Drug Me

The Hard Streets of Moss Beach

My first playwriting experience was in high school at age 17 when I wrote a one-act called “Drug Me.” In it, I talked about being on psychiatric drugs for bipolar disorder, diagnosed the year before. The cast comprised my parents, my girlfriend, my psychiatrist, and me. In it, there was a manic episode of the Wu-Tang Clan. Other students acted and directed, but in my case, the play was about my personal life, not something common at our School of the Arts. The playwriting teacher Karl, said something like, “autobiographical is not what we do here.” My play was mostly about the effects of the psychiatric drugs I had been prescribed because of my “mental illness.” It had too much energy, passion, feeling, yelling, and rapping—typical of many San Francisco high schoolers. I was filled with teenage rage, pretty much at everything: our country, politics, teachers, schools, and society. I was filled with religious fever, I was the next messiah in a long line of people who had created religions; this was an evolution of our species. Thousands of years ago, the holy land was in the Middle East, and in 2001 the holy land was the Bay Area. I wrote raps and poems about it, called “Madness,” highlighting being 5150ed. Today, twenty-three years later, I am still writing about it. Still faced with the same issues of being someone filled with creative energy who wants to be medicated by our system of psychiatry.

This week I just got out of surgery for my right ankle. I had never been under so much anesthesia, including a nerve block catheter and something new to my system: opioids. Even when I broke my ankle—before this week’s surgery—I avoided opioids at all costs. I stuck to over-the-counter for five days, but surgery wasn’t until 11 days after my fall. After 11 days with a triple-fractured ankle, I was going to need potent narcotics. On the fifth day at five a.m., the pain was unbearable, and the counter was not holding. I went to narco. And with my first dose, I felt numb and high. Euphoric. I see why people get hooked on this stuff and why there is a thing called the “opioid epidemic.” The pain was bad enough that I kept taking it every six hours. But with my aversion to psychiatry meds, I was always pushing for seven or eight hours between doses, even from the beginning. With my broken ankle, I had a little schedule and would spend my days doped out on the couch. The dope was so strong that it put me right to sleep, barely breathing. Anything to avoid the pain. 

The only other med I take is Risperdal for mania, a psychiatric drug that I’ve used for decades with much success. The drug limits me to about 60 percent of my emotional range and feelings and makes me unfocused. I sleep like twelve hours a day, easily gain weight, and have a reduced sex drive. Other than those drawbacks, Risperdal has kept me out of the psych ward. I’ve had twelve trips to the mental hospital, but I’ve never had to go when I’ve had enough Risperdal, hence why I keep taking it year after year.

However, when mixed with the Narco something weird happened. After surgery and once the catheter was out, the Narco started back. The worst pain for me is at night, so I use painkillers as a sleep aid. Nighttime is also when I take Risperdal and the two drugs conflict. For some reason Narco and Risperdal together in my system make it harder to fall asleep, like there’s a toxic chemical reaction. I’ve taken Risperdal for years to avoid the mental hospital, and now I take Narco for the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. So now, which one do I take? The physical discomfort of a broken leg is having me leaning toward Narco, at least for now. I want to stop Risperdal, but here’s the catch: mania. 

I have a track record of dropping my meds, hating being medicated, limited, feeling like a vegetable, and nearly flunking out of high school because I was drooling on my desk. I don’t want to feel like the meds and the condition are all I am. And yet when I try to get off meds, I might spend a couple of months in Canada or France, flying places for romance or speaking engagements. Feeling like I’m on top of the world before I start to hallucinate. The walls come in, my girlfriend is god, and Black Thought is talking to me from the depths of the Universe. Well, this is my white idea. I’ve always dropped psych meds for no meds, but now I’m leaning toward a powerful narcotic for pain as a sleep aid that I don’t know how long I’ll be on. Also when manic, I’m always running.

Do you know where the term “mania” comes from? In 1851 “Draptomania” was a diagnostic label given to escaped slaves, who ran from their slave masters to freedom.

What am I running from when I have a manic episode? I’m running from a system that medicated my voice and creative expression as a teenager. I’m running from a world where I have to medicate my emotions because it’s not ok to have rage. I’m running from the controls that my parents, my teachers, my doctors, and my politicians put in place as a system of authority. I’m running from the feeling of being out of control, feeling the pressure of my soul against my skin. The feeling that this reality is connected but there is no separation or breathing room to be alone. All my thoughts are one with the universe. We are all God. Existence is only a dream within a dream. 

But with a broken leg, I’m not leaving the house. You have to come to me to get your fix. I’m not getting on any plane with a credit card, a passport, and a map of the world. I’m sitting at home with my pain, figuring out what is the best hip-hop intro that I can play on repeat to make me cry today. Asking what are the things I can do with my body. Today I was finally able to pull out my computer and write after a week of recovery.

I am currently with my parents at their home in Moss Beach. They have been through all my manic episodes. Have flown me back from other countries and have taken me to the hospital. Now I am under their care. A child once again. I rode my knee scooter in the driveway like it was my first bike with training wheels—the same slab of concrete, that good old Moss Beach. 

I have learned to be open and honest with my parents. We make decisions as a team, even though I’m a grown man. The day after surgery, I felt the urge to drop the Risperdal and almost did. The intensity of the surgery, anesthesia, and feeling like Risperdal was going to interfere with my pain meds—and it did. My mom and dad visited me in bed. They were helping me with the pain meds. They left Risperdal up to me. I didn’t want to take it because it conflicted with the pain meds, but I felt the pressure of dropping my meds as a betrayal of their trust. They left me in my room, and then I called my dad back. I said I wanted to drop Risperdal and I was having thoughts of doing it; could he help me take it?

My whole adolescent life my dad helped, forced, or coerced me into taking my meds. He did it to try to protect me because this was a doctor’s order. There was a time when at nineteen and still living with them I didn’t want to be on meds anymore. My mom and dad proceeded to tell me I was going manic, and I listened, I got back on the meds.

As an adult, they can’t see if I take my meds or not. They can’t see my communication with my doctor. But as a grown-ass man, I am living under their house in recovery. The stigma of being another guy “off his meds,” or wanting to not take meds, is a painfully tired scenario we have played out as a family many times—my teens, my twenties, and into my thirties were all decades that had relapses of me not wanting to be mediated anymore. All my relatives and friends encourage me to take my meds. Even though, just like any addition, there is a period of withdrawal. 

During my three-to-six-month periods of being off my meds, I’ve done some reckless things and made some amazing art. I felt both my true potential and my lowest point. Sometimes I ended up in jail or living on the streets.

I’ve had a taste of how Hard These Streets of Moss Beach can be when you can’t come home to live with mom and dad. I want to do everything I can to maintain this balance even in a time of recovery, even at a time when I’m detoxing from heavy narcotics, feeling the pain of a reconstructed ankle with bolts and plates on it. Even in this time of heaviness, I appreciate that I can come home.

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