Tweet
So a friend of mine is a crime lab tech, and was doing experiments on different kinds of chloroform to catalog brands. And she tells me this, and I say "oh my god you totally need to chloroform me" and she laughs, and I tell her that I'm dead serious, and she knows me and the weird things I do (I use her lab to figure out knife cuts), so she thinks about it, and she was an RN is an earlier career and she tells me that if I get a note from doctor clearing me for it, she'll do it.
My doctor knows I'm crazy, he tells me not to take my benzos the night before, and don't die. And actually writes me a doctor's note to get chloroformed.
So I go to my friend, she sends me to a different lab and prepares the rag. She then comes in and tells me that were going to do it properly because "this is for science", and hooks me up to monitors. She also tells me that as the only person who has ever actually performed CPR, she won't be dosing me, and brings in a mutual friend to do the honors.
Let me just say this was not seamless. When she opens the jar with the rag, she falls over. She has asthma, and totally forgot. So we sealed it up real quick and she left the room. Then my buddy Mike grabs me and slaps the rag over my mouth and nose. First of all, it burned because it was still liquid at that point. It smells terrible, sickly sweet, like rotten meat. A little like Durian if you've ever had that. So I start retching. I had been trying to hold my breath, but once I started retching I was trying to gulp in air. Which made it worse. The smell was making me gag, but the stomach dropping nausea hit before the dizziness, and I'm trying to pry Mike arm off so I can throw up. I didn't even feel dizzy. I just dropped to my knees, and the whole world was just wrong. In a Dali/acid kinda way wrong. Like gravity just yanked, and I couldn't feel anything to catch myself, so I hit pretty hard. If I had fainted, Mike would have caught me. He was prepared for that. But I didn't. I dropped right through his arms. Mike didn't know whether to follow me to the ground or not, so he let go. I took in a huge breath of air and that's what set my stomach over the edge. But about 30 seconds later I was upright again, and within a minute I could get up, walk, all of it.
And I looked like a dead hooker clown with red marks against my slightly green face where Mikes fingers had been pressing into the skin. But I was nauseous for another two hours, and I had a three day headache. But the experience was nothing like I thought it would be. It's not a gas kind of passing out with the woozy and the sort of dive into blackness. The surface of the world got angry and threw me down in righteous rage. Suffice it to say I suddenly understand the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ether binge scene. I wasn't dizzy. I had no idea which way up, down, in, out, there was a second I thought I was staring into my own skull.
But it's worth noting that I wasn't quiet until the retching started. And that was not silent either. It works for a woman in an alley, but those movies where they do it within ten feet of some oblivious guy? No chance. The air hunger is scary, and there was definite whimpering. But because the rag was kept sealed in a jar, I had a stronger dose. Less evaporated. And poor mike spent about an hour leaning over a sink waiting to throw up from being so close to it. Pictures were taken. None will be posted, since for about half of them I apparently pulled my shirt over my head to make the earth shouting stop. And apparently I said that, so I was a little altered.
It's not something I'm willing to repeat. It's not a gentle process for all that it is outwardly gentle. It was nothing like falling asleep. I have never had a perception failure on that scale before, and I may have come out of the experience with stress activated synesthesia. So I did something dumb. And not for a good enough reason. Honestly I did it just to say I had. But it was terrifying. And if I really activated some latent synesthesia I'm going to be really pissed. And one of these days I'm going to get my friends fired.
Don't try it, is the upshot. I think my doctor signed off on it to teach me a lesson, and I gotta say, good for him. Because that was awful. That there is a photographic record makes it more awful. But I'm on a lot of medication, so my reactions were not 100% normal. But normal enough to say that Mike totally could have killed me. I was powerless to stop him. But Mike wasn't feeling too well either, so that's a bit of a problem.
My doctor knows I'm crazy, he tells me not to take my benzos the night before, and don't die. And actually writes me a doctor's note to get chloroformed.
So I go to my friend, she sends me to a different lab and prepares the rag. She then comes in and tells me that were going to do it properly because "this is for science", and hooks me up to monitors. She also tells me that as the only person who has ever actually performed CPR, she won't be dosing me, and brings in a mutual friend to do the honors.
Let me just say this was not seamless. When she opens the jar with the rag, she falls over. She has asthma, and totally forgot. So we sealed it up real quick and she left the room. Then my buddy Mike grabs me and slaps the rag over my mouth and nose. First of all, it burned because it was still liquid at that point. It smells terrible, sickly sweet, like rotten meat. A little like Durian if you've ever had that. So I start retching. I had been trying to hold my breath, but once I started retching I was trying to gulp in air. Which made it worse. The smell was making me gag, but the stomach dropping nausea hit before the dizziness, and I'm trying to pry Mike arm off so I can throw up. I didn't even feel dizzy. I just dropped to my knees, and the whole world was just wrong. In a Dali/acid kinda way wrong. Like gravity just yanked, and I couldn't feel anything to catch myself, so I hit pretty hard. If I had fainted, Mike would have caught me. He was prepared for that. But I didn't. I dropped right through his arms. Mike didn't know whether to follow me to the ground or not, so he let go. I took in a huge breath of air and that's what set my stomach over the edge. But about 30 seconds later I was upright again, and within a minute I could get up, walk, all of it.
And I looked like a dead hooker clown with red marks against my slightly green face where Mikes fingers had been pressing into the skin. But I was nauseous for another two hours, and I had a three day headache. But the experience was nothing like I thought it would be. It's not a gas kind of passing out with the woozy and the sort of dive into blackness. The surface of the world got angry and threw me down in righteous rage. Suffice it to say I suddenly understand the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ether binge scene. I wasn't dizzy. I had no idea which way up, down, in, out, there was a second I thought I was staring into my own skull.
But it's worth noting that I wasn't quiet until the retching started. And that was not silent either. It works for a woman in an alley, but those movies where they do it within ten feet of some oblivious guy? No chance. The air hunger is scary, and there was definite whimpering. But because the rag was kept sealed in a jar, I had a stronger dose. Less evaporated. And poor mike spent about an hour leaning over a sink waiting to throw up from being so close to it. Pictures were taken. None will be posted, since for about half of them I apparently pulled my shirt over my head to make the earth shouting stop. And apparently I said that, so I was a little altered.
It's not something I'm willing to repeat. It's not a gentle process for all that it is outwardly gentle. It was nothing like falling asleep. I have never had a perception failure on that scale before, and I may have come out of the experience with stress activated synesthesia. So I did something dumb. And not for a good enough reason. Honestly I did it just to say I had. But it was terrifying. And if I really activated some latent synesthesia I'm going to be really pissed. And one of these days I'm going to get my friends fired.
Don't try it, is the upshot. I think my doctor signed off on it to teach me a lesson, and I gotta say, good for him. Because that was awful. That there is a photographic record makes it more awful. But I'm on a lot of medication, so my reactions were not 100% normal. But normal enough to say that Mike totally could have killed me. I was powerless to stop him. But Mike wasn't feeling too well either, so that's a bit of a problem.
Comment