Synthetic Pot Part II

I'm doing this in two parts so that someone who does not want to wade through the detail of the "backstory" doesn't have to...

So, now we're into 2012.  June 24th...and I know I talked about this in an earlier post, but this was before I knew about the synthetic pot. Here's what I wrote in July of 2012, which tells the story while fresh in my mind...

We were sitting at the dinner table, just having finished dinner.  I asked Mark to pass me a tissue - they were on his side of the table.  He reached out, his hand hovering over the table, nowhere near the tissue box.  He seemed confused, picked up an empty plastic grocery bag and handed it to me.  I said, "Mark, that's not a tissue!  They're right THERE!" and I pointed.  I thought he was messing with me.  His hand hovered over the table once more and he picked up a movie CD that we'd gotten in the mail a few days earlier and handed it to me.  Now I was really concerned.  "MARK!"  I said, "The tissues are right there, RIGHT THERE!!!" and I put my hand on the box.  I said, "Something is WRONG!  Something is VERY VERY WRONG, Mark!"  He pooh-poohed me and said something silly, like all tissue boxes were different, then saying, well, no he knew that wasn't true.  Then he got up and said, "I'm going to check my e-mail."  I continued to tell him something was wrong and he could be having a stroke - I should take him to the hospital.  (We live just a few blocks from the UNMC Med Center...)  He couldn't figure out how to get into his e-mail, something he's done a million times before.  I was SO concerned, I told him I would call an ambulance and he said, "If you do, I won't go - THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!!"  He thought I'd lost my mind, seriously!  He said he was going to see his friend, Scott, and I started to cry.  Now if you know me, you know this is NOT something I do.  Ok, granted, since I've been in menopause, little things will make me teary-eyed, but I was all but hysterical, which is NOT me.  He really thought I'd lost it and said he was fine, "I'm going to see Scott."  Through my objections, he left.  I knew, I KNEW something bad was going to happen.  

I jumped in my car and went to my Mom's - a couple blocks away - and told her the whole story.  I was so scared.  Mark called my cell, I answered, and he said, "Where was I going?"  "WHAT?  MARK!!!!!!" I yelled.  He laughed and said, "I'm just kidding!  Quit worrying!"  I said, "Call me when you get to Scott's, ok?"  He agreed.  So I waited at my Mom's to hear that he'd arrived at Scott's - and waited, and waited.  I tried calling him.  No answer.  Tried again.  No answer.  I don't know Scott's number (or even his last name) so couldn't call him.  I went home and Mom & I agreed if we didn't hear anything within an hour, we'd go looking for him.

At about 8:35, I got a call from the hospital.  He'd been in an accident and that was all they would tell me on the phone.  He was at the Med Center.  We rushed up there and here's what happened in a nutshell...

Within 20 minutes or so of leaving the house, he ran a red light, hit another car hard enough to roll it on its side.  The driver, a young lady, was with her son - she had minor injuries (I heard she hurt her hand) and her son was pretty much uninjured.  (THANK GOD!)  Mark got out of his truck, apparently looked in the car, everyone at the scene thought he was drunk (he was acting weird), he got back in his truck and drove away.  Apparently, he got a couple blocks away and his tire went flat, and by the time he pulled over and got out of his truck, the cops were pulling up.  The cops said he seemed somewhat coherent at first, and he does remember them asking him if he had been drinking or if he was high, but then he went into a full-blown grand mal seizure, which lasted a half hour!  

He wasn't really injured at all in the accident, yet he was in ICU for 4 days, and in the hospital a total of 9 days. Looking at the faces on the nurses the first few days, I was convinced that I was going to be a widow soon.  They could not figure out what caused the seizure (apparently they never know in about 50% of the cases...), and they see evidence that he also had a mild heart attack (I'm thinking most likely due to the stress on his body of a 30 minute seizure!!!)  They did about a bazillion tests, which will probably bankrupt us, found nothing conclusive.

He was released on 7/3, put on all new BP meds, cholesterol lowering meds (in spite of having a cholestrol number of 111!), and anti-seizure meds.  And the state automatically suspended his license for 3 months.  AND he has to appear in court for the accident, running a red light, and leaving the scene of the accident.  WHAT A FUCKING MESS!!  (Pardon my French...)  

And now I'm going to stop thinking about it.  Every time I let my mind go there, I get the fluttery stomach, the sweaty palms... thinking about how this mess could ruin us financially, just when we were pulling out of our 3 year financial funk.  We're actually talking about getting divorced so that it can all fall on him - why?  Because how will I stay in business if this ruins my credit?  Then what??? 

As you can tell, it was probably the most horrible time of my life.  Well, come to find out that when things were SO bad, Mark had been using this synthetic pot because it's super-cheap.  It took him some time to admit it to me, but when I found out, I started doing some research and found all kinds of stories about it causing all kinds of health issues, up to and including death.  Even 4 months after his seizure, back to driving, he called me one night because he was lost (here, in the city he's lived in all his life) - he couldn't find his way home.  It was probably nearly a year before he was back to his old self, and even now, there are personality differences.  I don't think life will ever be the same.  All because he needed that high.  I don't really blame him, because they market that crap to sound completely harmless.  

But please... if you're reading this as a parent, warn your child.  If you're a young person smart enough to research something before you try it, DON'T!!  It's not worth it.  Have a couple beers.  Go buy some real pot.  Or better yet, do neither and find another way to feel good.  Hug a dog, pet a cat, talk to your best friend, whatever.  But just don't do this shit.  It could change your life forever, or worse, take your life...