Vicodin, Nine Hot Firemen, and a Husband Who Brushed My Hair
On the time I overdosed at 33, what my two-year-old knew before I did, and the quiet part nobody says out loud about being so tired of your own body
If you've ever held it together in public while quietly coming apart in private, this one's for you♥️
I was walking the dogs this morning when I remembered something I haven’t really told anyone.
When I was 33, I took too much Vicodin. I was in the middle of yet another ear infection, which sounds minor and is not minor, and at that point I had been sick constantly for fifteen years with three more years to go before anyone figured out I had a major immune disorder called CVID. My earliest memory is being eight years old and my grandmother giving me something disgusting tasting to try to fix my ear. Every time one comes, my body pulses with this specific, ancient fear. Ear pain makes you very aware of how fragile the whole situation is.
So I took some Vicodin. And then a little more. Not thirty or a hundred a day like happens with some people, just more than I needed, because it let all the illness noise recede to the background. I no longer had to be afraid of my own body. I remember thinking, very clearly: I shouldn’t do this. This is what they call abuse.
And then I took too much, around 4am.
I woke at 9, stood up, and my heart started to give out. I knew immediately. I held onto the banister and called for my husband to phone an ambulance. My two and a half year old stood next to me, wide eyed, and said: mommy you’re gonna be okay.
I asked my husband to brush my hair.
The fire department was coming and they would most likely be hot men and I needed to impress them. Sure enough, about nine of them came through the door, immediately emasculating my husband, and they all agreed they should be in a calendar. One asked if it was okay to expose my breast and I remember thinking how awkward this was, not knowing that ten years later we’d be calling an ambulance again for the exact same reason, except that time it was for a pot overdose, which is a whole other story and also a solo musical.
They put me in the ambulance. Heart failing, still completely coherent.
The EMT said: Molly, we’re going to turn on the lights and sirens.
I had just enough energy to ask whether he ever got annoyed when cars didn’t pull over, and if he’d like me to press my face against the back window and scream GET OUT THE WAY at everyone.
He asked if I was always funny in a crisis.
I said yes. And often paid for it.
At the hospital they got my heart rate up. I was in full performance mode the entire time, cheerfully assuring everyone I was absolutely fine, while almost dying. The nurse said she wasn’t expecting someone who looked like me to come through those doors. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant and I chose to take it as a compliment.
And then it was over. I had gotten away with it, the way we so often do with the close calls, not really understanding how near the edge we were, or how fast everything can escalate while you’re just standing there holding the banister.
My two and a half year old was right.
I was gonna be okay.
I just didn’t know yet how many times I’d have to be.
I’ve never really said that out loud before. The quiet part. That I overdosed. That it was accidental, yes, but that it happened at all, that I got there, that someone who is by all appearances holding it together and making people laugh in ambulances can also be a person who is quietly taking more and more of something because being in her body had become genuinely unbearable.
I say it now because I think it’s important that it doesn’t stay quiet.
Chronic illness is relentless and invisible and it will find the cracks if you let it. It found mine at 33, in the form of a little pill that made everything go soft and distant and bearable for a while. It can find anyone’s. It doesn’t care how funny you are or how many shows you have coming up or how much you have to lose.
I got lucky. I got nine hot firemen and a husband who brushed my hair and a two and a half year old who already knew, somehow, that I was going to be okay.
Not everyone does.
So I say it now, for anyone who recognizes the part where you think: I shouldn’t do this. And then you do it anyway. Because you are so tired of being afraid of your own body.
I see you.
I am you.
I’m still you.