I have dealt with migraine headaches for about ten years. I was first diagnosed when I was in high school. For about a year I complained of horrible pain in my face, mostly around the eyes. My doctor thought I had a never ending sinus infection and so I was prescribed antibiotics at increasingly toxic levels for about a year and a half before the doctor finally ordered a CT scan to figure out what the heck was going on. We learned two things. To begin with, I didn’t have a sinus infection or a brain tumor. Which was good. Secondly we learned that my sinuses are totally out of wack. One is very small and one is very large and I am pretty sure this is why I get so dizzy when I get stuffed up. My theory is that the air in my head can’t equalize and so it makes my eustachian tubes go haywire and I get vertigo. But that isn’t really pertinent to this story, so anyway.

My doctor sent me to a neurologist who listened to me talk about my symptoms for all of two seconds before she diagnosed me with chronic migraines. (Defined as at least four out of seven days a week I was living with a headache). Then she put me on a daily medication, a medication to take when the pain got bad, and something to take when the pain got worse. I was set!

I faithfully took my medication and I’ll never forget one day when I was walking down the hall at South High School (original name, huh?) And I had the thought that, gee, wasn’t I having a pleasant day. I couldn’t figure out the root of this good day until it hit me that for the first time in probably a year my head didn’t hurt. I couldn’t help but become envious of normal people who got to live like this every day. They always seemed so nice, but now I understood why I was edgy and cranky almost all of the time. I mean was it any wonder that I could be a total shrew at a moments notice? I was in constant pain!

This euphoria lasted about two weeks. At that point the medication quit working and we spent the next three years filling new prescriptions that my body figured out how to work around in a matter of weeks. Finally, I was sent to college with Maaxalt and a new drug called Neurontin.

I didn’t touch the new drug for about two months, until I had a killer migraine and it was about midnight and I was incapable of sleep. I had a seven-thirty class the next morning so I popped two, wrote a note of what I took in case it killed me and my roommates found my cold, lifeless body the next morning, and went right to sleep.

The alarm woke me up at seven. I stood up and the room literally spun. I picked up my jeans and tried to pull them on, but fell over, crashing into my closet on the way down. This class was not one that could be missed without severe consequences, so I grabbed a sweatshirt and stumbled down the stairs and out the door where I proceeded to swagger and sway like a drunk, tripping over my own feet all the way across campus to the History building. I got to my class, grabbed onto my desk and managed to ease myself into the seat just before two of my professor walked in. I have no idea what the lecture was on that day, only that two of one fat man in a big purple shirt was definitely one too many. After class, I staggered back home and slept off the rest of the drug induced haze.

Upon waking I decided that perhaps I should have only taken one of the pills. The bottle had said to take one or two depending on severity of pain, but I never expected anything like the aforementioned reaction. A few weeks later I had another migraine and thought I would try just one. Now, one proved to be the magic number. Not that it killed the pain any, but it gave me quite the high and made me happy, yes, very happy. I vaguely remember rolling down my hall giggling like a maniac at unfunny things like cracks in the wall and people studying chemistry. My friends, seeing that I was clearly not well, and that our quaint little Utah college was not ready for the likes of Miss High As A Kite, took me into their room until I returned to my normal self a few hours later.

I never took Neurontin again after that experience, and I’ve never met anyone who got sent to the moon quite like I did on it. I can tell you though, that were I ever to become a junkie, prescription drugs would be my drug of choice.