Writer's high

My alternative to amphetamines

I will never forget his screams. The way he howled into the profound darkness, begging for someone— anyone— to come to his aid, to save him from his captors, to save him from me.

But he was not in his right mind.

When my partner and I first encountered him, we knew something was wrong: it sounded like a chorus of demons had convened in his quarters; yet from the shadows on the wall, we could tell he was alone. As we peered inside, these suspicions were confirmed.

What we saw within was a rabid animal— agitated, aggressive, and aimless. He was literally tearing his hair out. Up, down, and back around, he paced across the room, again and again, chattering in a dozen different voices, holding multiple conversations and playing each of the parts. He was so spun up that he didn't even notice us.

The other tenants in the halfway house had called 911, worried that he would hurt one of them— or himself. As the closest ambulance at this time of night, we were dispatched to deal with the emergency.

We finally got his attention, still he spoke only to the wall, rambling about the FBI hunting him. They had bugged his phone and his room, he told his invisible interlocutor, and were following him wherever he went. I tried to reassure him that no one was tracking him, but that only made him more paranoid. Now he was convinced that we were in league with “them,” part of the conspiracy against him.

If this had been one of my first calls as an EMT, his behavior would’ve bewildered me. Head full of textbook knowledge, I would have considered a dozen differential diagnoses: alcohol intoxication or carbon monoxide poisoning, or maybe even a stroke or a traumatic brain bleed. The possibilities would have been overwhelming. However, after several months of working the streets (in Denver, no less), his presentation was obvious. This was a meth overdose.

Still, some technical knowledge was helpful. Full name: methamphetamine. Chemical formula: C₁₀H₁₅N. Discovered in 1896, classified as a sympathomimetic. In layman’s terms, it triggers the body's fight-or-flight response. Taking a typical street dose is like distilling 100 cups of coffee into an ounce of liquid, and injecting it straight into your veins. At first, it’s the ultimate espresso— your body begins vibrating with excitement, energy, elation. Then your thoughts start accelerating too, like a freight train with no brakes. Soon, you’re cruising at a million miles per hour, but there’s no way to slow down. Next, reality starts to fracture. Your imagination, all your dreams and nightmares— you can’t tell them apart from the real world— you experience visual and auditory hallucinations that feel more substantial than people standing before you. Meth has an activation time of about 18 minutes, with a half-life of 10 hours, meaning it would stay in his system for at least 40 hours.

A person in that state of mind is a danger to themselves or others, especially for that long. Eventually, something was going to trigger him into violence. High as he was, he no longer retained the mental capacity to make medical decisions on his own behalf. So, we’re required by law to intervene, even though he doesn’t understand that we're trying to help, and instead thinks we’ve been sent by the shadowy cabal to bring him in.

As we approached him, he suddenly became hostile, and lashed out like a cornered cougar, pouncing at us with open claws, his eyes unnaturally wide and bloodshot. Instantly, my training kicked in. I moved to his left, my partner to his right, and we each grabbed one of his wrists and pushed him forward, turning his own momentum against him. Up against the wall, he had nowhere to go. Pinned there for long enough, his aggression slowly subsided, and he was willing to talk it out.

We managed to convince him to get on the stretcher and then we seatbelted him in. Things were smooth at this point, but when we applied the restraints to his wrists, his paranoia flared back up. Of course, we had left the sedatives in the ambulance, so we'd have to do things the hard way. We rolled him out of the building as quickly as we could. His threats were caustic and frightening, though largely impotent at this point. Still, this continued agitation would wreak havoc on his nervous system, potentially making the comedown fatal. He needed the narcotics, and he needed them now.

In that brief interval between the building and the ambulance, he saw his last chance at escape. With inhuman strength, he sat up and nearly slipped out of the seatbelts. I cinched them down as tight as I could, but this only provoked his fury. He screamed bloody murder into the depths of the night.

“HELP ME!”

I felt the irony even then: in that moment we were the only ones capable of helping him, and our only intention was to take him to a safe place where he could come down safely and get the treatment he needed. That’s not how he saw it—he saw his worst fears coming to life in the most excruciating manner. I’ll never forget his horrific shrieks when we pushed his jaw to the side and injected the sedative into his neck. He begged pitifully to be set free, pleading for mercy, convinced that we were sent by the federal government to assassinate him in cold blood, in full view of the neighbors, who callously stood by and did nothing.

The Body

And that’s just one dimension of the human experience. Meth isn’t even the most popular drug on the streets anymore— Fentanyl is king. And it pulls you in the opposite direction; a downer, not an upper. Instead of a brakeless freight train, you get a waterslide into a swimming pool of sweet syrup that swallows you whole.

And I could tell you many more stories about every variety of chemical experience I've come across, each wildly unique based on the drug, the user, and his set and setting.

As a (novice) medical practitioner, I am constantly amazed by the human body, this tremendously complicated machine, driven by intricate interactions of several tightly interwoven organ systems— cardiovascular, nervous, endocrine, digestive, skeletal, muscular, reproductive, renal, integumentary— just to name a few. Each of these systems is activated and inhibited by electro-chemical signals, orchestrated by a myriad of hormones and molecules and the chemical reactions of basic elements like sodium, potassium, calcium, and oxygen, all following instructions encoded in genomic sequences that are millions of characters long, formed on a pattern that is billions of years old and shared by trillions of different species.

It’s staggeringly beautiful.

And there are drugs with elegant constructions that can interact with the body in baroque patterns, creating effects that are both rapturous and oppressive, exhilarating and devastating, healing and debilitating. Drugs can quicken the body with the velocity of a rocket ship— or send it crashing with the same abruptness.

As an outside observer, some of these drugs are undeniably enticing. Having seen them so often in others, my curiosity occasionally makes me consider— what would it be like to do meth? But fortunately, there are some compelling downsides that sway the decision, not least of which is hospitalization, as we’ve just seen. Moreover, there's the risk of addiction, which tends to lead to even more undesirable side effects, like, I don’t know, the loss of everything you hold dear— your job, your friends, your hygiene, your health, your will, and finally, your life.

On second thought, I’ll pass.

The Alternative

Because I’ve found something better. A secret source of satisfaction more stimulating than any chemical compounds.

For me, nothing can compare to the feeling of wielding the written word. Whether reading or writing them, the words become my own. They become me. They enter my consciousness and activate internal circuits that are otherwise inaccessible. All it takes are the right words in the right place at the right time to scratch under my skull, to pinch my meninges, to seize my entire spine in ecstasy. It’s indescribably exquisite.

I don't know how it starts, or if it ever leaves you. but I do know this— that I have it, that I've felt it with more certainty than anything else I've ever known; that words are beautiful, indescribably beautiful, something from another plane of existence, something heavenly, paradisical. Words stagger me harder than any punch I've ever taken, they take me higher than any cliff I've ever climbed, they immolate my mind, they electrify my insides.

Yes, words are a drug for the spirit, invigorating the soul; their activation time is instant, their half-life is immeasurable, their effect is incalculable.

This is why I write, even when it seems recklessly futile, indulgent and wasteful, unnecessarily stressful and taxing. “It's not about the money, honey.” It's not about the likes. It's about something far more sublime, because there are words written on the page that are more valuable than gold.

There is something primal about mere words, a possession held by both young children and our most ancient ancestors, and also something ungraspable, intangible, forever elusive and incomprehensible, a skill that is innate and easy to learn, yet impossible to ever master. It is a voice crying in the wilderness, saying “hear me!” urgently attempting to communicate, even though faithfully translating the mind's impressions into grammar and syntax is ultimately impossible. Still, we try, however imperfectly, because our souls are desperate to express themselves.

I can ignore the siren song of street drugs because I have something still stronger, though subtler— I say, let my whole head and my whole heart be hijacked by words. Not any medical remedy do I need, neither stimulants, nor sedatives, nor psychedelics; neither tonics, elixirs, potions, or pills; no, none of those will do for me.

My panacea is prose, my medication the music of language, my obsession the incising bite of persuasive argument and the mesmerizing magic of a transcendent story. This is intoxicating enough, all at once invigorating and tranquilizing, animating and astonishing. I do not wish escape reality, but rather to explore it more deeply, to taste it more richly, through the impressions shared by my fellow denizens of this inexplicable planet.

And let me participate in that one interminable tale, that collection of every written word from all times and places, the entire compendium of characters and letters, inscribed since Babylon till now, and further on into the future, beyond our galaxy, beyond time, beyond our consciousness. Let my words join that forever-flowing stream of those souls seeking to make their mark, to leave their legacy, ideas and emotions carved into stone and written upon hearts. And when finally we are all gone, still something will remain, the engravings of the mind of mankind in the wonder of our words.

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Author’s note

This essay was originally published in a previous version on this site, under the title “The Engravings of the Mind of Mankind.”