it's the dilantin, aka phenytoin, dubbed a miracle drug long ago, in a time when such dubbings were uncommon. I hated it when I was 17. Even stopped taking it a couple times, and, I might add, for a good long while each time. The thought of dependance on a medication apalled me. But eventually, it and I became reluctant companions. Now I want nothing else. I don't mean I can't get enough of it; no, no, not that at all. I mean, don't go switching me to whatever happens to be the drug du jour; the one made by whichever pharmaceutical company just recently invested a billion in marketing and handsome, persuasive salesmen. That is specifically not the drug I want.
It's the dilantin making me sleepy, all day, everyday. And I invited it. After my seizure last month, I cranked my dose (with my neurologist's approval, of course) from 400 to 530 per day. At that dose as my blood level peaked, about three hours after I swallowed the orange-banded white capsules, I enjoyed a little double vision (not the song), and suffered some conflagatory itchiness, which had initially subsided between peaks for the first couple days on the new dose. But soon, I was excruciatingly itchy 24/7.
And even that was fine. You don't know the disappointment I felt that afternoon when I woke and realized—despite my sensible actions and my success keeping in my stomach all the additional dilantin I took—that I'd had another seizure right there in my bed, and that it had dislocated my left shoulder. What a pain. Not just literally, but figuratively, too; I had gone ten months without a seizure, and would soon have been able to request a surgical repair of the shoulder which has been unstable since I woke on my kitchen floor two years ago. Any side effect of a familiar medication is preferable to waking lost and helpless inside my own mind.
so, you see, the dilantin-induced itching, double vision, and weariness is a bargain to keep at bay this overpowering molester.. this Jacob's Angel who confronts me at the river's edge and is not overcome, as in the Septuagintal parable (and the U2 song), but prevails every time. I always wondered what that angel wanted, and what he would have done if he defeated Jacob. But I know, of course. He defeats me every time, and he goes away only to come again. His purpose is to be defeated. The angel needs to emancipate me from my confinement here upon the earth; he must stay until I grasp my fear and pin it down. Just as in the contortions of lovers, just as with Jacob and the man-angel who came to his tent and writhed with him all night, I must place my hand inside his thigh, I must grab his heel, I must learn from him the thing I have forever evaded...
I don't know what it is, I haven't learned it yet. Or maybe I'm just afraid to learn it, afraid to let the angel go, because he won't come again once I learn this lesson. It's like refusing to drop your defenses, after you know there is no need for them any more, because the defenses themselves have become fond and familiar. And you have become addicted to the fear... 'Where, where's my angel? Come back to me, come back... '
alcoholics are honest. The ones who have surrendered, that is. Most have very rough life experiences, some horrendous. But once they figure out that a spiritual life leads to where they have always been trying to go, they just do it. (I work at a detox with a dozen co-workers who are each living their truth as best they can, and among sixty to eighty patients who are each trying, as best they can. Amazing.)
I, on the other hand, am dishonest; evading my truth, stubbornly refusing to surrender to reality, and ignoring the path which I have always known leads exactly to the place I have to go. I am pretending I'm still lost when I am not. I'm afraid to be responsible, afraid to take care of myself, and afraid when dawn comes to ask for a blessing and let my weary angel go.
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