Attack of the Crank Bugs: Friend’s Meth Psychosis

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 5 Part 2

Warning: Descriptions of self harm.

My phone rang.

“Hey.” It was Richard. “Can you come over?” He sounded strained, almost panicked. “I need your help with something.”

“What’s wrong?” My voice was thick and I hoped he couldn’t tell that I’d been crying.

“Just…come over. I’ll tell you when you get here. Come over as quick as you can.”

My attention turned on a dime. A friend, a living friend, needed my help. Though I didn’t know why yet, someone needed me and I was happy to oblige. I was happy to distract myself from the grief of a friend’s death, be it by lending a helping hand, by the obliteration of a meth slam, or both.

I grabbed my stuff and flew out the door.

It was night by the time I got to Fort Lee. I tucked my head down into my coat collar to protect against a blustering wind as I walked up to Richard’s building with the set of keys he had given me.

“Hello?” I said as I entered, closing and locking the door behind me. Up scurried Wheezer. I bent down and scratched him absently. “Richard?”

“Yeah… in here.”

I could hear the shower as I walked up to the bathroom door. Speaking through the door, “You ok?”

“Yeah,” he said, pitching his voice over the shower. “Well…no. But, yeah…I’ve…I think I’m ok. I think, I think I’ve got him. Shit!…I think…I nearly, I think I nearly got it.”

Him?

I was mildly confused. “Ok, what do you need me to do?”

“Nothing…uh…just, just hang out. I think I’ve almost got him. I’ll be out shortly.”

“Ok.” Still confused, but also exhausted from crying and schlepping across the GWB to Fort Lee, I headed into his bedroom, turned on the TV, and lay down.

I was used to Richard’s ridiculously long showers by this point. They were annoying, especially if he decided to take one before we slammed, which was a nearly daily occurrence. I didn’t complain, though. After an hour, maybe two, we would slam and I would have nothing to complain about.

Sometimes his showers were welcome. Often we would be entertaining a third who would be more into me than Richard, but since Richard was the one with the Tina, the guest would try awkwardly to be equitable. When Richard hopped in the shower, the guest would relax and we would go at it knowing we had a good hour or more to ourselves.

At this moment it was only me. Even though he said he would be right out, I knew I had a good hour or so, so I let exhaustion send me into a hard sleep.

I am counselor Deanna Troi from Star Trek the Next Generation. I am an empath with a seat on the bridge next to the captain. I’m a good balance for the blond short-haired lesbian in charge of weapons. My purple leotard…

“John.”

…is skin tight, fitting perfectly around the curve of my breasts and hips. So much better…

“John!”

…than that cheerleader outfit they had me in for the first few episodes. But what is my accent? British or something? Where am I from?”

“JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN!!!”

I woke up, still Deanna Troi. “Huh? What?”

“JOHN!”

“What?” I yelled. Deanna…Troi?…wait, what? Who…

“Bring me…bring me a point.”

“What?” Who…where am…oh, Richard’s. Deanna Troi? Really?

“Just bring me a fucking point.”

The Enterprise faded away and the reality of Richard’s apartment came into focus. I could hear the shower still running.

A point? But he’s still in the shower. “Why do you need a point?”

“Just bring me a fucking point now!”

I walked over and opened the top drawer of his dresser. There with his socks and underwear was an open bag of fresh “points,” unused syringes with their hunter orange caps. I had bought them just the other day. In New York City, but not in New Jersey, it’s legal to buy a ten pack of syringes from a pharmacy without a prescription. Kind of puts the awkwardness of buying condoms to shame.

I grabbed one and walked to the bathroom. “Richard?”

He was naked, soaked, and clearly exhausted. He held the detachable shower head under his arm aiming the perpetual stream of water at his crotch. He seemed to be kneading and pinching his skin to the side of his genitals where his torso met his thigh.

This is not at all what I was expecting. “What are you doing? Do you need…”

“I think…I think I’ve almost got him. Maybe, maybe I don’t need the point. Here, help me.” Though tired and less panicked than a moment ago, he was frantically rolling and pinching his skin.

“Help you? With what?” I couldn’t make any sense of what I was looking at.

“Just come here. I’ve got…I’ve got a worm. A big fucking worm. Somehow,” rolling and pinching, “some fucking worm has infected me. It’s trying to get my balls. Come here.”

He slid down the wall till he was sitting in the tub, his legs hanging over the edge. I put the point, still capped, down on the sink and kneeled outside the tub, ready to help but not having the faintest clue with what.

“Here, see where my fingers are?” He was pulling at a pinched piece of skin. “I need you to pinch here.” I did. “No! Here. Pinch the skin right here. No, pinch it. PINCH IT DAMN IT!”

“Ok, ok don’t fucking yell at me!” I was trying to follow his directions, trying to keep calm, but I didn’t know what was happening.

“Well fucking pinch where I tell you to…here, just grab it and pinch. You’re not going to hurt me.”

I pinched. “Ok.”

“Good, now hold it there, keep him there. Hold it! Ok, if I can just, ok…um…hand me the point DON’T LET GO!!”

“I have to fucking let go if you want the point!”

“Fuck! He’s loose again, damn it. I’m going to lose a ball,” panic started to set in again, “he’s going to get my ball, shit, shit. Hand me the damn point.” I handed him the syringe.

“Ok now pinch here. Harder! Ok.” He uncapped the syringe with his teeth and spit the cap away. Then he started aiming like he was going after a tiny fish with a tiny spear.

“What are you going to…”

He stabbed, plunging the needle into the fold of skin I was pinching.

“Whoa! Fuck, Richard what are you doing?!”

“I have to kill this fucker,” stabbed again, “before he gets my ball…DON’T LET GO!!”

“Ok,” I pulled my hands out of the line of fire and held them up in surrender. “I’m not helping here.” I stood up making my hurting knees happy.

I didn’t know what this “worm” was but I knew I had to walk away before I made a confusing situation worse.

“What else can I do? Can I get you something? Do Something? What?”

“You know what you can do?” Richard stabbed one more time before putting the point on the side of the tub. He continued to pinch and roll. Any blood coming from the puncture wounds was immediately washed away by the water. “Go online and see what you can find about worms, parasites. Find out what the hell is happening to me and how I can kill this fucking thing.”

That I could do. That I was more than happy to do.

After a bit of Googling, I came back, knocked, and opened the door. The scene hadn’t changed.

“Yeah? What is it? What did you find?” He asked without looking up, running out of steam.

“Well, what little I found on parasitic worms didn’t seem to fit. Most of them are too small. You wouldn’t be able to catch them like you’re trying to do. And the ones that are big enough? You still wouldn’t be able to catch cause they would be in your stomach or intestines.”

“That must be it.”

“Well, no, I don’t think so. You can’t really pinch your intestines…”

“Listen! I have a fucking worm, all right!” Then, finally, he stopped. “Oh fuck it. Fuck it. You win!’ he yelled at his crotch. “You fucking win, take my ball.” He turned off the water and sat there for a moment exhausted.

I handed him a towel and a couple of Band-Aids as I helped him up out of the tub.

As he dried off, he said, “Let’s slam. Maybe I can poison the fucker.”

We did, and for a short time we were thankfully lost in the slam. He forgot about his worm and I forgot about the death of my friend. We toyed with inviting someone over, but then Richard felt the “worm” move again and jumped right back in the shower, leaving me high and alone in the bedroom.

Over the next couple days, back at my place, I did a more thorough search online for explanations for what was happening to Richard.

I found the answer. Story after story. Article after article. Accounts nearly if not completely identical to what Richard was experiencing.

Somatic psychosis.

Tactile hallucinations.

“Crank bugs.” The false perception of bugs crawling under the skin

Clearly I was not a stranger to the possibilities of hallucinations, but mine had always been visual and auditory. I didn’t know you could hallucinate the sense of touch. Also, my hallucinations happened in part because of sleep deprivation and, thankfully, had only happened a couple of times

Is this what Richard has been doing during his incredibly long showers? This whole time?

I printed out my discoveries. In the first half of my report I had the closest examples I could find of parasites along with explanations as to why it wasn’t a parasite: this one lives in the stomach; this one in the heart; this one is microscopic; he’s never been to Brazil.

In the second half I included articles on meth-induced psychosis, nearly if not perfectly identical to his experience, undeniable, irrefutable.

He sat at his computer and devoured the first half of my findings. “Ah, this…this could be it. Look at this fucker,” pointing to a picture of a parasitic worm with a triangular head. “I bet that’s what I got.”

“Well, no,” I said, anxious for him to get to the second half of my report. “That’s a magnification. That kind of worm you would barely be able to see…”

“Maybe it’s mutated,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Then he got to the second half of my report.

He read a couple of sentences, then tore the entire section from the staples and threw it in the garbage.

“No.” He looked directly at me and, in a tone of I’m only going to say this once, “This is not in my head.”

“Ok,” I said, disappointed, letting it drop.

I fully admit I wasn’t trying to get him to stop using. With Richard, I was slamming nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Every slam, to varying degrees, was as wonderful and magnificent as the first. Slamming was part of who I was now.

It was my daily bread.

What I wanted was for Richard to realize, like I had realized when I had woken up in the middle of a hallucination, that it wasn’t real, that it wasn’t happening, that nothing was actually wrong with him.

He would have none of it. His reality was reality. End of Story.

From then on, I tap danced around his delusions, walking a thin line between not reinforcing and not contradicting. I let him shower as long as he wanted, poking my head in periodically to let him know he’d been going for two, three, four, at one time eight hours, waiting, frustrated yet patient. No matter how long he showered, we would always slam when he was finally done.

By this point, though, I had been regularly taking hits from his bong without bothering to ask.

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