The Time I Almost Died Like a Rock Star
No one wants to die in a stupid way. Something that will end up a punch line of their life once they are gone. Preferably, I would like to die in my sleep and, one night a few years ago, I almost got my wish.
Most people my age, sleep alludes them at night. Unfortunately, its not my age that keeps me awake at night, I have been that way for as long as I remember.
The irony about that is for years, at any point of the day, I could roll over on the couch and fall asleep in an instant.
“Nothing good on TV, I think I’ll take a nap.”
Off to dream land.
But night was another story (well, this story, actually).
Eventually, I found a method that would help me sleep at night. Although, sleep may not be the best description of how my time passed. The least healthy method I chose?
Scotch.
When the day was done, a few glasses of scotch on the rocks, and off to the land of Morpheus I’d go.
Now, you are thinking I should have tried a white noise machine (which I tried – did not work), soothing music (nope), TV in the background (again, nope) or any other dozens of internet searched methods to fall asleep.
Nothing worked.
Scotch? Yes, that worked. Maybe not the best method, but it got me from midnight to morning.
Over time I knew that this was not the best way to find sleep. My brother told me that red wine would be good for me, and that it would help me get to sleep. So, I tried it.
A step in the right direction, but not quite there.
Then I found the missing piece to the sleep puzzle.
But before I reveal that, I know that all I have written above and about to write below, is incredibly bad for me.
The missing piece? ZzzQuil.
Yes, ZzzQuil, the nighttime cold medications from VICKS (Note, this is not a recommendation or a condemnation of the product).
The combination of two glasses of red wine and the measured dose of ZzzQuil turned out to be the magic potion.
It worked for a while but, unfortunately for me, I missed my scotch. So, after several weeks, I went back to my original routine of scotch and a fitful sleep.
Then, one night, as I headed into the early morning of the next day, the scotch not doing it’s job, I had an idea.
After I already drank a good amount of scotch, I followed that up with a measured dose of ZzzQuil.
Surprisingly, it worked.
Unfortunately, maybe too well.
When my alarm went off in the morning, I did not respond. When it went off a second, third, fourth time, I did not respond. Finally, shaken from my slumber, I hit the snooze button and reached for my phone. Not sure of the time, I called my friend Bill, whom I worked with at the time, to tell him I needed a vacation day. When he inquired if something was wrong I simply grunted and ended the call.
My head in a fog, bags of cement lay on my chest, I could not move.
For hours, I slipped in and out of consciousness (not sleep, this was not sleep) until my eyes stayed open for more then five minutes. Rolled over and surprised by the time on the clock – it was two-thirty in the afternoon.
More than twelve hours in this self-induced limbo.
‘For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…’
I’m no rock star, and definitely no Hamlet, so, in the end, I just went back to scotch and bad, fitful nights where sleep, apparently, is an after thought.
Rock on.
Photo by Michelle Jimenez on Unsplash
