While scanning through the web-page I saw a list of potential dangers and possible symptoms. I scanned the information on possible genetic vs. social causes of infection and carefully reviewed what I felt was my own personal case history.
Shakiness.
A desire to consume.
The inability to stop.
A history of disease within several generations of the same family.
All signs pointed to the fact that I, shocking or not, was an alcoholic.
***
WebMD is slowly morphing into my downfall, as opposed to a friendly and helpful internet pal. Earlier this year, I spent three months of my life convinced that I had ADHD because of a self-diagnostic test I took on the internet. Every time I would watch TV I assumed it was more than just coincidence that the Adult ADD commercial was airing. To me, it was a sign. Cosmic whatever was calling out to me and pointing me in a direction. That direction was Ritalin.
I actually scheduled an appointment with a doctor, assuming that he would take one look at me, glasses falling off his face, and declare, “By god, your deficit for attention is larger than the national budget’s!!! Christ boy, we need to give you a super dose to shock your system.”
Before my appointment, I began to educate myself on the life of an adult ADD patient. I was planning on requesting Aderall as opposed to Ritalin because the weight loss seemed intriguing. I was just shy of requesting my transcripts for doctor perusal before my appointment.
In his office, I complained of insomnia, jittery legs, and concentration problems. I enlightened him on my amazing ability to forget things that I had just heard and about never finishing any project I started straight through.
He, “Mmm-hmm”ed and “oh”ed fervently, before telling me that he needed to take some of my blood.
Bloodwork is like an earthquake to a hypochondriac. Any of the thousands of diseases you picture yourself having could come quaking to the surface in a single drop of plasma.
Three weeks later he informed me that my thyroid had stopped functioning properly. Something I hadn’t even thought of. I had always assumed that a thyroid was one of those things that not everybody had, like a tailbone or a third nipple. Silly me. It still took me three weeks to convince myself that I didn’t have ADD. Finally I let that notion go, realizing that a malfunctioning thyroid was much cooler than oft debated behavior disorder.
Truthfully, I wasn’t always so gullible and easily duped into believing I am terminally ill. It took a strange rash, three doctors, a lack of health insurance, and a week in quarantine, to convince me that my body was weak and susceptible to every air-borne deviant available.
I had been, at one time, the king of “I-Am-Not-Sick-Just-Tired-And-Rest-Is-For –the-Weary”. I could have boogers shooting from my eyes, while speaking in a voice that would put Kathleen Turner to shame, shaking uncontrollably and cough/sneezing myself to the ground and would still manage to muster up the gall to tell anyone who asked, “No…no…I’m not sick. I don’t get sick.” Said in a tone of voice akin to, “I don’t get Rolling Stone Magazine, I never subscribed.”
My senior year of college, while battling my usual “non-existent” chest cold/bronchitis, my body decided to give up on me, allowing a strange rash to spread across my body, my temperature to sky rocket and making everything else in my body hurt. The campus doctor blamed allergies and the local free clinic was consulting pictures in books and comparing them to my skin.
Eventually the CDC (yes…THE center for disease control) was notified of a potential measles and/or scarlet fever patient in the county. Mind you, they only came to this conclusion after I ashamedly admitted that there was no conceivable way that it could be syphilis.
“Believe me, it isn’t syphilis.”
“Well, it isn’t as uncommon as you think.”
“Really, I’m fairly confident it isn’t syphilis.”
“I know young people think they are invulnerable…”
“Syphilis is sexually transmitted, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then BELIEVE ME it IS NOT SYPHILIS!”
“Oh right.”
I was ordered into a strict quarantine only allowed initial contact with the poor and unlucky roommate who had driven me to the clinic. I was to minimize my contact with anyone until the results of my blood test came back.
Dosed up on benadryl, steroids and a Z-Pac I could only stare at my wall and feign indifference.
A week later, still weak and semi-unconscious I was informed by the CDC that it was not measles and I was not contagious. They had no clue what virus I had contracted, but assumed that it wasn’t lethal.
“I am soooooo comforted.”
From that point on, the slightest sneeze or rough throat, coaxed me into downing vitamins and canceling rehearsals and running for my bedroom. Usually to my detriment. I could commonly be found at these times, huddled in a corner blanket to my chin in ninety degree weather, begging for a pill that doesn’t exist.
***
Many times, my wonderful friends and I referred to ourselves as alcoholics in a jesting manner; or what I always assumed was a joking manner. None of us like to admit that we joke, in this instance, because the potential for truth lurks behind the pun. And if one day one of us did indeed turn out to suffer from alcoholism, we could at least rest easy in the fact that part of us knew it would happen.
“Remember when we were drinking until four-thirty in the morning and I puked in one of your dinner bowls? I said then, ‘God I am such an alcoholic.’ Turns out…I was right. Told you so.”
***
I commonly feigned symptoms to diseases that I did not suffer from, but knew it would only be a matter of time before I actually would be diagnosed with. From the time I was about fifteen, I knew that one day I would go crazy. So by the time I was sixteen I started to pretend to be really moody, to the point where I couldn’t discern the difference between my acting mood swings and my actual serotonin imbalance. Besides, pretending to be insane is fun.
I looked at it, as if it were a favor to my friends. Acclimating them to what I eventually and irrevocably would become.
As I child I had suffered from Sever Childhood Migraine Syndrome. My neurologist informed me that there would be a period in my teens where, due to hormone imbalances, the migraines would cease, but by the time puberty ended, my syndrome would evolve into Adult Migraines. Rather than enjoy my respite and risk weakening my natural defenses, I consumed large amounts of caffeine and drugs to ensure every headache I would get would be a migraine. In a sick way, my plan worked. By the time I was eighteen and my migraines started again for real, I was prepared and used to the pain.
***
As a legal adult, I was doing the same thing with my alcohol consumption. But a part of me still couldn’t quite grasp the concept. I didn’t drink everyday.
Then MSN enlightened me on the plight of binge drinker. Signs, symptoms, habits, and general hygiene.
Hypochondriac.
Hypochondria.
“I am a binge drinker.”
Rest assured, I took this with a grain of salt, mostly because, as I have been known to say on any given occasion, “I loves my (insert name of any alcohol except rum here)!!!”
I read this report, filed it under my “Diseases I will have to start to Fake Soon in Order to Acclimate My Friends” and carried on.
But, consciously or not, I had started a watchdog inside of me that I cannot control. An inner-voice that I fight with now constantly while out in the city.
“Was that one drink too many?”
“I can still do shots, I don’t have to be up tomorrow until 11:30 in the morning.”
“You can’t drink the rum. Remember Halloween. Remember New Years.”
“Ben, you cannot be late for work tomorrow. It is not an option.”
Usually imbibing the voice into submission.
***
After a particularly harrowing night of drinking, socializing, and losing minutes, I found myself awake on a friend’s couch, barely remembering how I got there. More importantly, I knew I had a show to be at. I called my friend for a ride and ran to the nearest street corner to catch her. I climbed into the back seat to see the beaming faces of two of my close friends. I watched the beam turn to agog.
We drove not even a block before I made her stop the car, so I could puke on the street, in Sunday afternoon bustle.
I looked up to see my friends, not laughing, but concerned; actually somewhat terrified. Then the smell. Smoke and vomit, pizza rolls and sweat.
It was later when one of my car-mates informed me that the way my eyes looked and the way I smelled reminded her of a past relationship. A relationship built on dependency and drink. Ten years of my past smacked me on my face immediately.
As my head pounded, I thought of the time my mother threw an entire plate of hamburger buns into a swimming as “a joke”. Or the time she walked straight through a sliding glass door because she was too drunk to tell if it was closed. I thought of how I promised myself while watching my brother puke, “I will never do this.”
“I will never be crazy.”
“I will never smoke cigarettes.”
“I will never drink too much.”
“I will never be sick.”
“I will never be weak.”
It is as if my body suffers from Cassandra Syndrome. The woebegone prophet who saw the fall of everything. And my mind, like the citizens of Troy, refuses to listen. There is a psychological tendency among people to disbelieve inescapably bad news, often through denial. In the end it is easier to give into the hypochondria, allowing it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wish I could learn, instead of martyrdom, how to stand upon a block and let the world know, that while I am broken, I am not dead. Not yet. Not by far
