The Sweats, The Suite, Sweets And The Hotspot

I feel much better now, as Wednesday begins.

In 24 hours, the regimen of plain oatmeal and nothing else, along with an hour of using the "self help dialogues" from the "Awaken The Genius Within" book (which I could barely hear over the cacophony of my own rogue thoughts) has paid off by returning me to a state of mind that I had been taking for granted, I guess until the sweats, slight fever, confused thoughts and depression, all due, I strongly suspect to the withdrawal from Gabapentin that I am pretty sure I was going through.

Bobby in building C had given me a handful of the things at the start of the week which would see me jamming in the studio 3 days and busking only on the other 2 nights, racking up about 25 dollars.
It is an anti anxiety concoction that Bobby initially told me was a pain pill.
He said that the things really enhanced his enjoyment of playing the guitar. He had said that about the methadone that he let me have a 20mg tablet of once.
The methadone wound up making me feel like I was in a fuzzy warm cocoon, one that I never did leave to go out and busk. It was not a radically different high than the one I "always" have. I guess I must produce enough of my own methadone equivalent chemicals in my brain so that I pretty much go through life feeling no pain, but kind of spaced out and dopey.
Yes, I should know better than to take some prescription drug for "recreation," but the discovery of kratom had opened my mind to the possibility that certain chemicals might be like missing links or be able to become substitutes for micro-nutrients that might only be found in high concentrations in, say, a certain lichen that grows only on the face of a certain cliff in South Australia, and only for 2 months out of the year, type of thing. People have been known to have chronic ailments disappear after they move to a different locale, and then to have, say, their asthma flare up as soon as they move back to the city by the toxic waste dump, maybe.
At first I took a half a tablet.
I was playing the guitar at an insanely high level that night. I was finding it easier to form sentences in my head when speaking and, I had very little anxiety. I was a little wobbly on my bike, though, and actually had the feeling that I was playing at such a high level that I might tear a ligament in my hand or something.
But then Saturday came and I took one before I jammed at Jacob's house and then another before going out to busk at 1:30 AM.
And then, I kind of forgot about having taken them, which brings up one of the other side effects cited; that being short term memory loss.
Because of the sweats and the headache and the forecast for thunderstorms to begin at 9AM, I didn't ride to the food stamp office.
I figure that they either closed my account or they didn't. I threw out the wrong letter, the most recent one.
As is usually the case, I pulled that envelope out of my mailbox one day after the letter inside informed me that I had to have my "simplified report" completed.
If they have closed it then I might have to wait 7 days longer to get any food out of them.

"Gabapentin withdrawal" and confirmation that Johnny B. "the clean guy,"

has a side line in modelling.

There seems to be a conspiracy to aid me with the fasting and detoxification process.
When I did try to get to the grocery store before they closed at midnight; that was when the thunderstorms came, only 14 hours late and so severe that I decided not to get soaked from the waist down just to get $3.33 worth of food that I'm supposedly not eating. So the oatmeal fast continues, at least until morning.
I got an idea with the first spoonful of plain oatmeal, just how far astray I had gone from diets I have had in the past.
Just a couple years ago, after I had fasted on apple juice for 3 days and then water laced with cayenne pepper for another week or so, and had started to eat again, the oat milk that I made by putting cooked oatmeal through my juicer tasted as sweet as a milkshake to me; an oat flavored one.
Yesterday morning it tasted like the cardboard container that it is packaged in.
I only swallowed one spoonful. It wasn't exactly as if the theme from "Rocky" began playing in my head and I polished off the whole pan before hopping on my bike and starting the day.
I laid back down to massage my upper back and neck and find the pressure points at the back of the head and press into them while taking deep breaths.
This had me up and ready for another couple spoonfuls a half hour later, and it went from there. I felt intensely hungry, a sensation that my stomach was in a vacuum. But I had a pot of plain oatmeal, so there was almost a stalemate, but the oatmeal won out. I learned just how addicted I had become to things like a whole box of Shreds chocolate peanut butter cereal in coconut milk with added maple syrup.
That should have been another red flag, the fact that something had been taking away my appetite and I had just about lived off of the 4 doughnuts that I had eaten at Jacob's house. Jacob had bought six dozen of whatever they were -white frosting on top with sprinkles with a slight peanut taste to them- because they had been on sale, 3 boxes for 5 bucks, or something.
There is a table near the kitchen in that house that Jacob's guardian, Bob keeps stocked with all kinds of snacks from Fig Newtons in apple and regular flavors to Cliff bars and beef jerky, etc.
Although one of Jacob's friends warned me once, when he saw me looking over the spread: "Dude, some of that stuff has been on the table since I met Jacob in high school four years ago!," the doughnuts were fresh.  

Jacob brought Harold the cat a couple cans of his favorite food when he stopped by to "drop off" the music files of the overdubs to Friday's jam session that we did Saturday night.      
The thunderstorms forecasted for the morning which gave me enough of a reason, combined with the sweats and headache, to postpone riding my bike down to the food stamp office, arrived 14 hours late, just as I was preparing to ride up to the grocery store before it closed at midnight.
Since I had begun a fast of sorts Monday morning, I wasn't sure what I was going to get there anyways. Coffee was a temptation.

I had 3 dollars and 33 cents left over from the 13 bucks I had made in the wee hours of Friday morning. This after discovering that one of the quarters I had gotten was Canadian.

What the heck am I going to do with a Canadian quarter?!?

Merchants used to take Canadian coins, probably in good faith that the next person, the bank, was going to redeem it for them.
You would just see the occasional Canadian quarter in a roll of them from the bank and would just spend it like it was a U.S. one, maybe after checking out Queen Victoria...

Now it is off to work on the music files to the suite of music recorded over the weekend; I will post something here even if it is still a work in progress.

Using my phone as a hot spot, and doing this from my room is nice. I'll have to see if I can busk up the money to keep the thing on.