Serial Thursdays: Addiction 1

Growing up, I always refused painkillers.  I don’t know why – maybe I thought they were a sign of weakness.  I don’t know.  I just know that I routinely turned them down, even when I was in a lot of pain. 

But somehow, when I was fifteen, I came home from one more shitty day of high school – part of being a teenager, right? – and declared to my mother, “I have a headache.” 

“Tylenol’s in the cabinet,” she responded absentmindedly.  I hesitated, but went and grabbed the bottle, read the directions and popped two for my nonexistent headache. 

The next day, I arrived home and noticed that the bottle was still in my room.  “What the hell,” I thought, and took two more.  It wasn’t a big deal.  Really. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, this became part of my routine.  I worked my way up from two pills to four, six, eight, sixteen – always in increments of two, because I’m anal retentive like that.  My parents had purchased a bottle of 500 at the local wholesale club and never noticed a thing. 

Then one day, I downed 36 in one shot and took a nap. 

I didn’t wake up for two days. 

After that, I stopped taking Tylenol.  I don’t believe I even looked at another one for five years, and only because I thought my uterus was going to fall out from how bad it hurt. 

I can’t even explain to you why I did it.  It’s not like I felt good from it.  I never thought “time to get high!”  I just did it and it seemed normal to me. 

I didn’t even recognize I’d had a problem until over ten years later…

What are Serial Thursdays?