The Ranch…My Adventures

 I once went for a Grippy Sock vacation for 30 days. I call it “The Ranch” because it sounds less nutter. I’d tried to unalive myself and to the disappointment of many, I couldn’t even do that right.

Now, The Ranch is actually not a bad place. Free meals, free snacks, free medication at regular intervals, free arts and crafts and free bowling and trips to a thing called Pig Out in the Park…. Free chaperones too, all with varying medical degrees. Free counseling three times a day, one being a required group therapy. We once got on the topic of how fun doing cocaine is. Our counselor, who doubled as my personal support/ therapy human, didn’t stop the conversation. That seemed odd, doesn’t that seem odd? Maybe he was just glad that people were laughing rather than tying their shoelaces into a rope. 

We were literally allowed to go anywhere in the hospital that we wanted. Unsupervised. Seems like excellent care. Wanna smoke on the 10th floor balcony with all your new depressed friends? Sure! What could possibly go wrong there? My emotional support counselor would play ping pong with me for hours. It got me relaxed around him. I could talk to him, he was a safe place…. He once asked me what it felt like to be high on cocaine…. I mean, it was the very early 90’s so the 80’s hadn’t quite worn off yet…. 

I was placed on Xanax FOUR times per day. The thing about Xanax, and cocaine for that matter, is that your brain gets used to the current dose and needs a larger dose to feel the same as it had on the lower dose. The beauty of the Devil’s Little Pill is that it stops your brain from making its own feel good chemicals and send it on a vacation telling it that it’s fine, we’re fine, everything is fine…..Right up until the day that dose doesn’t cut it anymore. So, four times per day, an hour, then an hour and a half  before your next dose your brain is driving like an engine with no oil. And it hurts. So, maybe you add a shot of whiskey to lube it up a bit. It works at first and before you know it, your life is watching the clock so you can get that chemical your brain stopped making. 

I went to my doctor and said “ Get me off this shit.. Now”

This was not a psychiatrist. This was my PRIMARY care provider. Old as dirt. Delivered my oldest son, delivered the man with whom I got pregnant with when I was 18. 

This doctor who had performed surgery on me and delivered my child and prescribed this God forsaken medication for me after I left the ranch told me that he wasn’t qualified to ween me off and what was that other thing????? oh ya, I could die if I abruptly stopped, probably seize then maybe be brain dead…. Kind of like that engine with no oil! Fantastic!!

Then I had to be admitted to a hospital so that a qualified doctor could ween me which takes…Several weeks, around the clock supervision. 

My advice is…. NEVER EVER take Xanax. NEVER.

And, maybe try and avoid a grippy sock vacay too. Turns out… It’s not free!

Tracy