Night News

"Night News"

The window in the hotel room is opened.

I'm trying to get some sleep but the cold draft is keeping me up.

Could my mother's departed spirit be opening the window?

I'll close it to awaken from the dream.

Do I dream about my poetry?

Or do I write my poetry about dreams?

Am I dreaming?

I awaken to the chiming in of NPR radio.

The subject is mundane etiquette about the consistency of frozen peas.

This topic is of little interest to me.

I am thinking about my last hospitalization.

When they gave me the wrong medication.

Confused my medication with a similarly spelled addictive stimulant.

A totally different drug.

While taking me off the stimulant.

I had my first and only seizure in my life.

I was being loaded up with a cocktail of psychiatric medication.

The head doctor on 3 North didn't confer with my outpatient doctor to check.

The inpatient doctor put me back on the same addictive substance.

She thought I had the seizure because of withdrawal.

Not realizing the newly added drug may have been at fault.

A rough remedy that made me think my doctors needed remedial reading.

Which is exactly what the wrongly prescribed medication remedies.

I expressed this fact to my outpatient social worker.

She completely ignored it.

An observant doctor at a new program I was attending brought the error to her attention.

At that point I was becoming addicted to the medication.

She withdrew me from it.

I had been on 3 North, a drug and alcohol rehab unit.

Which is a long term unit where all the outpatients are referred.

This reminded me of my drug days in the sixties.

When Aby and the hippy heads stuck rectal thermometers up their noses.

They were called "boogie sticks."

A great contributor, along with his brothers, to my introduction to mental illness.



By Jonathan Billet 05/10/14.  His First Birthday In The 60's.