Witch Doctors and Roller Coasters

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This memoir is a sequel to A Green Hornet and Blackbirds.
I also wrote a poem about my experience: Datura Stramonium: To Dance with the Devil.
Jimson weed can be dangerous and deadly, not only to the one who ingests it, but to those around that person while that person is under the influence. The (mostly) horrific hallucinations are as real as life. It does have a medicinal use in small doses.
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I opened my eyes. It was Saturday. My arms were strapped to the rails of the hospital bed. An I.V. bag hung on its pole beside the bed, near my head, on the right. I took a deep breath and peered around the room. It was an open room, like a ward. On the right wall were linens stacked on steel shelves that almost reached the ceiling.

A young man dressed in a white uniform walked in carrying towels to place on the linen shelf. I recognized him as the guy from the outside world who had been bringing in supplies hidden in the towels. I recall, in the last few days, verbally drilling him and demanding to know where my money was. Was it hidden in the towels?

But today was different; I was in my right mind. He looked at me and paused, like he was waiting for an onslaught. I smiled and just said, "Hi." I recall thinking and slightly chuckling to myself that he probably thought I was crazy.

In the bed to my left, lay a man who appeared to be in his 30's. He had been as loony as me. I learned later that he, as a pedestrian, had been hit by a truck. When the witch doctors had come to dance around our beds, the man beside me was hollering and carrying on. I had just wanted the witch doctors in their colorful masks to dance for us. After all we were both in this aquarium which was also a sanitorium for the insane; I had walked the curved sidewalks.

Yet, in reality, it was simply an ICU ward with a large room and people continually milling about.

The IV pole with the bag had been my Aunt Flossie. I had talked to her on and off the past 3 days, since Tuesday when I had eaten the jimson seeds with Ron. I looked at the trash can over beside the curtain that could be slid back and forth for privacy. There was a black liner rippled and folded in the black can; that had been where the multitude of roaches had come from that had covered my body.

My arms were strapped to the hospital bed rails with a wooden or plastic support between the steel and my forearms; one of the supports had been my cast. I had broken my arm at the castle while riding horses. A hallucination stemming from when I broke my arm riding a horse 5 years ago.

I'm not sure where the hallucinations of the rape came from; all I know is that it was in an open stadium with an audience. Perhaps when the nurses had to catheterize me, I had fought them off. Nor could I identify how I had died and on my way to heaven Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had played music for me.

I was told later that I had been awake until Friday night. Gosh, almost 4 days lying awake. That alone was enough to cause hallucinations.

Tuesday, after Ron walked out the door at my house, he had somehow driven home. His brother, Skeet, took him to Hickory Memorial Hospital. I don't know how he got Ron there; Skeet was much smaller than Ron. The staff at Hickory Memorial had to put Ron in a straight jacket; he kept going after the nurses. The medical team there decided to pump Ron's stomach. He hadn't hallucinated for over 3 days like I had.

Apparently, after Ron had left my house, my father got me to Catawba Memorial Hospital. My mom later brought the leftover jimson plants from my bedroom to the hospital. The medical team was concerned about pumping my stomach. I don't know why they didn't converse with the staff at the other hospital. Perhaps Mom or Dad didn't mention Ron to the medical staff. I was later told that a lab in Chicago where Mom had connections produced an antidote for the datura. The medical staff administered it to me on Friday evening.

I recall when I started to come down off the trip after the antidote was administered, I told the nurse, who I had grown to trust and to whom I had revealed secrets, that I felt like I was on a gentle roller coaster. I then fell into a long sleep, to wake up now...sometime on Saturday.

I felt perfectly normal.