St. Patty's Past

Sorry everyone, I've spent the last two days floating between fever sleep, glued to the couch by a blanket and a serious desire to not move. I came back to work today not even realizing that it was St. Patrick's Day.

Granted, it's not like forgetting it's Christmas, but I would have at least made a half-assed attempt at putting a shade of green somewhere; a button, or somewhere on my boxers.

Actually, I probably would have just thought about it for second while getting dressed and said "fuck it" and left.

As I have nothing interesting to cull from my last two days of convalescing, let me tell you about a St. Patty's Day over 10 years ago. Biffy and I had just started seeing each other, and in those first tentative days, she gave me the overflow of vicodine from her recent surgery. And it was a lot of vicodine, a big mamajama of a pill jar. Here was a woman who really knew how to get to my heart, ply me with pharmaceuticals.

This was back in my wanton college days, so not only was it expected that I would get three levels of messed up for St. Patrick’s Day, it was necessary. I mean how long could I stretch this early twenties irresponsibility thing? For a while it turns out... Thing is, I really wanted to celebrate that bit of Irish in my blood by getting good and fucked up, but I was so broke at the time that it was difficult to buy food let alone drinks. My options were the bottle of Cuervo atop the refrigerator, where it had sat for over a year due to my hard learned aversion to tequila, and the handful of pain killers left.

The plan was to slowly drink my Mexican poison (with orange juice I stole from work, if I remember correctly), pop a pill or two and spend that intoxication spilling nonsensical words onto a spiral notebook. What hadn't really occurred to me was that, as I had been indulging in a steady diet of these fantastic, white pills, I had built myself up a Great Wall of China sized tolerance. After a little while, I realized that I wasn't feeling anything so I took another pill. And then another, and then another... All said and done, I think I took about 7 little vicodine.

Word to the weary: A serious vicodine hangover is like being in a moveable coma. I had of course heard that analogy where someone is so tired that their head feels like a stone, impossible to lift off the pillow. This will literally happen. This is not your normal hungover and tired, this is chemicals in your body fighting triumphantly to put you down. I did finally get out of bed and over to Oakland somehow, but my shambling, zombie strut gave me up to the drug encyclopedia/airplane mechanic that I spent my spare time with. He asked what it was I had taken, I told him, he laughed knowingly and told me to find one of the belt loaders (used to get baggage from the ground to the inside of the plane) and stretch out and sleep. There was nothing else that was gonna help, and he would cover for me.

So for those of you going out tonight, avoid the opiates. And for the love of the Irish avoid the green beer – that shit looks plain evil coming back up.