Of Motrin and Monsters

Originally written 7/27/8 Today!

“You don’t feel any pain.”

I had someone tell me that recently. And it’s certainly flattering in a caveman/athlete superhero kinda way. “Grrr me feel no pain! Me smash!” But it’s not entirely true. I do feel pain. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever felt the amount of pain that I am feeling these days. Not just physical, either, in other areas as well. For the sake of this post, let’s keep it Olivia Newton John. You know, physical, physical. I wanna get into physical. Let me hear your body…talk..let me…um…hear your….body …talk. OK, I’m getting lost in an 80s flashback to that video. Dayum, ONJ sure was the hawtness back then.

I get along with pain just fine. It turns out I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. When I was a kid, I broke my wrist, and somehow managed to talk my parents out of taking me to the emergency room for a day. I broke my ankle playing basketball, and still hopped the fence and walked all the way to the parking lot. (Those of you who know Roslyn Park know how long of a haul it is from the courts to the parking lot.) Even though my ankle blew up to the size of said basketball, I still somehow managed to delay the inevitable trip to the ER by a few hours. (Besides, I had a Heart concert the next day. Long story short, they ended up postponing the show so I still got to see them.) Now that I look back, I wonder why the state didn’t take me away from my parents for their neglect of my well being.

A few years ago, I was playing football and tore my ACL. I still manly walked off the field (take that, stretcher riding football pansies) and sucked it up for a few hours. It wasn’t the pain that drove me to the ER (it was my wife, actually), but just the growing sense of something is seriously wrong here. So I guess a side effect of being impervious to pain is also that drugs seem to not work on me. After my knee surgery, I was prescribed Toredal (sp? BTW, it’s ironic that I get some thing that is basically pronounced “tore it all” when I tore my ligament) for pain and Percocet for sleep.

I stopped taking both in 2 days, because they weren’t making any difference for me. Which is odd, because my sister loves Percocet. I went back to the doc in a week, and my biggest complaint was that I still wasn’t sleeping. I have heard good things about Ambien and Vicodan, so I was angling to get some of those. He nodded, and said he would take care of me. Then he wrote me another prescription for Percocet. Well fuck me.

It now troubles me that I seem to really be feeling pain these days. It’s not like a dramatic broken bone or collapsing lung kinda pain, but more like a general fatigue and soreness kind of pain. And yes, it’s all because of ‘doing what I do’ to get by these days. I know that is a by-product of it. But, goddamn, I don’t want it to dictate what else I do. I am lucky to go to the gym more than 3 nights most weeks. Yes, I am sure being in a broken down state can make my pain worse, but I also know some time at the gym also heals me. It’s an outlet, a release, it’s something I do that makes me feel a lot better about myself. So when I can’t do that, it only adds to the pain. In those situations, I tend to call in Dr. Captain Morgan to ease the pain, and no real good comes of that. There’s only so many times the neighbors think it’s “cute” when they find me passed out on their picnic table in the backyard.

So now I find myself turning to (dramatic dum dum dum DUMMM) drugs. The recluse of the loser. Hitting rock bottom. Yes, readers, like most great writers, I have started experimenting with (dum dum dum DUMMM) drugs. Right now I am doing a little dance with something called Aleve. I admit to feeling pretty foolish about even trying this stuff. I come home with back “pain” and leg “pain” and T has this stuff lying around. I am beyond beat, and just want relief. So I pop 2 and wait. Surely, this has to be dramatic. Surely, this will be the first chemical rush that I will spend the rest of my unemployed days chasing. How sweet this euphoria will be. I wait to feel and finally, I do! I slowly feel…..pretty much nothing. And not the nothing that means my pain has gone down to nothing. I mean the nothing that nothing has changed. I still feel everything I did before. This is kind of a buzzkill.

Surely, there has to be something out there that can work for me. I start to search for “strongest OTC painkiller I can buy” and it appears that you can damage your liver if you abuse OTCs. See, look at that potential life saving info I just gave ya. Not only do you laugh, but you learn here, too. It also appears that you should take them with food as well. This is of course from scouring 2 message boards populated by anonymous Internet folks. I am sure no one is lying on the Internet anymore. Most importantly, I have learned that I probably should take 4 OTC and wash them down with rum and Coke Zero. Or maybe the potential damage to the liver will be muted out by both the pills and the booze. Yea, that makes sense.

Shit, what’s that stuff Bret Favre hawks? If it’s good enough for a Hall of Fame, MVP Super Bowl winning QB, then it must be able to work for me. But I do hear it has a nasty side effect of making you wishy-washy and you can develop a huge ego and alienate all those who supported you your entire career. At least that’s what I hear.

Another by-product of this pain, toil and trouble is a sever lack of energy. Again, this can be directly attributed to ‘doing what I have to do’ these days. At home, most nights I am a wastoid. I walk around like a broken old man, longing only for the couch or the easy chair. I dead the days I have to be ‘busy’. On Sunday night, I literally curl up in a ball and just chill (read in silence) just to mellow me out for another week of this shit. I don’t think I can keep doing this, so the prospect of 5 more fucking days of it is pretty heavy, and I just try to prepare mentally and physically for it.

Miraculously, weekends do arrive, and I find myself feeling down. Like I just need a little shot or kick of something to get me to that edge where I really feel ‘normal’. Which leads me to my next embarrassing confession. I have started drinking various “energy” drinks. Good Lord, let me just throw the towel in now, OK? Again, I temper this because I know this is just something I have to do these days. I never started drinking this stuff till just this year. I was doing monotonous shit in a cold warehouse. I mean mind-deadening stuff, spirit killing repetitive labor. I was a zombie. I sent to the soda machine, and got something called Full Throttle. Yes, Coke puts it out, and it was the only such thing they had. SO I drank it. I actually found I did get a clear kick from it. I felt more awake, and a spike in energy that got me over that edge. OK, this wasn’t so bad.

So there I am the next day doing the same damn thing, and I decide to drink it again. Only this time the rush is clearly less. I am disappointed as I return to eating brains. These last few weeks have seen my energy level drop as quickly as most record labels’ creditability. (ZING!) I have had to resort to trying more energy drinks. I imagine getting this massive rush of energy. I want to feel my heartbeat in my eyes. I want to feel my pulse in my toes. I want to become super focused and feel like I can run a marathon.

Yea, right. I know I will get none of that. Instead, I just want a little kick so I can just feel a bit more normal. It just needs to push me over that edge, and I will be fine. I know this isn’t what most people ask of these miracle elixirs. But it’s what I need out of the deal. As we’ve gone out and about these last few weekends, I make T stop so I can pick up something. Honestly, I think she’s getting annoyed by now. And I’ve stopped teasing her about her coffee consumption. Can‘t call the kettle black now.

It just pisses me off that I am doing this. I know it’s all marketing. You get energy from food, so essentially all food and drink is “energy”. I feel so lame for going this route. I know I can probably get the same burst of “energy” from doing something far more healthy. Like, I don’t know, boiling a carrot in seaweed or something as organic sounding. But no, I allow myself to do this.

And what I’ve found so far is that the drinks do kinda work for me. Again, it’s not the Herculean burst or anything, just a little nudge. I’ve had Monster and Rockstar the last few weeks, and they are pretty much the same. I find I do get an initial bout of giddiness in the first few minutes. This translates to me being funoxious and annoying my wife. Always a great thing to do when you’re stuck in a car with her.

All in all, I am not happy that I have to resort to this. I feel suckered. I hate having to do this, and why I have to do this. I refuse to believe all the solutions I need can be found in 2 aisles in fucking CVS. I try no to do it. Hopefully, I won’t have to do this much longer.

Yea, I feel pain. Every day.


DVD Extras
Yea, I know Motrin is in the title, when I’m taking Aleve, but I went with that for the alliteration with Monster.

Alternate Titles
Of Painkillers and Energy Drinks
Of Aleve and Energy
None of This Can be Just Me Getting Older