LIKE PULLING TEETH

It has been much too long since I’ve updated this space, but I’ve got a really good excuse. More on that later.

But first, you should know that I’m writing this while stoned. Not really stoned, but a little stoned… a little buzzed… a little blitzed… a little bombed… a little high…

This is actually quite a novelty for me. I’m a nice Mormon boy, so I don’t often find myself in an altered state. I’ve never even been drunk before. The last time I experienced any kind of chemical high came some 23 years ago when I had to endure numerous tooth extractions. It was part of some orthodontic master plan that involved having all of my remaining baby teeth pulled so there’d be room for the new ones when they came in.

To be honest, I don’t quite remember the logic now, but I do remember a LOT of teeth had to come out of my head. I was very nervous about the procedure at the time. After all, tooth extractions can be quite excruciating, sort of like… well… like pulling teeth. So to put me at ease, the oral surgeon gave me some laughing gas. My sister (who had a similar procedure a few years prior) gave me some advice before I went to the office: “resist the effects of the gas, they’ll give you more.”

So when the doctor strapped the mask on me, turned the valve on, and asked me, “Do you feel a tingle,” I replied, “not at all.” So he gave the knob another crank, and things got really good for me. Before I knew it, there was a man standing over me with a pair of pliers, and he’s pulling teeth out of my head. I can hear the crunching, feel the grinding, see the blood. And I just don’t care. This gas was good stuff.

But that’s been the sum total of my experience with mood altering substances… before this weekend.

One again, the reason is dental. It seems I had a filling fall out of some teeth sometime during the Clinton administration. I paid the event little mind, but when one of my molars crumbled inside my mouth last week, that certainly did get my attention. So I ran off to the dentist who took x-rays and frowned and kept asking me, “are you sure you’re not in pain?”

By the end of the appointment, I learned two of my teeth would have to go, then be replaced by titanium implants that will be topped with zirconium.

The teeth came out on Friday. The place I went to knocked me out completely before ripping out my teeth, so there was no laughing gas. But they gave me a bottle of pain pills when I left. This turned out to be a good thing, as my mouth really, really hurt when the anesthetic wore off.

These pills (Vicodin, I think) take the edge off the pain. And like so many other pain killers, they make you a little high. So I figured I should take this opportunity to write while in this slightly altered state. After all, there is a certain mystique and romance surrounding drug induced creative output.

Many great writers were known to be heavy drinkers. Heck, Jane Austen couldn’t even get up the energy to beat her servants until she had downed at least a fifth of vodka. Then there’s the whole psychedelic music scene with its reliance on various drugs to produce great art.

Indeed, drugs seem to be behind all truly authentic pieces of art. Take, for instance, The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper,” Picasso’s “Woman Drinking Absinthe,” or that message your drunk friend left on your voice mail last week.

So how is my experiment in drug induced artistic output going? Well, it’s hard to say. My teeth are still throbbing, so that’s not all that fun. As for the Vicodin, it’s making me tired and distracted, and I don’t do much writing when I’m tired or distracted. So perhaps the drug-addled lifestyle isn’t for me. But if I change my mind, there are plenty more teeth I can have pulled.