Enough!

Jack Deatherage

(11/2020) I sometimes wonder what causes the things that go on inside my head. Occasionally I'll pick up layman's books on the workings of the human brain and marvel at what I don't know. I gather that everything is chemicals and electricity being shunted about on channels through various connectors interacting in a myriad of little understood ways. That happens in a normal brain, whatever a normal brain is.

I's nearly six years old the first time I saw something that shouldn't have been. A crumpled blanket, piled on my bedroom floor, moved for no apparent reason. At the time, I was sure a TV show I'd recently watched had put the idea of inanimate objects moving by themselves into my head. I'd discovered the power of suggestion! A power unrelated to Mom's suggestions, perhaps orders (such concepts are confusing), which usually involved me picking up crumpled blankets and making up my bed.

Years later I caused some of my high school biology class to question my sanity by stating I'd seen algae in a drop of water we were viewing through a microscope. No one else saw anything but a clear white field. I was adamant about what I saw and they were just as certain I was crazy! Turned out we all were correct. I was seeing "eye floaters" that I generally didn't notice unless I happened to be looking at a blank white surface. When you first notice those things at age five it's easy to forget they are there by the time you turn fifteen.

Something not so easily forgotten, and more difficult to explain, is the huge orange spider that I've encountered eye-to-eye three times from 1972 until maybe a decade ago. When I suggest huge I'm thinking easily a body the size of a tennis ball, legs sized to match. And orange as any dyed orange shipped to Marysland from Florida. No markings of any sort- just this monster of a spider hanging inches from my face.

I'd begun to imbibe alcohol occasionally in the early 1970s. Maybe a few beers, some wine, or some whiskey every few weeks. I'd heard heavy drinkers could have hallucinations so I never discounted that possibility even though I'd not yet become anything close to the drunk I'd eventually achieve. Was exposure to the irregular binges of alcohol I consumed in those days enough to get me to see the spider as clearly as the tree limb and leaves it descended from on sober, bright sunny days?

I'm inclined to think so given I've scoured the internet trying to find a spider- anywhere on this planet that looks like the one I've seen! I've found none! Which leaves me pondering my reaction to the one I saw.

I'm slightly arachnophobic. I tend to react to spiders the way I do to snakes- a startled jerk, then a more calm moment wherein I plan my next move. The orange spiders hanging just inches from my face never triggered the startled jerk a real spider of much smaller size would have.

The only other person I know of who saw a similar spider was a heavy drug user. The guy was willing to swallow anything that would alter his reality and/or produce hallucinations! I can't say I feel better for not being alone in having seen the eight legged creature. Though other drug users I've talked to tell me the hallucinations they deliberately sought out were always just that, hallucinations. Nothing to be frightened by. However, they expected to see hallucinations! Could my subconscious, which seems to have conjured the dangler have also told my body not to react to the wriggling figment?

Damned if I know. But other possible hallucinations have scared me nearly witless. Perhaps because other people were with me at those times and I feared for their safety? (The laughing gods likely know the truth of that, but they's too busy laughing to pass it along to me.)

I'm told simple dehydration can also cause people to see things that ain't. I know of one such incident that happened to a friend who was wasting away from a cancer. He would sit in his wheelchair, calmly watching spiders bigger than his hand crawl up the room's walls and scurry across the ceiling. He wasn't on any kind of pain meds which seem to frequently cause hallucinations after prolonged use.

Mom took lyrica for neuropathy, but gave it up when she began seeing strangers standing over her when she was trying to sleep. One of her brothers was taking Oxycodone for pain caused by a cancer he eventually died of. He told me he had carried on an hour's long conversation with a priest who wasn't in the room with him. Oh the joys of living long enough to have need of modern medical assistance.

About five years ago the Mad One and Cousin Luke went off to Russia and left us several bottles of distilled spirits. In my early explorations of alcoholic beverages I learnt to avoid such distillations as they went to my head too quickly and often set me on destructive paths that were amusing to my drinking companions, but hurt like a devil the next day. As I'd grown disinterested in the lighter alcohols I sipped with meals I began to consider the spirits- a raki from Turkey flavored with anise, a quince brandy from Croatia and a bottom shelf London dry gin. To my horror all three were delightful!

I happily switched from sipping store bought wines and homemade mead to distilled alcohols- usually bourbons, though I tried several rums and vodkas. The expression "demon rum" quickly came to mind when I began having bad dreams under even a finger of the stuff. Sleep also became restless under a finger or two of bourbon.

With the advent of the Communist China flu I switched to 190 proof grain alcohol because I could sterilize masks and hands while sipping enough to numb an ache that has been growing in one of my knees. A decent vodka also eases that pain and leaves me without the slightest hangover the next morning. However. I think the hallucinations may be starting up again.

Recently, while driving to a friend's farm to see if they'd begun cutting their corn, I noticed a male African lion casually walking over a rise in a mown and baled hay field. Two things stopped me from getting out of the car and pursuing the beast- If it was a real lion I might become its dinner. If it was a hallucination I was going to start questioning my sanity, again.

Given that I wasn't as startled by the lion as I should have been, I'm leaning toward it being a hallucination. After calling the nearest place likely to have lost a lion and being told they hadn't had one on the property in years, and no one has reported missing cattle or pets, I'm raising a finger of vodka, instead of the usual two, to the conjured lion. I'd sooner see lions that ain't, than spiders- whether they are or not.