Lifted

Past three o’clock in the morning, two weeks before Easter. I sat in the darkness of my car, parked in my driveway, feeling as if I were going insane. I’d been awake all night. I couldn’t stop twitching, moving, grabbing at myself. My mind raced. Bad voices clawed the edges of my brain. I tried everything I could to stop them. Racing up and down my attic stairs. Doing frantic jumping jacks. Bicycling my legs in the air. But it was hopeless. On the streets, they had a name for what ailed me: dope sick.

At 64, I was in withdrawal from opioids. For 28 years, I’d been prescribed OxyContin for pain relief. I have a genetic condition that causes invasive, noncancerous tumors to grow on nerve cells all over my body. I’d