The Time I Watched A Clockwork Orange

My parents had a somewhat unusual policy when I was growing up. Essentially, they didn’t believe in censorship of any form. I was allowed to watch whatever TV shows or movies I wanted, and certainly delved into non young-adult books as a child.

And while I mostly cherished this policy, sometimes it backfired on me. I had to learn early on what I could and could NOT handle as a kid. I clearly remember watching Alien for the first time in primary school, and being terrified of an alien bursting from my chest. I was a big fan of some of the more supposedly violent, raunchy, or “adult” cartoons of the ’90s, including Beavis and Butthead, Dr. Katz, Ren and Stimpy, and South Park. Of course, I also watched these alongside more kid-friendly shows like Animaniacs, Bobby’s World, and Rocko’s Modern Life, so I guess it all balanced out.

By middle school, I had seen more “off limits” movies than anyone else I knew, and my references to The Godfather‘s bloody horse head or Silence of the Lambs‘ Hannibal Lecter were met with blank stares. I developed a reputation for being rather morbid, though I thought I was simply being cultured.

I do remember a period of time when I simply went to far. My dad had a collection of Stanley Kubrick movies, including titles like A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Lolita, and Full Metal Jacket. Though I had seen Kubrick before, and enjoyed Dr. Strangelove’s hand with a mind of its own, I was unprepared for the sheer violence in the rest of the batch.

I managed to make it through The Shining without too much trouble, and it remains one of my favorite horror movies. Lolita grossed me out, seeing as how I was in middle school at the time, and could barely process feelings about boys my own age, much less ones old enough to be my father. Full Metal Jacket scared the crap out of me, and I had nightmares about classmates shooting themselves for weeks. But none approached the psychological damage wrought by A Clockwork Orange, during which I saw a penis for the first time. It was middle school, and I was a shy thing. To see graphic gang rape and full frontal nudity, all to the tune of Singing in the Rain was too much for me. I sat there, slack-jawed but unable to turn away.

Before I had taken the tape off the shelf, I had asked my mom if she thought the movie was any good. “Oh, yes,” she replied. “Quite good.” “Do you think I should watch it, then?” I asked. She answered in the affirmative. Now whether you believe in censorship or not, this is still an intense movie to see alone as a 14-year-old. Drugs, rape, and violence paraded across the screen in a seemingly endless loop. Even when Alex is taken to be “rehabilitated,” the horror continues in that dark conditioning room.

I finished the movie, and sat stunned for a while. Then I came out of my room, thrust the tape in front of my mom, and asked what the hell she had been thinking. “Well, you asked me if it was good, and I told you! You didn’t have to watch it. That was your own decision.”

Oh, well. The no censorship rule benefitted me much more than it harmed me, so I still think it was a good policy. As it turned out, I could take a lot more as a kid than society expected or thought was “appropriate,” and I think it made me a better, more open-minded person today.

The Time My Nose Bled

My nose will bleed at the slightest provocation.

I don’t know whether the skin inside my nose is just unusually thin or WHAT, but the arrival of winter always means blood everywhere.

On my pillows when I wake up, flowing from my face in the shower, in each and every tissue — it simply doesn’t matter. Nose bleeds, like the honey badger, just don’t care.

But dry air is not my only enemy. Even a glancing blow to an area merely resembling my nose will cause it to start gushing like a waterfall. I was always that girl in gym class who somehow managed to get a bloody nose every damn time. I’ve been maimed by errant soccer balls, field hockey sticks, and footballs. If it has the capability to get airborn in the confines of a high school gym, then it’s hit me in the face. I’d sit on the bleachers, dribbling blood onto my gym outfit as the rest of the class continued playing tennis or handball or whatever the fuck they did. While my life essence pooled onto the waxed floor.

Heathens, the lot of them!

Anyway, I remember one particularly horrible nose bleed experience. It was several years ago, and my nose had decided to start leaking because, you know, why the hell not? I was just brushing my teeth before bed, minding my own business, when a lazy trail of blood splattered into the sink. Before I knew it, the trickle had turned into a flood, and I used half a roll of toilet paper just to stem the tide. The flow had finally stopped, but I’d be damned if I was going to go to sleep with a nostril full of clotted blood.

I gingerly tried to clean the area with warm water, but the damage was simply too severe. In the course of my probings with toilet paper, I noticed a red slug-like tendril poking shyly out of my nostril. In horror, I dabbed at it with my tissue, and gave an experimental yank.

It felt like I had just torn away a piece of my soul.

The rush of blood was instantaneous and terrifying. It was like someone had hooked a garden hose from hell to my nose, then thrown the taps open. Blood spattered everywhere, turning my pink girlish bathroom into a gruesome crime scene. I fumbled for the toilet paper, thrusting an entire roll against my face in a desperate effort to keep myself from bleeding out.

Apparently, that little strand of blood I had pulled on was the entire original clot. The tentacle was several inches long, and once removed, the blood flowed anew, and even worse than before.

The bleeding eventually slowed, and I decided to just go to bed, crusty bloody nostrils or not. My face was pale, and my hands were shaking, but I figured I wasn’t at actual risk of dying.

If you, like me, suffer from frequent nosebleeds, take note. A few sprays of Afrin (or its generic equivalent) will stop the blood in its tracks. The nasal spray constricts the blood vessels in your nose, which reduces swelling and seals off the ends of any ruptured vessels. But take care not to use it too often, or else risk the dreaded rebound congestion. But a spray once in a while to stop an out of control nosebleed should be fine.

UPDATE:

A physiological explanation from my mom:

FYI, the reason the nose bleeds so well is because of an area on the nasal septum called Kiesselbach’s Plexus. It is an area which is fed by the anterior ethmoid artery, the splenopalatine artery, the greater palatine artery and the septal branch of the labial artery. All these arterial branches come together to form the aforementioned Kiesselbach’s Plexus. They anastomose in this area, meaning they come together to form a sort of ball of arteries. When a nose bleed happens, this Plexus becomes involved and in some unfortunate folks this area is very friable, or easily torn. When a nosebleed comes into the ER, the very first thing to do is to give three squirts of Afrin x 5. Also filling a latex glove with ice in the fingers of it and placing it across the nasal septum helps to clot the blood. If the Afrin doesn’t work and the nose continues to bleed, then cautery of the Plexus happens – not a pleasant thing to participate in. Then the ENT or whoever sticks a balloon thingie up there and inflates it to keep constant pressure on the Plexus. Just thought you’d like to know. Usually this type of nosebleed involves young men for some unexplained reason.

The Time My School Was Banned From the Zoo

My sister and I went through the same public school system, though she is almost five years older than me. Occasionally, her reputation would precede my entry into the classroom. Mrs. Honesty, the teacher who took a hairball from me, disliked me from the moment we met because she didn’t like my sister. My English teacher freshman year of high school had the same preconceptions about me. I had to wonder WHY these teachers had a bad impression of my sister, though. She was a good student, and not in any way a troublemaker. At least her reputation benefited me in art class, where all my teachers presumed I’d be a drawing prodigy like my sister. Sadly, I was not, but I’d rather a teacher like me for no reason than hate me for no reason.

Anyway, our class took several field trips to different museums and farms in Southern Ohio. Yes, farms. In the Midwest, I guess there’s not much to show kids, so I would be shipped off regularly to a working farm and made to milk cows and collect eggs. I can still remember the uncomfortable squishy warmth of a cow’s udder, and the piss, piss sounds of the milk shooting into a metal pail.

We also visited the Cincinnati Zoo, which is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 zoos in the nation. But there were whispers of an “earlier unfortunate incident” that had gotten our school banned for a time, which was a tantalizingly vague explanation. As I soon found out, my sister’s class four years earlier had been the culprit.

Apparently, there was a group of hormone-fueled problem children in her grade. This group of rambunctious boys frequently caused trouble at school, and a field trip to the zoo was no exception. Several of them actually jumped into the ostrich pit at the Cincinnati Zoo, and chased the massive birds around while trying to ride them. Now, an ostrich can weigh well over 200 pounds, run up to 42 mph, is 6-9 feet tall, and males have penises eight inches in length. Ostriches also have powerful legs which can gore and kill a predator, such as an idiotic 16-year-old human male.

Luckily (or perhaps not), nobody was hurt during this display, but our school was asked to leave. At least future classes were allowed back, but given that ostriches can live 40-45 years, I’m betting they remember us. They remember, and they are plotting.

UPDATE:

I thought that our school had been banned permanently from the zoo since I couldn’t remember taking any field trips there, but a friend corrected me. Apparently I have a shitty memory. What else is new?

The Time I Ran From Dogs

I spent much of my youth being terrified by dogs of all types.

A tiny yappy Chihuahua, a fluffy lap dog, a big slobbery Great Dane, it didn’t matter. I was scared of them all, and convinced I’d one day be torn apart by canine teeth.

I’ve already mentioned how I was raped by a chocolate lab, but that was not the first nor the last time I’d be humiliated by man’s best friend.

Years before that incident, I was walking in a field with a friend when a Rottweiler appeared in the distance. It advanced towards us, drool flying as it ran in a full sprint. We soon realized that its intentions were not friendly, and we broke into a run ourselves. I swear I have never run so fast in my life, and my innate fear of dogs propelled me far past my friend. I figured the slower of us would be the first target, and I sped as if my life depended on it. But our pathetic flight was no match for a full-grown dog, and he caught up with us in moments. I could hear his ragged breath behind me, but my legs continued to pump with a mind of their own. Suddenly, the breathing noises stopped, and I glanced behind me, assuming my friend was being eaten. The dog had stopped suddenly, letting us escape. It turned out that we had been inadvertently trespassing, and the owner of the land had released his dog to chase us off his property. He sicced his dog on two 8-year-old girls. The dog had been trained to stop dead at the edge of the property, and it sat there, alternately panting and growling at us.

I also had another friend growing up whose house resembled a zoo more than a home. The house was a historical landmark, and so renovations were limited by law. It had central A/C, but was heated by a single wood-burning potbelly stove on the first floor. The children spent free time chopping wood and tending the fire, and sleepovers involved shivering on the upper floor under a foot-high stack of blankets. The family had three dogs, three cats, three rabbits, and two horses. The cats and dogs ran free using pet doors, the rabbits had a hutch larger than my bedroom, and the horses lived in a large pasture. The property itself was so large that each family member had their own small motorbike they used for doing chores during the day, and there was a full-sized teepee in the middle of the yard for relaxing. I learned to ride a Pocket Rocket bike myself, and promptly crashed it into a fence my first time out. The family was friends with the caretakers of neighboring Peterloon Estate, which meant us kids got to explore the 1200 acres of land, complete with gardens, fountains, and woods. I even got to go inside the 36-room and 21-bath mansion once, which was pretty spectacular. Outside, we’d get a group of 10 kids and play flashlight tag at dusk in a landscaped area straight out of The Secret Garden.

Anyway, the three dogs at this house were somewhat…temperamental. There were two large Siberian Huskies, one of which was semi-feral after living life mostly outdoors away from the family. Named Koshka, the Russian word for “cat,” the dog frequently snapped at and tackled me, growling in my face as streams of drool dripped onto my forehead. The other Husky, Ivan, was more tame, but would chase after our motorbikes and often launch himself in front of the wheels in a sort of bizarre suicidal game. I’d wrench the front wheel to the left or right, usually causing me to spin out or crash into a bush. I burned my leg more than once on the hot exhaust pipe when my bike fell to the ground, pinning me underneath. Ivan would gambol about my prone body, yelping in excitement at the smell of burning flesh.

Sophie, a Husky and German Shepherd mix, was the most friendly and tame of the three, and was the canine that finally got me to overcome my fear of dogs. She liked to play, but was never overtly aggressive, and her mismatched eyes would look into your own with an air of curiosity and intelligence. Plus she was super cute, and since she never once tried to rape or kill me, she got an “A” in my book.

The Time I Was Terrified of Roller Coasters

When I was young, few things could reduce me to pants-wetting terror like the prospect of a roller coaster. I had an irrational, animalistic fear towards the things, and thus my childhood passed with me watching from the other side of the fence while my friends whipped around in loops.

When I was still pretty little, perhaps seven years old, I went with my best friend at the time to King’s Island, Cincinnati’s premier (and pretty much only) amusement park. It’s apparently the largest one in the Midwest, and is best known for it’s fake Eiffel Tower and the world’s longest wooden roller coaster (“The Beast,” with a ride through the woods that lasts over four minutes).

In the children’s section of the park, there is miniature wooden roller coaster called “The Beastie” (now the Peanuts-themed “Woodstock Express”). This is not a large coaster by any means, and is designed for little kids. It’s highest drop is only 38 feet or so, and it never goes above 35 mph. However, I was terrified of it, and imagined that a ride on the rickety structure would result in multiple limb amputation. Somehow.

However, my friend this day wanted to ride it, and his older sister (or perhaps his aunt?) decided she was tired of my fearful antics. She said I’d get over this fear and ride the damn thing, come hell or high water. I begged desperately for a way out of this. She couldn’t really force me on it, could she? Finally, she gave me an out – if I could eat an entire Smurf cone while in the short line, I would be exempt from riding.

Now, Smurf cones were these blue and white swirled soft-serve monstrosities that they sold at the park. Each cone was topped with an ice cream tower that was about a foot tall, which meant that unless immediately inhaled, you’d be sporting dessert on your sneakers within minutes. Eating one in a line that lasted only a minute or two was a formidable challenge, but I was willing to take the risk.

She bought cones for me and my friend, and I set upon the ice cream with a ferocity usually reserved for lions bringing down antelope. Only halfway though, my stomach was beginning to protest loudly, and my hands were covered in moist sugar. But I kept on going, determined to not ride the accursed Beastie. Moments before we were to board the cars, I triumphantly held up my empty hands.

My friend and his sister got on the train, and I happily waved them goodbye. My face and chin were smeared with blue syrup up to my eyes, but I was happy and proud. I had done it! I had avoided the roller coaster!

Seconds later, I projectile vomited pale blue slurry all over the waiting area and track. But the cars had already left, so I was safe! The vomiting was totally worth it.

The Time My Brother Passed Out In High School

My brother has been mentioned here a few times before, namely when he tortured me with Shakespeare and grew a second asshole.

A talented actor and writer, my brother also has some…idiosyncrasies. One of which is his unfortunate tendency to pass out at the sight of blood. Or even when thinking about blood. Or when just thinking about bodily functions in general. For someone with such a vivid imagination, this means that even a passing mention of a horrific accident or disease could send him reeling straight towards the ground.

Despite the frequency of his fainting, I’ve never actually seen him do it in person. I’ve seen him close, pale and clammy, but never completely unconscious on the floor. But I’ve heard the stories, one of which I’d like to share with you all, dear readers.

This was back when he was in high school, perhaps sophomore or junior year. He was living life as only a young man in late 1980’s Florida could, which meant that he had one of the most glorious mullets that I’ve ever seen. Majestic wavy black locks flowed over the back of his head, so it’s safe to say that he was stylin’ back then.

Anyway, one day, he was in health class, or perhaps a biology class. Regardless, Hepatitis was the subject under discussion, and the teacher began describing some of the symptoms. Orange urine, yellow jaundiced eyes, clay-colored stools, male breast development. My brother’s mind went into overdrive, imagining himself as a bitch-titted man with yellow skin who pissed Sunkist and shat rocks. The thought of liver disease alone was enough to make him nauseous and light-headed, and he stumbled from his desk and bolted out the door. The idea was to get to the bathroom in case he vomited, but he never made it that far.

Instead he woke up in the hallway, with people stepping over him on their way to their next class. He had collapsed only steps outside the classroom door, and worst of all, he had peed himself. Student gingerly crept by in an effort to avoid the puddle of urine spreading across the linoleum.

I think it’s a testament to how cool my brother must have been back then since he SURVIVED the remainder of his high school career without being a social pariah. Had that been me, the peeing nicknames would have followed me all the way into adulthood.

The Time I Ate PowerBars for a Week

Many years ago, my parents headed out to Arizona for some sort of pharmaceutical-sponsored conference.

Back before legislation was passed that made this sort of spending illegal, pharma companies would lavish attention and dollars attracting doctors to their events, all in the hopes that the MDs would think of their little pill in the future. Though obviously very ethically questionable, my dad, and by extension his family, got to do some pretty sweet shit.

Riverboat cruises, special fireworks viewing areas, free dinners – the list goes on.

Anyway, at some point, he and my mom ventured into the desert to learn about some new inhaler, and hang out at a resort free of charge. We children were left behind to sulk and whine. My sister and I were assigned a babysitter we had never met before. Eerily thin with a slightly manic grin, she looked like a jogger who had taken a wrong turn and had thus been running for eternity. She was perky to the point of annoyance, and lived life as if she were hosting a children’s show.

My parents waved goodbye, and almost immediately, this woman’s dog made an appearance. Now, she had been forbidden to bring her dog since my brother was deathly allergic, but her corgi made itself at home. Though my brother didn’t live with us at the time, he couldn’t stay in any house where a dog had been in the past five years or so. The dog pranced around and terrorized the cat (who later melted), slobbering on all our furniture and gnawing on our shoes.

The woman then revealed that she sustained herself on a diet of PowerBars, and expected us to do the same. The tar-like bar was jam-packed with protein, and lord only knows what else. Possibly laxatives given its effect on my digestive system. Our new babysitter placed a single bar on a plate, then handed my sister and I each a fork and knife. Our first sullen meal was eaten in silence, and I cut up my bar into tiny chunks before swirling them around the plate. I pointedly made sure they never came near my mouth. But I eventually succumbed, and choked it down piece by piece. The taste was horrid, and the bar did nothing to sate my hunger. But I did have to admit that after dinner clean-up was considerably easier.

PowerBars became our breakfasts and dinners, and I gorged myself in the school cafeteria for lunch. The woman taking care of us apparently sustained herself just fine on PowerBars, though I would not be surprised to hear she used cocaine as an appetizer. After a few days of this, there was a Fire Sale going on in my ass. Signs must have been posted on my butt cheeks, declaring that, “Everything! Must! Go!” My sphincter had never been so void of contents, before or since.

By the time my parents finally returned, our house had been ransacked by the dog, and my sister and I had the pallor of nutritional deficiency. The woman was fired, never to be seen again, but I have not been able to eat an energy bar since that day. The thought alone is enough to turn my stomach.

The Time I Played Taboo In College

I lived in an aging dorm my freshman year of college. It was twelve stories tall, and I lived on the 11th floor, which had a large balcony that was closed off forever since some unfortunate student had flung himself over the edge a decade before. But a service door had been accidentally left open, so we would regularly go up to the roof, which had no barriers whatsoever, and was nothing but a slick sheet of ice come winter. I almost slid off that roof a handful of times, but always managed to stop myself just inches before tumbling off the side of the building.

Anyway, there was a girl on my floor who I’ll call “Rebecca.” Rebecca was something of an odd duck. A recent transfer from another school, she was actually in her sophomore year, and wore fluorescent track pants every single day. She was a nice girl, though I was unnerved to discover that she watched Silence of the Lambs each night before going to bed. She said the movie soothed her, and she liked falling asleep to the sounds of Hannibal Lecter whispering, “Clariiiiice…”

I enjoyed making her uncomfortable by refusing to leave the communal bathroom whenever she had to poop. She couldn’t stand to go when there was anyone else in there, so I’d just sit there and try and wait her out. This resulted in her suffering from regular constipation.

I’m kind of an asshole.

Anyway, since I went to the opposite of a party school, a rousing evening in our dorm would involve the board game Taboo. If you’ve never played, it’s a word guessing game played between two teams. According to Wikipedia, “The object of the game is for a player to have his/her partner(s) guess the word on his/her card without using the word itself or five additional words listed on the card.” So if you had the word “Santa Claus” on your card, you’d have to get your team to guess the word without using words like “reindeer,” “presents,” “Christmas,” “sled,” etc.

But whenever Rebecca played this game with us, the night would take a turn for the depressing. No matter what the word, her description of it would always hearken back to the Holocaust. Her explanation of “Santa Claus” would probably go something like, “This mythical figure is a symbol of a holiday that the Jews killed during the Holocaust never celebrated.”

The word “Volkswagen” would be, “A vehicle made by the Nazis during the Holocaust.” “Oven” might be, “The Jews were cooked in these.” The lighthearted game would always instantly turn incredibly dark and uncomfortable. And yet we pressed on, not wanting to ban Rebecca from our floor activities, but terribly depressed all the same.

She later yelled at me for driving a Volkswagen Beetle, noting that it had been built on the shoulders of Jewish slaves. Because of the game of Taboo and Rebecca, I now saw reflections of the Holocaust in all manner of everyday objects. This is apparently how she lived her entire life, shrouded in a tragedy a generation and ocean away. Perhaps this is why she found solace in Silence of the Lambs? Maybe to her, it seemed positively upbeat compared to Schindler’s List.

The Time I Thought My Heater Was Alive

When I was young, I attributed human qualities to nearly all inanimate objects. My childhood baby blanket had feelings, as did all my stuffed animals. I felt bad about putting hot things on counters, thinking that the surface must get very annoyed. My entire world was animistic, and I spent a good portion of each day trying to appease all these different objects.

Though there were several demanding items in our house, the harshest mistress was the heating system. We lived in a house with an old-fashioned water heater system, and each room along the route was warmed by hot water passing through a narrow pipe along the baseboard. My and my sister’s rooms were at the very end of a long and torturous route, so the water was usually no more than lukewarm by the time it got to us. As a result, I was freezing all winter without a space heater.

However, despite the chilly water passing through our pipes, the heaters still made an ungodly racket each and every night. Bubbles caught in the the pipe would burst and crack, and with the metal chamber around the pipe, the noise echoed until it sounded like angry gnomes were kicking the wall hundreds of times per night. I was a light sleeper, and all these knocks and bangs would keep me up most of the night.

I didn’t know the mechanism of the sounds, so I figured the heater was keeping me awake in order to punish me. “What do I need to do?” I’d whisper. “How can I make you stop?” After a week or so of sleepless nights, I would get desperate and start talking to the heaters.

I’d kneel down on the floor in my pajamas, and tap on the heater, and speak to it in soothing tones. “There, there,” I’d murmur, “There’s no need to get so upset.”

I eventually somehow got it into my head that the heater was making so much noise because I wasn’t paying enough attention to it during the day. That’s it — it was just lonely! So I’d crouch down and pet the heater each day, stoking it softly up to 100 times, begging it to please please PLEASE be quiet that night.

My tender ministrations were rarely rewarded, and I’d occasionally cry and scream at the heater, telling it that it was an ungrateful bitch. But with every burst of loud clanging, I’d be on my knees, apologizing and petting it, telling it that I didn’t mean it, and to please just settle down.

I frequently slept in the living room where we had a fish tank that provided enough white noise to cover the worst of the banging noises. This whole process repeated itself every winter for a few years, until I finally got it into my head that the heater was not, in fact, sentient.

If I had only discovered ear plugs years ago, this entire psychotic episode might never have happened.

The Time I Got Sick in Japan

Practically my entire time in Japan was spent in a haze of illness.

My theory is that my body simply had no resistance to all the new germs and bacteria floating in the air of this different country. I spent a good portion of my childhood fending off sickness after sickness, building up a fortress of memory cells that keep my coughs and colds to a minimum these days. But in Japan, all bets were off, and my body became an all-you-can-eat buffet for every virus for miles.

I got a bad cold every other week or so, which always lasted for at least five days. My supply of medicine was tiny, and getting more over-the-counter drugs required a 1.5 hour drive. Even when I got to the medicine aisle, I had no idea what to buy since everything was in Japanese. Though I had studied the language for years, I didn’t know all the nuances surrounding drugs.

While I do occasionally get colds in America, they are usually fairly mild and merely uncomfortable at their worst. But each and every wave of illness in Japan was accompanied by a raging fever that would last for days at a time, sapping my strength and sending me shivering to my bed. Fever-reducing tablets seemed to have little effect on bringing down my temperature, and I would hobble to work with my head feeling like it was floating several feet above my body. The slightest head movement would bring on vertigo, and I ended up using a trash can in the staff room more than once for vomit. Charming.

Whenever this happened, I’d be sent off to the local clinic, which was run by an elderly man with no English ability whatsoever. He would sit there with an electronic dictionary, trying to ask me questions before throwing his hands up in the air in defeat. As a result, he would just poke and prod at me in silence, then send me away with copious amounts of drugs. This one-doctor/one-nurse facility was a pharmacy as well as a clinic, and I would come away with BAGS of medicine. Many drugs in Japan still come in powder form, which means you put some water in your mouth, then pour a packet of foul-tasting powder in there, then mix it all together before swallowing. The process made me gag every single time, so I rarely ended up taking the medicine given to me. Plus when I checked with my dad regarding the drugs, he found that they often had nothing to do with my condition. For a fever, the doctor apparently gave me a powerful anti-coagulant as well as a diuretic. I decided not to take them.

However, on one occasion, I felt so abysmal that I tumbled into the clinic and nearly passed out in the waiting room. My fever was nearly 104 degrees, but the doctor decided that an enema would fix me right up. I was nearly delusional with fever, but knew that this sounded sketchy as hell. I refused the enema, and immediately a nurse was at my side, attempting to jam an IV needle into my arm. I jerked away, saying “NO” repeatedly. For all I knew, they were going to knock me out, then pump my intestines full of so much water that I’d explode into a fountain of feces. The doctor was not used to his patients refusing treatment, but eventually just sent me home with a bag of drugs and the instruction to drink “many water.”

I felt so awful that I decided to give the medicine a chance. I had about a dozen powders, and I could read enough Japanese to decipher that I was, apparently, supposed to take them all at once. I choked the powders down, then retired to my bed with plenty of water and a book. But I was too feverish to make out the words on the page, and I fell into a doze. I woke up shortly afterwards suffering from auditory hallucinations.

I heard people screaming, especially children, and I began freaking out. I didn’t realize it was a hallucination at first, and I tried to run out of bed, only to fall flat on my face. I was so dizzy that I could only crawl, and I began to make my way down the stairs on my belly. It took ages for me to reach the first floor of my duplex apartment, but I immediately emailed my dad all the medicine I had taken. I knew my fever was high, but I had never experienced anything like this before, and I was worried that the drugs had something to do with it.

Sure enough, I got a quick response that said, in all caps, “STOP TAKING EVERYTHING!”

One of the medicines in particular was an antibiotic that was illegal in the US since it could cause sudden liver failure (and death), as well as, you guessed it, hallucinations.

Also snuck into the drugs was another anti-coagulant, and a laxative. The next few hours were terrible for me, but luckily most all of the medications were flushed out of my system within 12 hours.

I never went to that clinic again. I swear that doctor was trying to kill me.