The abyss opens for…

My Death Throes

Flint & Steel Two-Part Writing Challenge

I am fully immunized from any variant of Covid-19 so far identified. Four vaccines and counting. I had not one iota of reaction to any of these shots, but did have a scare when, after visiting us over New Year’s, my daughter announced that not only had she been exposed to the Delta variant, she felt worse than she had ever felt before in her life.

She was double-vaccinated, too, so let the conspiracy-talk begin.

I worried about her and us, and my worry led me to try some alternative means to combat my own fears and my increasing bouts of insomnia. So, instead of my usual all-CBD tincture at night, I thought in my addled brain that a Delta-8 variant would give me a better chance to sleep, and a calmer notion of how to manage my anxiety and fear for my daughter’s health.

Soon, she passed the worst part of the virus (with the help of nurturing Italian food her boyfriend so lovingly prepared; it’s amazing what an Alfredo sauce can do for your ability to fight back from 102-degree fever!). My Delta-8, though took me far past her recovery, and past a bit of common sense.

The first night, I took the whole dropper full. The (how do I describe this accurately without sounding too condescending and old?) young dopehead salesperson told me that a dropper-and-a-half would be his recommended dosage.

And not that I am any model for that old Steppenwolf song from Easy Rider, but in my day I did “smoke a lot of dope.” It’s good to look at an old photo of yourself, even if it’s developed only in your memory, but try not to believe the nostalgic hype of who you once were.

I woke up in the middle of that night so dizzy from my new tincture that I wondered if I weren’t accompanying Peter Fonda through some old graveyard. For I saw the spirit or image of Owen, my best friend who passed over four years ago. Owen was not only my best male confidante, he was also the first person I’ve ever watched die. A privilege, true; a grief wound, though, that keeps on throbbing.

I made it though the graveyard — though as in any dream, it morphed into something more eternally fun. Was it a record store? — and the following morning, vowed to cut back on my tincture, a vow I kept over the next three weeks, ever approaching the end of the bottle.

Here’s the thing about our vows: they’re like our fears, stunningly able to be overcome when invulnerability, like paranoia, strikes deep.

And speaking of paranoia…I wondered at the time when Delta-8 became available even here in Lindsey Graham-land if there was anything strange or synchronous about a hemp + THC product bearing the same name as a highly contagious virus. While it felt strange to tell other people that I was taking a nightly dose of Delta, hardly anyone needed to hear the distinction, so I muddled along, believing, as only fools do, that I knew myself so well.

Here’s a question: when you reach the near end of your bottle of Delta-8 tincture, what should you do when the medicine dropper can’t vacuum up the remaining liquid:

A) Keep trying to get whatever the dropper can hold, over and over?

B) Pour it out into a more observable container and measure your dose?

C) Put the bottle to you lips and down it all?

Cue the Pusher Man.

Part Two forthcoming.