Fentanyl, Narcan and Quantum Immortality
Hey guys. My previous account is /u/Cujuabled, but I can't seem to get into it. It's been awhile.
This was roughly 7 months ago, but the experience continues to latch itself into the forefront of my mind. So while it was a trippy experience, it was likely nothing special, though I'll share it with you anyway.
I had finally been released from jail for the worst case I've ever had (I've had quite a few over the years), and found myself in the apartment of an old, fentanyl addicted, very religious woman and an angry Armenian couple I used to live (Vahan and Ani) with and another girl (Erica) we know. I had just picked up a couple of grams from my connect, walked in the door, gave some to the old lady and then went upstairs to see the Armenians and the girl. I was going to smoke with everyone and then sell the rest of what I had. It was maybe 2 in the morning. The light was low and the gospel music hummed downstairs, lulling the woman to sleep on her couch with the rock of fetty I had given her. Vahan whispered to his wife in quick, indecipherable spurts of Armenian as he burned off the chemicals with a torch lighter of the square of aluminum foil they were about to use, thin white smoke rolling down the flat sheet like a gust of wind through loose desert sand. There were no chairs or furniture of any kind upstairs. We were all sitting down or on our knees, preparing various instruments of paraphernalia.
My mistake was being so fresh out of jail and using a dabber. I had been using for maybe a couple of weeks, but still had to be very careful. I took a dab, and then...
I came to inside of a waterfall. There was a current spashing down on my head, running down my shoulders. I felt the pressure and weight of the water, I heard it sloshing from its source down upon me, pulling me from the dreamless and amnesiac, respiratory system depressed sleep I had tumbled into and back to waking clarity upstairs. My first recognizable image is of Vahan in my face, big nose and bald head seemingly made larger by the concern in his deep brown eyes. He was holding a small empty bucket.
"You okay bro?" He asked me. Why wouldn't I be? I thought as I took a quick look around to see if maybe the two girls could clue me in on what he was talking about. Ani and Erica sat next to each other, looking at me from an angle that suggested they had moved away from whatever action had transpired and gotten close to each other instinctually. They were looking at me with concern on their faces, asking me if I was okay. Vahan would not move from all too close to my own face. I nodded to them, told them I was alright, and felt the urgent need to stand up and walk to the window.
This is when things changed.
I took a few wobbly steps forward, looked out the window at the lowlight walkways that crisscrossed the many ponds of the apartments. It was dark out there, and I had a strange inclination that there was nobody out there. For all the lit up windows, the cars in the parking lot, the streetlights giving visibility to the roadways and the highways, and all the buildings in all the cities in all the states in all the world, there was no one out there. There were only us in this apartment, with the gospel music, arguments in a foreign language I don't understand, a group of people, all of us brought together by one unquenchable, unstoppable need to escape our own psyche by any means necessary, and escaping through the means we had found most convenient - chemically.
So dark and so empty out there, and the darkness seemed to be seeping through the window. I checked that it was closed tight to prevent the darkness and emptiness from coming inside, possibly from taking us away, but the effort of doing so exhausted me, and standing there right next to the bathroom, I bent down and braced myself with my hands to my knees. Vahan spoke again, his voice trailing away down some echoey tunnel not visible to the naked eye, but taking his voice away nonetheless.
"I had to hit you with 16 bro. Two 8 milligram doses. Shit is going to suck for you in a second."
My vision began to take on a grainy, old timey tone, my hearing becoming a static hiss, my nervous system screaming at me to run, run, but to where or why I don't know. Things were getting darker. It was dark when I let out the first of many bouts of vomit mostly in the toilet. It was a little darker when I began puking on myself. By the time I couldn't stop flopping like a fish, choking on my own vomit, or breathe in between each violent release of the seemingly endless supply of bile inside me, I honestly can't help but think sometimes that I had died at some point. My soul finally stepping free from the life of self destruction I've put it and my body through, pushed up to the ether at the soft, rhythmic hum of the gospel music downstairs, urged upward by the panicked cries of Vahan, Ani and Erica as they saw the color blue spread like some kind of internal airburst from my lips to my whole face, eyes losing whatever faint light the drugs had not yet killed.
As I flop, choke, gasp, and puke all over the bathroom floor, the three others are right outside desperately trying to figure out what to do. In one ear, I hear the words "he's gone," and "call 911 because I can't get him breathing again," and in the other ear I hear Erica, "just take baby hits, it'll pull you from the withdrawal as soon as the narcan wears off. Just baby hits, okay? You don't want to get narcanned again." She passed a foil with a small piece on it, a lighter and a pen tube. In between puking on myself, trying to breathe between vomit sessions, and uncontrollable and violent bursts of activity from all four limbs, I took a hit.
And blew it right the fuck out for some reason. Frustrated with my lack of agency with my own body, I tried again. And held the hit down. And the next one. And the next one. After maybe 10 or 15 more minutes, I began shivering. Freezing cold. Then exhausted. I said I need to lay down, and I went back out of the bathroom and they covered me with a blanket and I slept as someone who had maybe just died.
Now, I've been narcanned a couple of times before. None of my previous experiences were like this at all. I likely didn't do my experience justice, but, and I'm sober now, I often find myself looking back on that night and wondering if at the time I were living in a parallel universe in which I died, either from the overdose or choking on my own vomit or whatever, and I was transitioned into a reality in which I would live. One where instead of them saying I was gone, and to call the paramedics, they instead handed me a foil to hit to combat the withdrawal symptoms. I know I heard them saying I was gone and to call the paramedics because they can't bring me back, but when I asked about it the next day, they didn't recall saying that, just that I needed to hit a foil for the withdrawal symptoms.
It was very trippy and I can't stop thinking about it. If anyone has any similar experiences, please share. If there is some kind of biochemical or neurological explanation for that experience that I'm possibly not informed on, please inform me. Thank you guys love you lots.