I Have Bad Brains -2

I have a fucked-up brain.

⚡⚡ 😁👍 ⚡⚡

I offered some evidence of that in Part One (of this three-part series). 👇

After reading that 👆🏻, I'm sure you're wondering: 'Did this dude drop acid when he was in his 20s?'

The answer to that, of course, is "HELL yeah!"

🌈🌈🌈🌈⚡😁👍🌈🌈🌈🌈

The 1980s were an insane time. Don't believe me? I dare you: go Google up random pictures of people partying anytime between 1980 and 1989. Then look at their hair. 😨

Okay, so then, factor in disco. What the holy fuck was up with disco? Where the hell did the BeeGees come from (and go)? Were they time travelers from the 27th Century who just hustled into that decade to start the Disco Revolution, and then they returned to their Night Fever Jive-Talking future where they are even now Staying Alive forever? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Here's some reference for the young people. 👇 It's a three-minute glimpse into both the past and a far-flung utopian paradise at the end of time... Just listen to this chirping shit!

See that BeeGee in the middle? ☝ He has the ultimate 1980's hair.

So, basically, my contention is that everyone was crazy in that decade. Or maybe it was just the Bolts & Bills, like me & President Clinton?

Could be. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂

During the 80s, I was personally making a shit-ton of money. Way more than I needed for, like, food, and rent, and porn. (When I say "porn" I'm talking about magazines bought in adult book stores. And video cassettes. My first VCR cost over a thousand dollars! We had no Pornhub! We lived like fucking savages! Google this shit, young people.)

I mean, most guys in their 20s spend a lot of money on their girlfriends (or boyfriends) and/or their wives (or husbands)... and then they have to spend lots of money on their kids, after knocking up their girlfriends and wives. Not me. I've never been married. And in the 80s, I wasn't getting laid. I mean, like, NEVER. (Wait... glory holes don't count, do they? 🤫)

*** In case you're confused, I'll clarify I'm bisexual. When I was young, I always thought I would one day marry a woman and 'settle down'. The only romantic attraction I ever had was to women. It was just two years ago that I fell hopelessly in love with a gorgeous young man named Demetrious who completely changed my entire paradigm. ⚡💙💚⚡ He Rocked My World. 🌎 ***

Anyway, back in the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, I had no self-confidence around good-looking women. We're talking: none. I couldn't speak to a hot babe, let alone ask her out. Think Raj from The Big Bang Theory. That was me in my 20s.... only way whiter.

So, consequently, I had money to burn in the 80s. I was good at my job (telemarketing for a home improvement company) and the bonuses were freaking incredible. Thousands of dollars. Not hundreds. Thousands. So where did all that excess cash go? 👃🏻 Right up my nose! 😁👍 Lots and lots and lots and LOTS of cocaine. Massive amounts of it. Like, if my heart hadn't been young and super strong, it coulda/shoulda exploded on numerous occasions.

Back in the 80s, cocaine was a thing. We really liked it. It goes amazingly well with boogie fever. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Go figure!

Besides all that coke I was doing, I also did LSD. "Orange Sunshine," they called it. 🌞 A tasteless, odorless hallucinogenic on little tabs of paper. I did magic mushrooms too but they came later. LSD began my mind-altering experiments.

So I'm asking you... do you think all those psychodelics helped fuck up my brain?

Psy-cho-del-ics....

Oh!!! It's psychedelics! Really, spell-checker!?!? Psyche starts that word out? I know how to spell 'psyche'! That's where we're at right now on Vocal! Well, that's embarrassing. I should have remembered how to spell that. 😕

So anyway...

I did a lot of hard-ass drugs in the 80s. Let me relate one of my earliest experiences with lysergic acid diethylamide...

Friends and I were partying in my our Cincinnati apartment. We had on the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. Back then, Pink Floyd went with dropping acid like Nickleback goes today with puking. 😉 The music was playing low in the background, this mellow passage with no lyrics, like an easy-listening instrumental. Lots of alcohol was being consumed. Thick, pungent cannabis smoke wafted through the room. And as we are partying, I was oblivious to the fact that music was even on. I was laughing with my friends, laughing hard.

But then, at the end of this mellow musical interlude, there is the sound of clock chimes all going off at once. It's the beginning of the song, Time. Pink Floyd was famous for all the sound effects on their albums... which is why they were the perfect choice for people who were tripping their balls off. ⚡😎👍

So I personally went from being unaware of the music, not even cognizant that it was on... to suddenly hearing all those chimes going off.... this 👇

....and hearing that 👆🏻 created this magical moment. I swear to you, I saw the music. That can happen with LSD. Your senses get crossed. You feel sound. You taste colors. It's mind-blowing.

Crossed-senses is exactly what happened to me. Those bells went off and, I swear, I saw the chiming fly straight out of the dual stereo speakers, shoot across the apartment, and soar straight out the window!

I saw sound. 🎼🎵🎶 👀👀👀

Freaky, right? ⚡😁👍

So yeah, I ask again: do you think all that crazy partying maybe fucked up my brain?

At the time, as I went into my 30s in the 1990s, and started getting laid, and I stopped doing all those hard drugs, I didn't believe there were any lasting long-term detrimental effects. I thought all that mind-altering experimentation was just, you know, part of that whole fucked-up 1980s experience. Over. Done. Kinda like disco. And white bell-bottom pants.

It's only decades later that I'm now wondering about these things.

Because, you see, in autumn of 2019, at the age of 58, my bad brains started getting way worse.

Let me tell you what happened.

I began having incidents where I was sleepwalking (I thought). All I knew for certain was, I would go to sleep, wake up... and then people would tell me I did shit in the middle of the night that I had no recollection of doing. As I mentioned previously, my girlfriend Ruth passed away in September of 2019. Did I mention that? {See part one of I Have Bad Brains for more about Ruth.} A couple of months later, I met Demetrious, the man I will be honored and privileged to marry sometime in the not-too-distant-future. He and I fell in love fast. Really fast.

There was passion. 🔥

I am Blessed.

It was when I was spending nights with Demetrious that I finally clued into the fact I was sleepwalking.

Also at that same time... I had two twenty-somethings that were living with me in my small three-bedroom house. This young hetero couple became homeless. I knew the young dude from working with him and I allowed them to move in with me, just one week before Ruth died. Then, after Ruth passed very unexpectedly, I allowed this young couple to make Ruth's old bedroom their own. My young friends were Robert and Callie. I allowed them to live here rent-free.... which makes me wonder if that's why they didn't initially tell me what I did. 😲 (I'm kidding.)

One night, apparently, I walked into Robert and Callie's bedroom while they were sleeping and I got into bed with them. I was stark naked. 😲😲 😲 I don't remember it, but I'm certain they wouldn't lie about that.

Plus, it makes sense. I sleep in the nude most of the time. So yeah. Apparently, one night, I went to sleep in my own bedroom, and then in my sleep, I got up and went into their bedroom to get in bed with them. With a glazed smile on my face, I said, "HI!"

Whoops! My bad!!! 🤷🏻‍♂️

It's astonishingly disconcerting to have people tell you that you did stuff... and you have utterly no recollection of doing it. I still find it hard to believe. What did they even fucking think when I slipped naked into their bed? Did they have a clue I was walking in my sleep, or did they just figure, 'well, I guess he's charging us 'rent' after all'? 🤣

Was there physical contact that night? How long did I stay in bed with them? A few minutes? An hour? I never knew it even happened. From the perspective of my bad brain, I went to sleep in my bed... and woke up in my bed. Nothing unusual at all! No recollection of nighttime wanderings. I didn't ask, obviously, when weeks later they told me about the incident, but I have so many questions. Did the three of us all just snuggle most of the night? If so, was I behind him, behind her, or in the middle? (They were both super hot, so honestly, you know, I wish I could remember that! 😂🤣)

The mind boggles! This shit is nuts!

Is this how Moon Knight feels? (*Comic book geek joke.*)

I'm now thinking the most likely explanation is that Robert and Callie just thought I was drunk. We were drinking a lot in the weeks after Ruth passed, more than I had personally drunk in years. In retrospect— I'm totally muzzy on details, but I guess the night it happened was probably a night Robert, Callie, and I were drinking and they just wrote it off as me being in black-out when I snuck into their bed?

Hell, maybe that is what happened!

I don't know.

Then, yet another discombobulating incident: there was that one morning when I woke up to see in the mirror that I had this terrible black eye. Check it! 👇

{ Hm. 🤔🤔 That's a fascinating 'coincidence' I'm only discovering just now as I write this! It was exactly one year after I got that black eye in my sleep that I asked Demetrious to marry me. Only realizing that as I pull up the pic to post it here and I take look at the date.}

Yet another time, actually before the incident with the black eye, I hurt the ribs on my left side one night. I just woke up one morning in excruciating pain. I had no idea how I hurt myself.

Was I banging into shit while I was sleepwalking? Okay, I guess that explains the injuries... but then, what? Banging into shit hard enough to cause pain didn't wake me up? 💥 WTF?!? 🤯🤯🤯

Mind-boggling.

So eventually, just before Memorial Day 2020, (after Demetrious had moved in with me in March)... I collapsed one afternoon in our bedroom. I had seizures, aspirated into my lungs (contracting pneumonia as a result), and then nearly died. Demetrious saved my life. Literally. If not for him, I would have drowned in my own fluids. He called 911, which brought the paramedics here so they could rush me to the emergency room for treatment. Then I spent the next nine days in the ICU.

Most of that time is lost to me. I do have a vivid recollection though of the first time I woke up in the hospital after collapsing at home. I was in my bedroom... blackness... and then I was in the hospital and I was strapped down. I had/have never been restrained like that before. (I'm not into bondage.🤷🏻‍♂️) My wrists and ankles were attached to the bedrails. I started yanking, trying madly to free my hands, and I couldn't budge. That made me fucking furious. I was out-of-my-mind-enraged! In the moderate-sized city where I live in central Indiana, there are two hospitals. Since I was dying when the paramedics arrived at my house, they took me to the closest of the two. (Yay, team!) Days later, when I woke up in that angered state, I was completely pissed that the doctors and nurses wouldn't free my hands and therefore I demanded that I be transferred to the other hospital here in town.

I needed those restraints off my limbs! It was like the kind of rage Bruce Banner must feel, only I didn't have the gamma-ray-infusion to work it to my advantage so I could break free. (*Second comic book geek joke.*)

That's pretty much all I remember.

Months later, I had a follow-up visit with the neurologist who attended to me during my ordeal. He told me that at one point during my delirium, I was angry at Doctor Phil!

Like, what?!?!?!?!

I was raging at Doctor Phil!?!?!

Well, that seems perfectly natural.

So was I out of my mind or not?

🤔🤔🤔

Exhibit C (in the Case for me having Bad Brains)...

'C' Stands for Seizures.

When I finally recovered, I was told I had an "inflamed brain." From that point on, I started having occasional seizures. I was then put on the meds I take twice a day to prevent my mental malfunctions.

An argument could be made that it was bad brains that landed me in the hospital in the first place. 😕 I hate to admit that, but that's just Keeping It Real. Before my collapse, I had no health insurance. So when I started 'sleepwalking,' I didn't do anything about it. It took me landing in the ICU before I finally obtained health insurance, a.k.a. the American 'right' to see a doctor if you're sick. (Don't get me started or I'll need to post this as a rant in the Swamp. 😠)

In some ways, my condition is easy. I mean, it's not like a heart attack or something brutal. There is utterly no pain. I just don't remember anything. Ever. From my perspective, I lose consciousness. then lose time, and then I wake up. And then people tell me I did shit I can't recall.

Recently, Demetrious and I went on a dream vacation to Arizona to visit my oldest and dearest friend, and his extraordinary wife. This is my BFF who has never failed me (and who has put up with my horseshit) since high school. Well, before D & I left, I packed my anti-seizure pills (a.k.a. as my "anti-fall-on-my-ass pills") in our luggage. And then, wouldn't you know it? Our luggage got fucked up on the flight. It didn't arrive until a full day after we set down in Pheonix. So I didn't have my pills for a day... and that resulted in me having a seizure the first day of our desert vacation. (I also wonder if maybe the elevation during the flight somehow affected my brain?)

I freaking love Mexican food. And imagine it! There my baby and I were, in Arizona, 🌞 where the Mexican food must be primo! So after our long flight, we ordered food. When it was delivered later to my friend's house, I was told that I "tore it up." I have utterly no recollection of that meal, however. Just my luck— the only Mexican chow I had while in Arizona and I can't remember it! 😕

It was really that early-summer trip that caused me to finally, definitively realize the fallacies of my earlier assumptions/deductions. As it turns out, it seems my problem is not exactly sleepwalking after all. Go figure! It's more like I go from a normal state of consciousness into this quasi-conscious state where I can still walk, and talk (kinda), but I'm dazed, glazed, not completely there. It's not sleeping. It's some other kind of altered consciousness. Incomplete awareness.

And while it's happening, no memories are being recorded.

Day one in Arizona: My Perspective— we took a quick nap before our Mexican food arrived. I was hungry when I laid down in the guest bedroom with D....... and I then woke up full. I knew immediately something was wrong. Why was my stomach full? I deduced I had another one. And then my loved ones confirmed that, yes, I did indeed have a seizure.

I've got fucked-up brains.

Recently, as I was writing about these same experiences on Facebook, a friend on Facebook put a name to what I experience at various times, especially this summer of 2021. My friend called it "breakthrough seizures." Interesting and accurate description, IMO. I will take my meds twice a day (noon and midnight), and they mostly do the trick. No seizures. They control the problem. But occasionally I still have a seizure while I'm on these meds. And I don't know why. I'm still so very, very confused about my condition, mostly because my old/first neurologist was fucking horrible at answering my questions. He wouldn't give me much of his time when I went to see him in a follow-up visit about two months ago.

Maybe he's a Doctor Phil fan and I offended him?

🤷🏻‍♂️

So I'm now in the middle of a complicated process of getting a new brain doctor, someone who hopefully will answer the long list of questions I'm compiling. I'm still desperately trying to deduce what the catalysts for these breakthrough seizures are. But it's just too complicated, because I have too many possible suspects. Stress? Exhaustion? Med interactions? (I also have cancer.) Too much sugar? (I'm a Coke and Sprite addict who is trying to drink fewer sodas and more water... and finding that very hard.) Eye strain from writing on my computer for hours? Getting way overheated? Dehydration? An occasional puff of marijuana? I even considered the flashing lights from playing a computer game on my cellphone. (One of the few questions my old neurologist answered was that one about game lights. He said, basically, 'no, that's not it.') Over the last year, I have wondered about all those things being possible catalysts for these breakthrough seizures.

The biggest bitch about going brain-tilt is the memory loss. Did I mention that already?

I forget things. And what's wicked unnerving is I don't know what I've forgotten until some awkward moment. Old movies... gone. Not the ones I've seen dozens of times, but the ones I've only seen once or twice. Certain songs... gone. Personal experiences? 🤣 Tattered and full of holes.

A couple of nights ago, I got into a spontaneous debate on the phone with my BFF and it took an ugly turn. He and I are on different ends of the political spectrum. I'm more of a John Adams guy; I think government is a highly effective and useful tool, if utilized properly. He's absolutely Jeffersonian; he's all about minimal government and maximum freedom. We both have always enjoyed a lively debate.

Intellectually, he challenges me. I love that!

So during our discussion on the phone, I made a comment about government. He said, "Back up that contention. Give me an example." I have dozens of points pertinent to this topic! 😁👍 No problem! I instantly go to the memory-drawer in my brain where those many, many examples are kept, and guess what? Completely empty! Not a single example I can lay my fingers on.

😦

I wasn't aware that particular memory-file was empty until I went to access it! That is how this always happens to me. I'll unconsciously be like, "I know this. I got this." But when I then go immediately to where that mental information is kept, it's void. Blank. Nada.

I have fucked-up brains.

Eventually, all that information about government slowly gurgled back up into my consciousness, but it surfaced hours later. In the moment when I needed it and fully expected it to be there available to me, it was gone.

I had a couple more points I planned to make right here, but I forgot what they are. 🤷🏻‍♂️

So anyway... Hi! ⚡😎✋🏻 It's a pleasure to 'meet' you! Thanks so much for reading this drivel! I still have one more addendum on this topic (attached below 👇).

I almost used, "Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself" as the title for this series, but I didn't want you to mistakenly think I was the devil.

Or Mic Jagger.

⚡⚡ It's my superhero identity that is Lightning Bolt. ⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡ I'll tell you that origin story another day.

My real name is William Markly O'Neal. All the short stories and poems I've had published heretofore in various magazines are under my real name. It was only writing this series about my bad brains that I decided to assume a nom de plume going forward here on Vocal. I'm trying to create a sarcastic, comedic persona here. What'd'ya think? Is that a fucked-up idea or what? ⚡😁👍

I only found Vocal about a month ago and I love it. I'm hopeful I can develop an audience here. If you enjoyed reading this, please hit that LIKE button and/or subscribe to me. Tell your friends. Phone your neighbors. I'd be enormously grateful. Any tips you could send me would also be beyond crazy fantastic. I appreciate your support!

I hope I provided a chuckle or two. May Blessings Flow to You and Yours today.

🙏🏻

Finally, there's the 3rd part to this series. 👇

MORE ABOUT ME: I’m sixty-years old. As mentioned, about a year ago, I started suffering from seizures. I haven’t worked since, and I can no longer drive. I have meds that mostly protect my brain from these assaults, but every so often, without warning, I’ll have a ‘breakthrough seizure’… and they wreak havoc on my memory. Since I can’t work and haven’t been able to secure disability, I currently have no income, other than the dribbles from Vocal. If you are inclined to tip or make a pledge to me, I would be eternally grateful… and I will do my best to entertain!

Thank you kindly for your support!

___________Bolt ⚡