Todd Calls the Ambulance on Himself
I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you were dying, but it is not a good feeling. Especially if it occurs in front a girl you are trying to charm. What I did was followed by a tsunami of regret and embarrassment, but in the moment I was convinced I was leaving my body and believed medical assistance to be absolutely necessary.
This happened during an exceptionally turbulent time in my life. I had developed problems with my living situation, my car had blown up, and while my dream career was in motion, it inched along at the pace of a crawl. I was broke, stressed, and uncertain. Things around me lacked security, the pressure was unremitting, and the tension would conjure some emotional instability from time to time. Just to top things off, it was wintertime so the world was poignantly cold and gloomy. Taking any mind altering substance during this period was perhaps not the best idea.
I was on a date with a girl I had recently started seeing. We had dinner, then went back to the hotel we were staying in that night to clean up before going to see a movie. At the hotel I show her a party favor I picked up a few hours beforehand: a bottle of Adabinol cannabis-infused syrup. According to the label, the bottle contains 440mg of THC. As time gets closer, we head to the theater. The movie theater is attached to a complex with other businesses, so after parking we decide we are going to walk over and get ice cream before the film. Even though the outside temperature is in the negatives it isn’t going to stop us from wolfing down delicious frozen desserts. Before leaving the car I take a few swigs of the syrup, without really thinking anything of it, and we go get our ice cream. Once finished with dessert, we proceed inside the theater, get tickets, and find our seats. Everything is cool; a nice and normal evening. We have some conversation while the trailers play and soon enough the movie starts.
The opening scenes to the movie are dramatic, overly dramatic, and I don’t know if it’s my stoned mind making things seem different than they are or if this movie is just really heavy. It only takes a few minutes to tell that this movie is going to be lame. The drama is too thick and obtuse and I can’t take it seriously. Meanwhile, I notice this syrup has kicked in much faster than ordinary edibles I’ve had in the past. My heart has begun beating fast and it feels like my adrenaline is running. I start feeling strange and uneasy, but attempt to talk myself out of it. This doesn’t help, the agitation remains, so I decide to visit the bathroom to pull myself together.
While walking through the theater lobby I can tell things are really hitting me hard. I make it to the bathroom and try some breathing techniques to calm me down but things are not getting tame. In fact, they are getting worse. It has only been, maybe, forty-five minutes since I drank the syrup and I am already disturbingly intoxicated. My anxiety rises and I feel like I have made a mistake.
“How stupid of me,” I think to myself, “to ruin a date with a girl I really like because I decided to get high and over did it.”
I return to the movie, sit down, and tell my date I don’t feel right. I ask if she would like to go on a walk with me. She agrees and on the way out tells me she thinks the movie was going to be dumb anyways. We leave the theater and stroll outside where we find it has been snowing. I’m thinking this romantic winter scene might be just the thing to rescue this date. She has a great idea: she’ll drive us to a nearby park and we can watch ice skaters. The park might only be a few football fields away, but once we get there I am gone. The high is too much, my heart is racing, and I just do not feel okay.
By now night has fallen and the weather is frigid. We park, exit the car, and begin to walk. The more steps I take the more disconnected I feel from my physical vehicle. I get weird sensations that I am somehow detaching from my body. We watch ice skaters for an entire minute but cannot withstand the cold, so we rush back to sit in the car. It’s so cold that even with the heater on I’m having trouble warming up. Maybe 10 more minutes goes by and I am still not dealing very well. My heart is pounding away and suddenly a sinister train of thought strikes me: I start remembering my two uncles who appeared healthy yet passed away from sudden heart attacks. Apparently cardiovascular problems run in my lineage. That thought sends me over the edge; I start panicking. I’m next and I know it. Poor decisions have brought me here and I’m just waiting for the attack to take its course.
My behavior quickly becomes erratic. I get out of the car and continue panicking for my life. Pacing back and forth, trying to keep things together, I can feel me losing myself. My date tries to settle me down and get me to breathe slowly but that is not working right now. I freak and ask if I should call 911. She says no but I hastily call anyways, sloppily dialing numbers on my phone. My date tells me once more not to do this but before any sense gets to me my sloppy dialing hits the jackpot: 941...991...911.
“911 what is your emergency?”
I shout that I am having a panic attack. I’m having difficulty describing my location, because I don’t know where I am, but they need to know my death is imminent. My shouts become less comprehensible as my date takes the phone. She peacefully speaks to the responder, before hanging up and saying they are sending somebody to check on me. I feel tremendously stupid in front of her. I would not hold it against this girl if she never wanted to see me again.
Once the ambulance arrives, along with a second emergency truck, both vehicles park and a gang of first responders get out. “Are you the one that requested an ambulance?” One of them asks.
I stand there destitute and open up about the situation. I tell them I have ingested too much Cannabis, that I am paranoid my heart is beating way too fast and I am fearful I am going to have a heart attack. Instead of the headstrong rush to save my life I was expecting, they stand there blankly and look at me. They even ask what I want to do! Half of the guys appear to be fighting back fits of laughter. The others look at me like I have a Heroin needle sticking out of my arm.
One of them perks up, “Have you been doing any other drugs tonight, maybe some Spice?” (synthetic cannabinoids)
“No, dude. God no. I ate too much weed and I want something to make it stop. Gimme some anti-weed pills or something.” I reply.
They pull me inside the ambulance, repeatedly asking if I have vomited this evening or been sick. “Uhhh kinda.” I say. The paramedic gives me a serious look. “I got a new cat I think I’m allergic to.” I reply, sniffling. He tells me my heart rate is 155 beats per minute.
“Is that lethal?” I ask.
“Not in itself but your heart rate can increase and you could enter cardiac arrest from irregular heartbeats or atrial fibrillation.” He tells me. My date rushes out of the ambulance in an emotional charge. This kind of talk is not helping and it certainly isn’t calming anybody down. The thought of past relatives passing from sudden heart attacks crosses my mind again and connecting these thoughts is too much.
“Take me to the hospital.” I command.
I kiss my date goodbye before being strapped to the gurney and shipped off. The ambulance ride is very uncomfortable, as we hit numerous bumps and pot holes along the way. I distinctly note in my head that this is not at all like the movies. The paramedics seem nonchalant about the whole thing. On the positive side, there’s no social protocol for behavioral conduct when you’re the one being escorted for treatment in the back of an ambulance. I get to be extremely frank with these guys and they return the treatment. I keep asking why they don’t carry anything on board that will make this high come to a halt and if that “loud-as-fuck noise” is the heater.
“You can’t die from weed right?” I ask the paramedic.
Mr. Ambulance Guy says my elevated heart rate is a side effect. In a sober state I would have argued that there’s no such thing as a side effect but feeling like I’m going to enter the other side any time now leaves me with nothing to say. They ask how much I consumed and about my general drug use. A question to which I give them the truth: I don’t get stoned regularly, so I don’t have a tolerance of any kind, and I don’t know how much I took but it has proven to be much too much. A second paramedic in the ambulance tells me to inhale through my nose and exhale out my mouth. Is this guy trying to get me to meditate? This event has shown me when facing death, or at least believing that you are, all the Zen exercises are out the window.
This is the worst, most vicious high I have ever been a part of, and it has my mind rolling. I think about my date, assuming she went back to the hotel, and that if I knew where I was or where I was going or how to operate a cell phone I would call her and let her know. It’s unfortunate tonight has escalated from casual night out with the lady to medical emergency.
While I drift between intermittent glimpses of consciousness, we arrive at the hospital. I’m wheeled into a room and they hook me up to an I.V. along with whatever other machines. They run EKG tests and take my vitals. Everybody is nice to me and all the nurses appear concerned…but not too concerned because they still aren’t giving me anything to combat my marijuana overdose. I’m still under the assumption my heart is going to give out at any moment. I start getting almost delusional thoughts that I should have known these risks were real and that this is what it feels like to die of a heart that is failing!
Various people come and go, while my attention span wanders. Every time I come out of a consciousness black out somebody new is trying to talk to me or perform another test. I’m unsure if I am going unconscious, falling asleep, or just really stoned but there is just one black out after another. I “wake up” in the middle of a particularly insidious test, at least that is how I interpret it, because of sharp pains caused by a blood pressure cuff. There are multiple nurses grabbing at different limbs simultaneously and in the most serious, life threatening tone they say: “Todd, hold your leg still.”
It feels very real that if I am unable to comply with their demands I am going to shed my mortal coil. I don’t know what they are doing but I can feel pain in my leg.
“Todd. Keep. Your leg. Still.” They sternly repeat.
“Are you saving me??” I drearily ask. I fade away again, and the memory goes black.
The next time I come to clear consciousness, as clear as it can be at this time, there are two nurses in the room. One is a woman looking over some charts and the other is a guy wanting me to piss in a jug. I tell them I want heart tests done and inform them of my genetic disposition. They tell me my main risks are blood pressure and cholesterol related. They leave the room so I can provide a urine sample…while I remain hooked up to the I.V. By some miracle I fill up the piss bucket but some spills on the floor. I’m too tangled up in cords and wires to care right now.
A new woman enters the room looking official, wearing professional clothing. She is obviously not a nurse. She tests if I am coherent enough to answer such questions: what year it is, who the president is, what my birthday is. I pass without a struggle. She tells me she is coming in to discuss with me whether or not she can legally speak on my behalf.
“Oh fuck.” I think. “This cannot mean anything positive.”
Before I freak out she tells me they are going to inject me with a benzodiazepine and then discharge me. She asks if I have a ride. I ask if she can call me an Uber and apparently she is not allowed to do such things. It takes me a minute, but I figure out how to use a cell phone again. I make a few phone calls, find somebody nearby to pick me up, and then ask the professional looking woman: “Wait, what hospital is this?”
“You guys are some goddamn miracle workers!” I inform the staff of nurses who discharge me.
They let me leave but not without some papers on drug abuse. Walking out of the hospital, I make a second phone call to see if my actions have forever scared my date off or if she wants me to come see her at the hotel. By the graces of the gods she isn’t upset with me, only concerned for my well-being. After this two hour excursion of sitting in a hospital bed riding the lightning, I’m ready to sleep this awful night away.
Although a funny mistake now, even in memory the feeling was so real to me at the time it still can make me uneasy. I really disregarded the power of Cannabis and found she is not always a lover. The evening was thankfully anticlimactic yet the embarrassment remains. Oh well. I keep reminding myself I am a participant in this life, not a spectator, and shit happens when you’re out here living it.
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