Trainer Andrew ♂, Day 55: How To Get Clean Without Really Trying

Dear Celebi that was horrible! 

Lance finally let me out of his bedroom where I’ve been shut up for the last two days.  According to him, the only way I could really kick the habit was to go completely stone sober.  No drugs, nothing.  He threw me in his room then threw away the key. 

I had begun shaking really bad in the first hour, and the convulsions didn’t die down for a long time.  They spread up my arm like a cancer, then down my body, slowly at first, building to a complete crescendo where I rocked so hard the bed’s headboard beat like a drum against the wall.  As soon as my legs began to shake, moving was impossible; I was fully confined to the bed. 

The first step was the sweat.  My body temperature skyrocketed, sending me into horrible sweating fits which sapped the fluids from my body.  It coated me and left a sticky itch on every square inch of my skin.  Then, at some point, I became horribly cold, and all that sweat felt like little beads of ice. 

Next, I became very tired.  Cocooning myself in the blanket, I shuddered beneath it.  Though each of my limbs seemed extremely heavy, and my body about ready to crash, I couldn’t sleep.  No matter how much I try my eyes wouldn’t close for more than a few seconds.  When I did, the hallucinations started.

That was the next step, the hallucinations.  They were a horrible lot, worse than anything I’d experience while poking.  I saw Lickitung’s face before me, but whenever I grasped at it, chunks ripped away in my hands; I tried frantically to piece them back on, but more and more kept falling off.  Soon, she was nothing but a disfigured hunk of meat, her mouth hung open and a high-pitch scream blasting my face.  There were others too.  A Pinsir crawled across the ceiling at me; its purple shell looked like the surface of boiling water.  When it was directly over me, it turned its head a full 360, staring at me with black eyes.  Shadows constantly ran in my periphery, and all the while I heard Lance shouting “Hyper Beam!” at the top of his lungs (I’m not so sure that was a hallucination).

My chest squeezed tight, breathing became hard, and I had to void my bowels every few minutes.  By the end, puke and feces leaked over my stomach and curdled at the edges of the bed.  The whole room stank.  I couldn’t take it anymore!  I clawed at the wallpaper, desperately trying to tear my way through the drywall and out of the tiny prison.  Then, a few hours or a few years ago, I blacked out, and there was a great burning nothingness that filled every hole in my being with a deep, searing pain. 

Lance woke me up just a little while ago.  I’m miserable, but I feel better.  The worst is over, Lance says.  I’m glad.  This means that I’m clean.  This means I can get Lickitung back. 

This means I have a choice.    

Now I can just reflect on what I’ve done, where I’ve gone, all those horrible things that I had to experience.  The truth is that I'm a bad person, but that's going to change, I'm going to change. This is the last of this sort of thing. I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm going to be just like you: the pokémon, the family, the fucking big television, the bed, the bike, the kitchen with a refrigerator, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisurewear, luggage, a table, poké balls, hyper potions, junk food, children, walks in the grass, nine to five, a Meowth, gyms, choice of sweaters, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing the gutters, getting by, looking ahead, to the day you die.

Choose your future: choose life,
Trainer Andrew ♂