That stoned feeling - II

Felt like getting stoned

When the decision was made to switch my pills in May 2010 after 8 months of the irregular bowel movements and unexplained diarrhoea, I was promised a better quality of life along with the reduction of pills from 3 to one combination pill.

However, I was advised that I would have the side effects of getting stoned along with vivid dreams with the prospect of insomnia. Living in Amsterdam, everyone would have thought I knew what getting stoned was. For all the troubled adolescence I had that exasperated my parents, I never took to drinks or drugs, I got religion instead and with that stopped smoking at 18 having smoked for 4 years.

Now, I had taken a puff or two of a spliff and indeed inhaled, whatever effect it was supposed to have I never arrived there. My on-off partner who had come to stay with me for the first few months after I left hospital was in every way a stoner, he bought ready-rolled spliffs and smoked the living room to a cloud, playing with himself before going to bed in the main bedroom.

Google, how do you feel stoned?

Like I did years before when I had a sherry, a port and a glass of wine before getting sick into the sink later that night, I had to go online to understand what being drunk was, what a hangover was, now, what the feeling of being stoned was. I thought, having an idea of what it was would help me through the experience. Read it in the blog below.

Blog - That stoned feeling

It was a light-headed feeling almost like I was being starved of blood to my head, you feel faint though nowhere near fainting. It informed the reason why I took my pills late, close to bedtime, so the stoned feeling cleaved unnoticeably into my sleep. There are times I have been up and about when that stoned feeling begins, usually around 90 minutes after taking the pills.

I have over time been able to work through it without the need to settle down somewhere to recover. It can take up to 2 hours for it to clear up. If you were not that observant, you won’t even notice I was slightly impeded by the stoned feeling, my wits very much with me.

That stoned feeling was stronger last night

Strangely, last night, whilst I was writing my last blog, I felt the stoned feeling in a more accentuated way than usual, I could not explain why. I pressed on with completing my blog and was quite wide-awake into the early hours before I got some needed sleep. I cannot remember having any vivid dreams, I just wonder if there is a switch somewhere that got flicked. We’ll see what this night brings without getting too anxious about it.

There was an attempt to switch my pills in late 2018 which failed woefully, every possible side effect of inconvenience and negatively impacting my quality of life materialised. I presented an over 40-page diary of my experience to make the case for being returned to my previous regimen than having me being put on another guinea pig enterprise. We switched to a generic version in October, they seem to be just okay.

Some might seek the exhilaration of being stoned, even with experience, I cannot convince myself I like the feeling, one bit.