My Accidental "Trip" (It Was Horrible!)

Monday was super weird. At a couple of points I thought maybe it was THE day. You know, like maybe my "graduation" day from this life. And I would have been mostly okay with it. 

It had to do with the cannabis product I tried for pain. I had taken a HALF of a gummy a couple of days earlier for pain. It didn't have any side effects, but it didn't make much of a dent in the pain. So, today I tried a FULL gummy. It was 10 mg of THC and 10 mg of CBG. Apparently it was a mistake to double the THC from 5 to 10 mg. Eek. What I've been told is that the THC is the psychoactive component, but you do want a little bit of it in there to augment the effect of the other components that you're using for pain or anxiety or whatever. The people who want to actually get high take THC in doses many times higher than 10 mg I ingested.

Breanne was over, babysitting me while Michael was out to lunch with a friend. About 30-45 minutes after I chewed up the gummy I started feeling really strange. Strange enough that I sat up and announced it to the air.

I tried to describe it to Breanne. I seemed to be processing information in slow motion, my brain wasn't keeping up with the movement of my eyes, I couldn't always think of the word I wanted, like when I wanted her to check the size of my pupils, I couldn't think of the word pupils, so I said eyes. I felt like I was talking in slow motion. She told me that my rate of speech and words I was using were all normal, but the things I was talking about are things a high person would be talking about. Like, "Are you talking, Breanne, or is something next to you talking?" I felt floaty. I felt like a person in the movies who had been drugged and absolutely could not resist going to sleep. I called my son to talk to him about it, and I also called Michael who came home immediately from his lunch date. Time seemed to pass incredibly slowly during this episode. It felt like it went on for hours and hours, but it was really only about 2.5 hours. I was in and out of snoozy-land. When my eyes would open to slits I would see Breanne and Michael's faces watching me, counting how many breaths I was taking per minute. Sometimes they would nudge me to wake up and ask me to take a breath. I heard him talking on the phone to an advice nurse, and her on the phone talking to some other medical professional. Kaiser wanted me to come to the ER. I said in slow motion there's no way I can go anywhere. Having worked in the med/surge department of a small hospital for the last 2.5 years my daughter has seen many things. She knew that I might not have control over my motor skills. In other words, if I got out of bed I might not be able to stand, or move the way I should. A couple of times she needed to leave the room for a moment, but she had her hand on my ankle and ask if I felt the need to jump out of bed and do anything. Maybe that's a common side effect. But no, I had no desire to get up and do anything. Since mentioning I was not going to the ER, Kaiser suggested Michael call 911 so the EMT's could come check on me at home. They came, they were great. We have loads of experience with the EMT's after caring for Michael's mother for a couple of years. It's always a positive experience with them. Anyway, they checked my vitals and everything was fine. I was just very drowsy, but I think I answered all their questions correctly. All the same questions they used to ask my mother-in-law. Like, what year is it, who is the president, what's your full name, where are you right now, what's your address, etc. Since my vitals were fine, and I absolutely did not want to go anywhere, they felt it was okay to leave. I asked what would happen if I did go to the hospital. They said a few more tests would be run. Sounded like a waste of time and a big fat hassle to me, so they went on their way to their next call. The lead guy said I was probably going to be feeling a lot better in about an hour. He was right. I did slowly start coming back to myself. Kind of in and out in waves, the same way it came in. I was so relieved to start coming out of it. After the EMT's left, Breanne finally left after having already missed an important meeting scheduled for the afternoon. I felt terrible about that, but was so grateful she had stayed.

The next day, Tuesday, I felt a lot more normal, but still very subdued. Into the late afternoon and evening I felt more and more like myself.

Trippy, man. Do people actually desire this sort of experience? As for me, I will make sure it never happens again. Yikes. You may want to think twice about following my unfortunate example, people!

Miraculously, at one point I was able to show Breanne where my oxygen level and heart rate can be monitored on my smartwatch. Later, I put access to those two features right on my watch face so they can be easily accessed if ever needed again. If you tap the curved blue line in the lower left it takes you to the oxygen monitor. The red line takes you to heart rate.

I didn't even like proofreading this, causing me to relive it. One day it will be funny, but not quite yet. Oy.