From age 15 to age 18, I took 10 mg of Valium four times each day.

During the September of my first year of college, I spent twenty-four hours withdrawing from Valium with a friend by my side.

I came partway out of a fog that day but not far enough.

From age 15 to age 58, I took narcotic pain relievers.  A doctor started me on Percoset (Darvon-based) when I complained about my legs.  The doses increased as I aged; the drugs got more serious as time passed.

During November – December of 2013, I slowly weaned myself from narcotic pain relievers with my doctor’s assistance and guidance.

I finally broke through the fog in January of 2014, peering in astonishment at my world, what remained of it.

Doctors prescribed that medication.  Doctors.  I had no idea what pain relievers did to me.  No idea how attenuated I had become; how numb; how insensitive; how jittery if I tried to unilaterally decrease them.  I lost four decades of living; four decades of connection.

When I rolled out of that fogbank and found out what my life held, what I had lost while I tried to damp down the pain in my legs with narcotics, I wept.  I still weep.  I walk around in permanent mourning for what I did to myself in the name of Western medicine’s solution for chronic pain.

Once again:  I am not a good example; I am a horrible warning.  Don’t dull your senses.  Not with potables, pot, or pharmaceuticals.  Find another way.  If pain threatens to overtake your life, turn to nontraditional ways of controlling it — yoga or meditation.  Believe me.  You deserve to feel.  What you lose when you wander in a fog can never be regained.