blades and around again feels in the morning like I was lightly punched all night long.
I slept - but I didn’t rest. Every night.
This has been going on for months at a low-grade level, not quite yet registering except that I couldn’t think straight while awake. I wanted to nap every day. Then, I started to hate everything and everyone. Then, I started to want to die, a bit. I didn’t know it had started in my sleep - I thought it was my mind.
Then some time in late August, the gently nagging toddlers in my body had had enough and they started screaming at me, and then I just didn’t sleep. For about a month. And the horror story of it is that I was having the experience of sleeping, but my body was not actually getting any rest.
I have struggled with insomnia since about one year into being in Stein’s group therapy cult - which naturally he blamed on my mother’s death and myriad other my-fault, my-trauma, my-disease things. Couldn’t possibly be the abuse I was undergoing in my “therapy,” the professional incest, the dependency culture, the coercion, the control, the manipulation, the calling it love. No no - none of that. The insomnia must be my fault. The magic tricks on this guy, I’ll tell ya. Sleight of hand. Diversion tactics. What a spectacle.
Total sleep deprivation, however. Total sleep loss. I have never experienced anything like this. Night after night after night for a month.
This creates mental illness. This made me want to die. Not just die. Also not feel love towards my partner. Actually, not feel anything towards him. It was not hate. It was an absence of neurochemicals, period. Made me start looking at apartments in other cities. Apply for other jobs. Wake up sobbing in the middle of the night for hours. And so then I knew eventually that I wasn’t actually sleeping - for unknown, new reasons, and I knew I needed to ride this all out and get medical help.
Tolerating emotions and changing my emotions and not acting on my emotions and even discounting emotions is something I can thank Stein for. Who knew he would come in so handy.
So anyway, my doctor said it was ok to take Ativan also at night, for now, on top of everything else I already had been doing, until I can get through all the tests and doctors’ appointments I have to get through or until we can think of something else.
Cardiologist. Pulmonary function test. Sleep study. More bloodwork. A temporary heart monitor.
But I keep forgetting to take the Ativan with all the other things. Even though it is the coup de grace right now. My lungs are still throwing a fit in the night, but my brain loses the match with that final blow. Boom. Benzo.
Why do I keep forgetting?
Look, anyone should be skeptical of taking a benzo every day. Anyone. I don’t care who you are. If you were not struggling with substance use before, your brain will become dependent on a benzo with daily use over a certain period of time - that is just science.
But in Stein’s universe, the one he caged me in, I was an Addict. “A” my scarlet letter, this was my birthright, my fate, my living legacy. It didn’t really matter that I never had had any challenges or issues with substances before and never did while in “treatment” with him either. It didn’t matter that I was annoyingly honest and medication compliant. This was who I was and he could prove it. And the more I resisted the idea, the more that was proof that I was an addict. Magic.
I do not know if I’ll ever be totally free of this particular indoctrination.
I do know that I now struggle to refer to anyone as an addict out loud the farther I get away from waking up. Even one of my family members, who now refers to themself that way and is trying desperately to get sober through 12-step and manifesting and spirituality and higher power. They keep “relapsing.” Ever AA, it seems they’ve been dropped by a few sponsors. I imagine, the sponsors or other fellows are telling them that relapse means they cannot stay in relationship and that they’re not “ready” and their addiction is really strong and they just need to surrender to the program more. I try to keep my mouth shut. It’s just what I imagine; because it’s what I went through and what I saw happen to countless people in the program.
I did say on Thursday, “I know that what I’m about to say is very taboo and basically the devil in 12-step, but I’m just wondering if you’ve thought about harm reduction. I love you.” I felt sacrilegious embodied. I could feel the soles of my feet scorching slightly, they were so close to Hell.
But last night I flung the cozy blankets off of me, I walked back in to the bathroom, and I looked in the mirror as I took the little temporary Ativan that my body desperately needs as we try to figure out what the fuck is going on, and I said “Fuck you, Stein. You’re a shitty magician.”
Last night was the fourth night in a row I slept peacefully.
Regimen
Bren Linto Morrigan
9-29-22
10 months out
Copyright 2022