So, I'm back in my life again and aside from feeling like a complete dumbass -- despite everyone being very very supportive -- things are back to more or less normal. Not having a car in VT is pretty difficult but not impossible. My truck has been safely moved to my cousin's place outside of Cincinnati and is no longer incurring tow lot charges. The car insurance company is still bugging me, even though there is no claim pending against me.

I've had a lot of time to do some reflection. People have been asking me -- in direct and indirect fashions -- if I have learned my lesson. Implying, I guess, that there is something I didn't know going into this that I know now. And maybe also implying that they knew it all along. It has been fun to talk about this with my friends and start the "what is the dumbest thing you ever did?" discussion. I'm a little bummed out that mine is so recent, but time will heal that.

Lessons I have learned from this, in no particular order:

• Drugs + cars is not something I'll be doing again, ever.
• A re-evaluation of my drug use patterns is probably a good idea.
• There's a lot to be said for the Catholics. My hospital care was great.
• I care more about what I do to my family than what I do to myself.
• Accordingly, I really only feel bad for the "Is she dead?" anguish that I caused my family, and the premature end to what was a really great trip.
• Luck works in mysterious ways, for me
• The system scares the living crap out of me when I am forced to interact with it.

You'll notice there's probably one or two things missing. I haven't learned much of a lesson about drugs, except that I need to be more careful. The weird thing about this experience is that considering the overdose I took, if I hadn't been visibly in trouble on a major highway, I would have been more likely dead. My Mom's neighbor asked her if she was mad at me for all this. She replied that she thought that -- besides the driving part of this -- that I had taken all reasonable precautions. Drugs have a weird position in our society where they are completely villainized by the government and the media, yet many many people do them all the time. In fear and not. With good results and bad results. If I had gotten into a drunk driving accident, I don't think anyone would expect me to stop drinking, just to act more responsibly -- for others' sake if not my own.

I'm unhappy that I feel that I am now in some ways a poster child for The Evils of Drugs, and that there are friends of mine who may look at me a little sideways when I talk about drugs or continue experimenting with drugs. I feel a little like I got knocked up -- no matter what I say about having been careful and planning, people will assume that the end result strongly implies the opposite.

On the other hand, sick as it may sound, this whole experience was really different from anything I've ever been through before and that in and of itself makes it all a lot more positive for me. I'm trying to not just encapsulate it all pithily as a "wow, I was so wasted..." story. Anyone who asks about it gets the whole truth, warts and all. I'd like this to be the last thing I ever do that's this dangerous, but I'd like it not to be the last thing that I do that's this interesting.

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