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All the weathermen were predicting the worst storm of the year, and I wasn't about to wait for it in my tiny, tree-heavy house in the canyon. So when a friend of mine who was out of town said I could stay at his place in the flats, I gratefully accepted, threw a few things in a bag, and left. I went to find some peace of mind—and damn near lost myself.
The house has a well-stocked wine fridge, and a bar glinting with spirits of every kind. I like to look at the labels for old time's sake, remembering which year was good for pinot noir, which was bad for cabernet. It's a bit like going to an art museum and testing my knowledge of the great masters.
It's surprising that I can recall so much about the moods and perfumes and textures of wines, since I've been sober for over eighteen years. Granted, I take a cornucopia of psychoactive drugs to regulate my brain chemistry and control my behavior. But after years of wrestling with the ethics of this situation, I've finally made my peace. I figure, if a bona fide doctor is prescribing these pills to treat a genuine illness (and I've always considered bipolar disorder to be a genuine illness), and I'm taking them exactly as prescribed—now there's the tricky part—then I can still consider myself sober. Hardliners, of course, see it differently; we've agreed to disagree.
By now, not drinking or using illegal drugs has become an integral part of my identity. Maybe it's because of all the drinks I've turned down over the years, often in the face of fervent social pressure. With every single refusal, I've had to make a fresh commitment to sobriety. Every no is really a resounding yes.
So my friend's liquor cabinet wasn't a problem for me, just a diversion on a rainy day. But I do watch for danger, believe me. Triggers are specific to everyone, and although I'm fairly sure I know mine by now, all it takes is a razor-thin lapse of vigilance and those 18 years are gone forever. I wear my abstinence like a badge of honor; and no one—especially me—is going to besmirch it.
But everything happened so quickly. I was chatting away on the phone with an old friend, and looking through the cupboards for something to eat. Carbs, if possible. Lots and lots of soothing carbs. I spied a bag of pretzels and dove right in. They tasted a little stale, but I was hungry and just kept crunching away until the bag was almost empty. My friend finally asked me what that noise was in the background. I told him, with my mouth full: "Pwetzels, but I tink they're stale."
"Did you check the expiration date?" he asked. Just like a man: pragmatic.
I put on my glasses and looked at the back of the package. There, in tiny subscript next to a smiley face, it said, "This product contains THC."
You often hear people say, "I gasped," but they don't really mean it literally. I did: I felt a sudden, dizzying inrush of air into my lungs. But woozy as I was, I didn't faint. I wished I had, because then I wouldn't have to face the flood of guilt I knew was coming.
I heard a disembodied voice. "Terri, are you still there?"
I fumbled for the phone and started babbling. "Oh God, I didn't mean to. It was an accident. I never, ever would done it if I'd known. Oh God, oh God, what am I going to do now?"
My pragmatic friend said, "Slow down. I can't understand what you're saying. You wouldn't have done what?"
I told him as best I could through my sobs. Then I heard a whoop of laughter.
"But what am I going to do?" I cried.
"You're going to get stoned," he said. "Now calm down. I have a friend, a professor at Stanford, who smokes pot all the time. She'll tell you what to expect." He patched her in, and explained the situation. When she finally stopped laughing, she told me that after eating that amount I was definitely going to get high.
"But I don't want to!"
"Sorry, you really have no choice. You'll probably start feeling it in 15 minutes, and my guess is it will last most of the night. I wouldn't drive if I were you."
Drive? I could barely stand. But I had 15 minutes to prepare for the inevitable. I locked all the doors, switched on the alarm, and hid my car keys in the refrigerator. I grabbed a bunch of post-it notes and slapped them around the house. "Pretzels," I reminded my future self. Then I flopped down on the couch and pulled the crocheted blanket over me, vowing to sleep it off if I could. But the more I touched the blanket, the more fascinating it became. Each loop connected to the next, then the next, and the next after that . . . It was more than a mere blanket, it was a profound statement about the nature of time and fate.
My friend called me back just as I was about to put the blanket in my mouth and suck on it. I was suddenly so very hungry.
"How are you doing?" he said.
"I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine. I'm going to eat the blanket now."
"Terri?" he said. "You're stoned."
"Am I?" I said, and started to cry. My tears tasted delicious, like splashy little spritzes of salt on my tongue. Like liquid Doritos. Like the first frosty sips of a margarita. Like tiny explosions of caviar. I forgot why I was crying.
Sucking on the blanket helped. Eating an economy-sized bag of M&M's helped. The couch was so cozy, and the rain kept tapping Morse code messages on the roof . . . I knew I ought to be worried, but why? The world was such a lovely place. So lovely. I rolled over and saw the liquor bottles lined up like shiny soldiers on the bar.
The enemy, coming to get me.
I yanked the pillows off the couch and made a fortress between me and the alcohol. It didn't matter, I still knew it was there, watching me and waiting. Waiting. Waiting for this chance, after 18 years, to taste my blood again. I peered over the blanket to see what the bottles were doing. Biding their time. And what a marvelous blanket it was, so soothing and warm. I wanted to curl up inside it and sleep—but not in this room, not with them watching. I'd wake up as a pod person, like in "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." And now I was too anxious to close my eyes.
Music! Music would lull me to sleep. I got out my iPad. Ah, Bach: the grandeur of the Goldberg Variations swooped and soared and filled the house. I floated into the bedroom, trailing the blanket behind me.
Nine hours later, I woke up. At some point in the night, I'd apparently swallowed the Sahara desert. I got up to get a drink of water, and wondered what all the pillows were doing on the floor. I went to the bar and poured myself a big glass of seltzer. How pretty the bottles were, in the morning light. I felt steady enough to drive home, although I kept looking over my shoulder for the sobriety police. When I turned on the radio, the Bee-Gees were playing. So much for sublimity.
I had to laugh. Even I could see how funny it was, now that nothing really bad had happened: the best comedy is tragedy where no one gets hurt. I laughed until tears trickled down my face. But alas, they only tasted like tears.
