It’s just one day after Christmas, and I would be remiss not to wish you all a happy new year before I start. So here goes… (ahem)–Happy (coming) New Year! To celebrate the Holidays, think of something for which you are truly thankful, and write it on the palm of your hand (or somewhere where you will see it all day). Each time you see it, say it out loud: “I am thankful for…(whatever is written on my hand).” Do this weekly, and you’ll be surprised how your outlook on life shifts. Okay, on to the post…

Remember, this series is written retrospectively. I suggest you read posts 1, 2, and 3 first, as they read sequentially. As of this writing, I have been on the full dose of LDN since August, 2012, and am doing well. We’ll get into that part in LDN Journal #5.

***

Mid-June, 2012:

I took my first dose of LDN tonight. Just before bed, I reached into the brown sandwich-sized baggie and pulled out a small 3 ml syringe filled with cream. It could have been anything really. They could have sold me hand lotion, and I wouldn’t know.

Sunscreen. It reminds me of sunscreen as I apply it: Cold, thick, and white. 1.5 mg is my dose, so I carefully plunge out the proper amount onto a bare spot on my belly, and gently rub it in circles with my forefinger until it’s gone. It actually never goes completely away. If I rub it too much, it dries and the residual rolls off in little rolls like eraser waste, little LDN boogers. So I just rub it until it is lightly tacky but not wet, then I lie down on the bed and wait for something to happen.

This is silly, of course. Nothing will happen, but it feels like Christmas, like I just got what I asked Santa for in the mall. I sat on the old man’s lap and asked for LDN. I want a drug, Santa baby. And I want it to make me better. Think you can handle that?

Well it is the middle of June, and Santa is on siesta as I lie in bed. I put my ankles together and watch my feet. I have a small bunion on each foot that makes my big toes angle away from each other slightly. The toes are like two fleshy magnets turned wrong-ways, pushing at each other’s tips. Away. Away.

When I alight my consciousness from my feet, nearly ten minutes has passed. My eyes are heavy and I touch my belly where the cream was. It betrays a thin film that was not there before, a translucent reminder that maybe Santa does come in summer. I rise and turn out the light. To sleep. I dream in IMAX, vivid, large, and 3-double-D. My dreams are M.C. Escher meets Stephen Spielberg. I cannot say what it is I dreamt that first night (because I did not write it down), but the impression it left was indelible indeed. Colors popped. Images in enhanced color. Sound in digital. I have never before dreamt like that. I awoke with moisture in the recess of my breastbone, feeling a bit like I have just run a long race.

The next night is the same. Theater quality, bizarre dreams meet restlessness. I awake unrested, but oddly not tired. This dreaming and restless at night continue for about three weeks. Each morning I am more and more amused at the dreams. I even laugh. I am not rested, but not tired, a state, like a 4th dimension, I thought didn’t exist.

At four weeks, I increase to 3 mg and the dreams return (after a week of normal dreaming), but this time only about 3-4 nights of restlessness. The dreams, however, remain. My mind is addicted to the dreams—so much more fuerza than before.

I played football in high school. Kicker. I was good, but the kicker is never a real part of the team. I didn’t play, just scored points, more points than anyone else. No matter. I remember one summer in August, we were practicing in full pads. It was still morning, but the hot humid air hung over us like wet wool. My holder, Jay, and I were working field goals from both hash marks at 35 yards with the back-up center. It was too hot for helmets, and Jay’s long brown hair flung sweatletts in small arcs as his head moved to follow the snap. The hair rested across his face like cooked pasta on the wall.

Between snaps he began to talk to me about his addiction to marijuana. He said he has been high so often in the past three years that to not be high felt abnormal, boring and low. He can’t imagine not being high, he said, but he wants to quit. What will happen to his reality when he quits?

I don’t know what to say, “Let’s have another few snaps, but over there, on the 25.”

After six weeks of IMAX dreams, my mind cannot imagine the old dreams. They are somehow lesser: dull, boring and low. I don’t know what to say to that either. I don’t know what will happen to my subconscious reality when the LDN quits the dreams, or I quit the LDN. I should call Jay, he might tell me.

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Filed under: My Story • Treatments

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