First Taste Of The Drug That Is Called 'Awake'
2006-03-10, 16:06

Imagine that you are a mine worker, and you've been trapped underground after a shaft collapsed. Imagine that feeling when, after what seems like forever, long past when you've been able to keep track of time, a crack in the debris forms, and you know that you're going to be, at last, saved.

Imagine being someone wrongly imprisoned and, after twenty years of injustice, loss and depression, your lawyer comes to tell you that new evidence has been found to acquit you of your accused crime. All you need to do is wait out the few days for paperwork to go through, and then you'll be a free man.

Imagine being given your first taste of a drug that gives you a mild but pervasive euphoria, and the dealer tells you that, while it'll cost you for more, it's cheap, plentiful and is actually good for you - you just need to wait for the next shipment to come in.

That, my dear people, is how I'm feeling today. Last night I had my second sleep study, this time with the so-called CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine strapped to my head. Really, it's just a nose-mouth air mask with two straps that hold it to your head and a 3/4"air tube trailing off to the air pump/humidifier. It sounds cumbersome, and maybe it is. But I found myself not caring, because the air, oh the air! In my lungs! While I'm sleeping!! The power!!

So far today I've had not one whit of sleepiness. As a matter of fact, by brain doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. I've found myself occasionally daydreaming - and not in a desperately-need-REM-state kind of way - and having a hard time pinning my thoughts down because they're racing around in circles inside my skull. Wouldn't that be my luck, that I was too tired to realize that I had ADD all this time?

I was, not unlike our Administration, trying very hard to downplay expectations before I went into this last night. I kept telling myself, it's just the first use, you probably won't notice much difference and there's no guarantee it'll work well for you anyway. But I'll be jiggered, it did. Is this really how most people feel on a given day when healthy and having had a decent night's sleep? Is this what I have to look forward to on a regular basis? If so, it makes me mourn the last twenty years, in a way. So much that could have been done. Alas. But now at least I have something concrete to blame for my terrible high school career. Thank goodness.

So now I'm interested to see what going back to unassisted sleep will bring me. I'm thinking it'll being me less air.

Tonight, I get to present unto my dear wife a movie that is on the required list under the Cheesy category - the Queen-laden sci-fi classic, Flash Gordon. Really, I dunno how someone of my generation could have gotten through life without even having accidentally seeing some of this movie, let alone not even knowing of its existence. I'm also going to be introducing H and myself to the Ditty Bops, discovered, along with my unknown deep love for Louise Brooks, courtesy of Wil Wheaton's blog. True evidence that Star Trek benefits all mankind, to this day. Yeah.

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