It Might Get Messy

Jazz musicians in the middle of the last century lived in a weirdly high-pressure world. If they had a gig, they worked from 9 pm to 2 or 3 am. Then they tended to go to after-hours clubs where the musicians gathered for cutting sessions and to catch up on the most up-to-the-minute music. Often the late nights went to dawn or after. During the day, recording, rehearsing and business (and in many cases day jobs!) had to be fitted in.

And of course pretty much everybody smoked tobacco and marijuana and most of them drank, some heavily. In that environment, harder drugs—injectable narcotics—were easy to obtain and could ease the stress of the crazy lifestyle. Addiction was common.

Three of the greatest music talents of all time—Charles Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane—all struggled with heroin addiction. Parker never kicked, although he did at one point ruefully show an interviewer the needle tracks in his arms and say “that’s my car, my portfolio, and my house”. When Davis decided to kick, he moved into a guest house on his father’s property outside St. Louis, told the old man not to come in no matter what he heard, locked the door for 2 weeks, and broke his addiction—amazingly—on his own. Coltrane had a religious revelation and—even more amazingly—went cold turkey from both heroin and alcohol. 

Of course, he later—and not much later—died of liver cancer. Parker died of pneumonia and bleeding ulcers, although when he died he had advanced cirrhosis, and a recent heart attack. The Medical Examiner estimated his age at 50 to 60. He was 34. 

Despite wrestling with addiction(s), between the three of them, they changed not only jazz, and not only music, but the broader world of the arts multiple times. These gentlemen were geniuses, and no mistake. And their brains were so powerful that they could revolutionize whole fields of endeavor repeatedly. Awe-inspiring. 

I’m no genius. And I’ve revolutionized precisely nothing. Unfortunately, the only thing I have in common with Parker, Davis and Coltrane is a physical addiction to opiates. Here’s the story.

I’ve been really, really sick the past couple of weeks. This was worrisome. I’d grown strong enough to get to archery range, haul the 40 pound target downrange, and repeatedly cock a crossbow with a draw weight of around 300 pounds (reduced one-half via an ingeniously simple rope cocking device—meaning I have to pull 150 pounds to cock it), and shoot a dozen or two dozen arrows per trip. And I was sufficiently back to strength to get out hiking in the local wilderness area taking photos and chasing snakes. So all of a sudden getting so ill that I was coughing up large amounts of blood, had blood in my vomit and feces, could barely get myself out of my recliner, had vomiting fits in morning and evening, couldn’t eat, and couldn’t hold down enough liquids to stave off dehydration was disturbing.

We called the doctors. They squeezed me into their schedules on one day’s notice. First we visited my oncologist/hematologist. Her office decided I wasn’t quite sick enough for hospital admission, but that I needed to return early the next morning to start intravenous feeding and medication. 

Dr. H, my surgeon, was next. He ran the (now familiar) videoscope into my vitals via my sinuses. Could find nothing wrong, in fact he said I already looked better than when he’d seen me two weeks prior. But he was also worried about my sudden turn for the worse. We talked for a while. And I saw the light come on. He asked “have you been cutting down your dilaudid?” I told him I had. He said (and I’m paraphrasing) “Dude. You’re having withdrawal symptoms, you idiot. Why are you reducing your dilaudid dose?” I said “I don’t know. I thought you were supposed to try to get off opiates.” He said no, you try to get off opiates if you don’t need them and/or have an intense psychological need for higher and higher doses. He said that in my case, I needed dilaudid for therapeutic reasons. Taking it through the day let me feel good enough to function. To go to the archery range. To take daily walks. To help out around the house. To read and write. Basically, the traumas wrought on my body were so devastating that I needed the pain-killing, mucous-suppressing, relaxing benefits of the dilaudid. There was no reason to cut it out, and every reason to continue taking it. 

And I thought “Duh!”. I know the symptoms of opiate withdrawal—I took the Rutgers U. 1½  credit course titled “Plant Hallucinogens”. I should have realized what was happening. Instead, I got pretty scared about pouring blood out of my throat and being completely dysfunctional.

Now I’m back on my maintenance dose of dilaudid. I feel good during the day. I can exercise and build my strength, and write and read all day without whining. Practice guitar. Write new songs. Basically, I have as much life as someone with their tongue hacked out, their oral cavity and throat re-plumbed, and taking twice-daily doses of powerful blood thinners to prevent the blood clot in the lungs from busting loose and causing a massive heart attack or stroke can have. 

In fact, today we visited the National Arboretum on the fringes of D.C. for the first time ever. I can’t say I actually “hiked”, but I did a lot of walking and stayed upright for a couple hours. And shot most of the photos offered as lagniappe below.

As always, you have me enormous thanks for reading this and being here for me. You all are absolutely helping to keep me alive, and you give me every reason to keep battling physical debilitation. With the assistance of necessary medications. Thanks, everybody! This blog and the one at www.aehsfoundation.org will be the updates this week. “Talk” to you ‘later!