Bob stars in his own X-Files Alien Abduction Experience

cover art for CD
Sunny Day Real Estate
art by Chris Thompson
(I used to have the full-size
store promo poster on my bedroom wall)

DWINGELOO-2 GALACTIC INSTITUTE
of WEIRD DRUGS
& FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

LOWER YOBBO COMMUNITY POLYTECHNICAL COLLEGE
MUDCAVES, YOBBO

e-mail: fuckedup@loweryobbo.edu

Private Health Report No. 1.
I Don't Remember A Thing

INTRODUCTION

Was it Fentanyl or Fentaryl? Did the woman at the doctor's office misspell it? What the hell was that shit they gave me?

Who threw the Benzydrine
In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?

Who struck John?

UPDATE

Meanwhile, I have just been informed by a Licensed Healing Arts Professional that if it's what he thinks it is, a lot of anesthesiologists (they like to try things out on themselves first) have liked this Stuff so much that, when they can't get their hands on it, try heroin, and become addicted. (Heroin is banned for all medical purposes in the USA, though it has a very rare legal use in the UK.) Anyway, because heroin is so thoroughly Forbidden in the USA, it's real easy and cheap to get, I think there's a girl at the gym who can get you some.

So the buzz is that Fenta*yl is a synthetic opiate analgesic (something to Banish Pain) which is about 100 times more potent at Banishing Pain than heroin. It's a real "I felt no pain" or "I am feeling no pain" drug.

I think PP says it has a rep of not having much of a psychic Buzz or Euphoria -- heroin is regularly described as an unbeatable Encompassing Wave of Soul Nirvana Bliss. But with This Stuff, you get the painkilling effect big and quick -- but no particular Bliss. So PP says a lot of newbies overdose because they think they haven't shot enough, so they shoot some more. Bad move.

Anyway I wish to emphasize that my entire Experience was medically necessary and supervised by authentic M.D.s and R.N.s. This ain't no Party. This ain't no Disco. This was at the Miskatonic University Medical Center, in the Day Surgery Clinic. (Although for all I can remember, it might have all happened at a delicatessen.)

If you have an Older Wizwang, you should summon up your courage and get this Procedure. It's good for you. Ask for the Fenta?yl.

======================

I've ingested a lot of Stuff, including binge quantities of alcohol -- the universal experience of Higher Education -- but until last month, I never experienced, or never had evidence the next day to think I'd experienced a blackout or memory loss.

I wish I could tell you what a Great Party this was, but first, I don't remember, and second, it wasn't a Party. It was a hospital procedure, a test men are advised to get around 45+.

Women have the same wizwang as the wizwang this test went up, but I suspect the reason there's more noise for men to get this test than for women is that women face more statistically dangerous cancers, and so are prioritized first to the diagnostic tests for these cancers.

Unless somebody really wants to know, I'll skip what preceeded this test the night before at home. That was the ghastly, horrible part, I remember it with perfect clarity, and I'm certain everyone who's ever had to go through it remembers everything about it as clearly as I do.

I got to the day-surgery clinic about noon, changed into a gown, and a nurse inserted an IV into my hand. I was cooperative but very anxious, and she assured me that the medications they'd be giving me would prevent all discomfort. She mentioned some word which had "amnesia" in it, but I don't remember the word "hypnotic."

[Actually I thought "Is she telling me I won't remember anything? Naw, that's impossible, there's no such stuff. They erase peoples' memories in X-Files episodes about Alien Abductions."]

But I wasn't going to be put to sleep or rendered unconscious. Total anesthesia carries an inherent statistical death risk that doctors and dentists always prefer to avoid when possible.

[me too, i am oppposed to Death.]

I was actually getting a hose and a camera shoved up my Lower Wizwang (sorry about the Latin) and, at the same time, a hose and a camera shoved down my Upper Wizwang, and I suspect the Upper goes best when the patient can cooperate with verbal instructions (like "swallow now," that sort of thing).

I pushed an IV stand and walked from the patient prep room to the surgery room, climbed on the bed without assistance, met my doctor, and chatted a bit with him. Whatever the medications were, my anxiety was gone, and I was more curious and nosey than worried. I was lying on my back for the little pre-op things they did to me, and I remember asking the nurse how they were going to do The Big Thing in that position. She said they'd take care of that.

And I guess they did. Pardon the cliche, but The Next Thing I Remember was a little of the escorted walk from the surgery room to a chair in the recovery room. Then I remember the doctor chatting with me again to tell me that both cameras had shown healthy Wizwangs, but I had Heartburn (he didn't even dignify it by calling it Acid Reflux). He said there was a little lab work still to do, but that probably would also have a good result. Then he left, and a few minutes later I dressed, and my wife drove me home. I was instructed not to drive for 24 hours.

According to the doctor and the paperwork, I had a tube shoved way up my butt and another tube shoved way down my mouth, probably very slowly (the only risk they warn you about is a slight statistical risk of perforation), and I was awake while they talked to me and to each other about what they were seeing on TV screens. They claim I had the Full UFO Alien Flying Saucer Anal Probe Treatment -- but I don't remember a damn thing about it.

Nor was there any pain or discomfort afterwards Down There or Up There to leave me with any clues or evidence that I'd spent a half-hour being Violated by Masked Aliens.

I wasn't clocking things very carefully, but my guess is I was Out Of This World (but conscious, they tell me) for about twenty minutes. I remember Absolutely Nothing of that time. If somebody claimed they never performed the tests at all, you couldn't prove it by me. I'm taking their word for it, because I have no choice.

It was a Perfect Blackout, unaccompanied before or after by any sense of confusion or anxiety. It couldn't have been smoother or more perfect if Waking Memory was a tape and they'd just scissored twenty minutes out of the tape and thrown it away. In the month since the test, I haven't recovered a single memory, vague or clear, from those Missing Twenty Minutes.

The doctor's office phoned me with the lab results a few days later (they upgraded me from Heartburn to Esophageal Inflammation and told me to take two over-the-counter pills), and I just had to ask what the hell that Mickey Finn was they'd given me. The doctor was happy to tell me: Fentaryl and Versed.

Versed is the trade name of a particular preparation whose active ingredient is benzodiazepine. Taber's (on-line) Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary returned this:

benzodiazepine

Any of a group of chemically similar psychotropic drugs with potent hypnotic and sedative action; used predominantly as antianxiety and sleep-inducing drugs. Side effects of these drugs may include impairment of psychomotor performance; amnesia; euphoria; dependence; and rebound (i.e., the return of symptoms) transiently worse than before treatment, upon discontinuation of the drug.

(Diazepam = Valium, it's like Valium, right?)

I've found some references to Fentaryl on the Web -- mostly anecdotes by patients complaining of side effects -- but nothing this "white-coat" specific. So I really don't know anything about it.

All I can tell you is: It worked for me.

Or maybe it didn't. I don't remember a goddam thing. And that was the first and only Total Waking Blackout experience I've ever had.

This seems obviously to segue into Date Rape.

But since My Experience, a British investigation about Date Rape was published, and it turns out that

http://vleeptron.blogspot.com/2006/01/beware-alcoholic-beverages-spiked-with.html

(from the report in New Scientist:)

"Everyone thinks that Rohypnol is a problem," says Michael Scott-Ham of the UK's Forensic Science Service in London. "But alcohol is by far the biggest problem." Scott-Ham and his colleague Fiona Burton analysed samples taken from 1014 victims in the UK soon after the alleged assault between January 2000 and December 2002. Only 2 per cent of samples contained sedatives, they report in a paper to be published in the Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine.

If [List] readers are at all interested in this, or if you have your own similar experiences, or know anything about these drugs, please respond; I'd like to post this to my screwy Vleeptron blog, but it would be cooler with some feedback from youse folks. I'll keep your replies Anonymous if you prefer.

===============
from PP:
===============

}I've found some references to Fentaryl on the Web -- mostly anecdotes by
}patients complaining of side effects -- but nothing this "white-coat"
}specific. So I really don't know anything about it.{

It's a synthetic opiate about 100 times stronger than heroin if memory
serves me correctly.

I was getting patches of this stuff a year or two back now from my pain
treatment doctor, pretty high dosage patches actually, but didn't ever
really feel much pain relief from them. It was weird. They really didn't do
much for me, those patches- but here in NYC about 12 years ago, someone was cooking up fentanyl and selling it cut into heroin. The funny thing about fentanyl is that while it's a LOT stronger than heroin, there's very little "rush" when one shoots it, so addicts were shooting the stuff, not feeling anything much, mixing up another, shooting that, then overdosing because they'd shot way too much of it.

From your description Bob, I'd say thanks to whatever powers that be
that the medical establishment sissored those 20 minutes outta your memory.

;-)))

Peace and love,
PP

"Madness is not enlightenment, but the search for enlightenment is often
mistaken for madness"
Richard Davenport-Hines

===================
from GW
===================

} If drugwar readers are at all interested in this, or if you have
} your own similar experiences, or know anything about these drugs,
} please respond; I'd like to post this to my screwy Vleeptron blog,
but it would be cooler with some feedback from youse folks. I'll keep
} your replies Anonymous if you prefer.
}

LOL..Very entertaining. And thanks for the sacrificing your own body on
the altar of Humour just so we can all get a giggle at someone else's
misfortune (funny how that works, ain't it?).

[das deutscheswerde ist Schadenfreude, Ja?]

I know I sure did {g} .

As for feedback however, about the only thing that came to mind...at
least of any seriousness.... was in response to following paragraph:
}
} The doctor's office phoned me with the lab results a few days later
} (they upgraded me from Heartburn to Esophageal Inflammation and told me
} to take two over-the-counter pills), and I just had to ask what the hell
} that Mickey Finn was they'd given me. The doctor was happy to tell me:
} *Fentaryl* and *Versed*.

Fentaryl??!! Oooowww! So near, and yet so hopelessly,(sym)pathetically
far away. Fentanyl and benzos. Now there's an altar that has seen many
a body willingly sacrificed.....

GW