My Friend the Pirate
Continued from here...

My anarchist friend, who called himself the Pirate, was probably the most intelligent, lucid and interesting law-breaker I have ever met.  He looked like an extraordinarily normal middle-aged guy with a mustache and  balding head and a sunny disposition, but he was anything ordinary.  I still have his photograph, so I know that he really was real.  He got himself thrown in FFTC after beating the shit out of two police officers in a drunken rage.  He pretended to be mentally ill in order to avoid jail and to have a vacation from the world.   He told me all about the ins and outs of changing identities and making fake IDs (now known as identity theft,) before it was popular or even possible on the Internet.  He made me aware of many strategies for social protest and thievery.  He taught me many awesome relaxation techniques, information about my rights as a patient (hence why I was able to read my own chart in spite of the staff trying to convince me I could not.) and gave me some great suggestions on how to work the system at FFTC for my personal gain.  If I ever needed anything that I did not have or was not allowed, he would smuggle it in for a reasonable price.  For a Molly Mormon, such a person was not just a novelty -- he was the coolest.  After talking for the Pirate for a few days, my fear of fun-loving criminals faded away.

As time went by, friends at the loony bin mostly consisted of very Christian people and fun-loving criminals (which included the  violent attempted-rapist who got sent to the top floor.)  It was a very  strange mix to be sure.  The Christians helped me convince myself that I was still a good girl.  The criminals taught me how to party.  The Pirate never brought me anything stronger than Aleve, but those who were younger, drug-addicted and similarly trying to avoid jail time did.  During my comradeship with these gang members and hoods, I was introduced to the art of faking symptom to get more "legal" speed to share and enjoy.  I was introduced to cocaine (only did it once,) the joys of cooking (what I now realize was) meth, making designer drugs, and mixing psychiatric medications for fun and amusement.  The staff didn't seem to realize that I was on a crazed drug binge, so their solution to my bizarre behavior at the time was to give me more drugs.  It was during that time of excess and chemical glee that they decided to release me.  I wasn't having temper tantrums anymore, and in fact I possessed an air of docility,  cooperativeness, creativity and general delight.  Sure, I needed a cane to walk, had slurred speech, constant tremors, the beginning stages of blindness and a propensity to end up in the hospital for overdosing on my meds, but I was no longer a danger to myself or other.  My first husband and I actually got along really well, because I was too high to give a shit anymore.  He was incredibly kind during this period, and he actually learned Spanish to read my books, and transcribe my dictated essays.  He even bought me ice cream.  See, he wasn't all bad.   I was getting good grades to boot because I never slept.

Admittedly my time-line is rather scrambled, because frankly, my brain was scrambled.  I was scheduled to travel to the cities in the hopes of getting officially diagnosed for narcolepsy (which I secretly hoped would get me more speed.) I was told that I had to get off all my meds for three weeks.   The first week was pure hell.  My then husband thought that I was seriously going to die from the withdrawals.  We were told that this was normal.  I eventually went down to the cities, and stayed with my mom for the second week.  Once the withdrawals were over, my mom noticed that I looked and acted in a more healthier way than when I was on my meds.  I went to my sleep analysis. I didn't have narcolepsy, so as a result, I was cut off from my legal supply of speed.   I went back on my meds before I went back to my spouse.  My mom watched me go back to needing a cane, acting weirdly, shaking and being sick.  She begged me to quit, I told her that the doctors said I needed my meds to live a normal life.  Without my clean supply of speed, I made my own upon my return to Moorhead.   The smell of making the stuff got to me, so I made the "herbal" version with ephedra as the main ingredient.

One week before my finals, my doctors readjusted my meds.  I learned from a former tweaker that my love for speed was the reason my gums were receding horribly, my hair was falling off in clumps, I was skeletal and getting acne.   Being vain and wanting to look good for graduation, I quit cold turkey.  The beginning week was uneventful.  By the time graduation and finals rolled around, the first wave of  withdrawal symptom hit me.  I was very paranoid and anxious, and completely unable to function.  For some inexplicable reason, I was able to finish my degree with honors, but I was barely able to finish my graduation walk.  I slept though most of my rehearsals and needed help walking up to the stage to get my diploma because I kept falling down.  It was a proud moment, but very sad at the same time.

I was more or less stable after that, because I actually found a competent and caring psychiatrist.  He cut out all  drugs and gave me clonidine, a wonderful heart medication that was often used off-label to help severely autistic people like me function .   (How severe?  He told me that without medications, my brain functions as if I we're using 500 micrograms of LSD, all the time.)  I later learned that it is also a great medication in helping ease drug withdrawal symptoms, which only serves to reinforce my notion that the Doctor knew what he was doing.  I was addicted very addicted to clonidine and I was overly docile, but it really was better than the alternative of quitting cold turkey or losing my physical health again.  My husband and I were working together to rebuild our marriage.  Unfortunately, my friendship with Loki (one of the few people who remained my friend after the ordeal) reignited his jealousy.  Also, watching Iva, my "substitute grandma" die, while I witnessed her kids fighting over the inheritance before giving up the ghost, devastated me.  The Fargo flood didn't help matters any.  Our apartment fell apart.  There was quiet infidelity on both our ends (not with Loki who I did not like very much,  someone else.   When I got caught, it earned me a huge public beating that involved two long walks back and forth from Moorhead to the Dilworth Walmart.)  By the time our apartment went underwater during the Fargo-Moorhead flood of 1997, my then-husband told me that I was not to move to his new apartment (which I was paying for.) Instead I "needed" to stay at my mom's place so I could get a better paying job to support us while he continued school (with a low-credit load and no job.)  I was too tired to fight about the fact that he would keep most of the possessions I bought, and that I would pay for an apartment that I wasn't live in, nice clothes I would not wear, a credit card I was not allowed to use, and a car I could not drive, (as well as unintentionally helping him save up for a trip with his girlfriend to Spain, that he thankfully did not take after she embezzled him out of our life savings.)  I was just happy to be out of there and to find work in the Cities right away.