U.G.L.Y.

U.G.L.Y.

H. A. Rhoades.

Preview - A Place of Strangers by Geoffrey Seed.

I woke up in a panic. Looking over to the night stand the clock read 5:36 am. What a nightmare, it was so vivid that I could look back on it and recount every detail. The dream was a continuous story that covered days, maybe weeks, so clear that I felt as though I had lived it rather than dreamed it. It was as if I had lived to watch my death. I closed my eyes and began to recount the details. Like a chronological history of a cataclysmic event seen through my eyes as I observed the end of humanity. And it began with the fall of a city.

The Population of the greater Los Angeles area was over ten million when the first wave of infection started. That first wave took out almost 100 percent of that population, and they were all gone within a week. Another one million got sick, eventually becoming hosts that would help the propagation of a fungus that turned most of the remaining population of the world, as far as I could tell, into hosts or food. No one had any idea if the infection had spread to other continents. Maybe it hadn"t, but I believed it would eventually.

The communications we got towards the end were limited and very little information was pa.s.sed on about any other survivors outside of what was left of our group. It seems likely that it spread to Canada and Mexico. It absolutely had overrun the western United States.

There was some hope for the rest of the world if it was contained before international travelers became infected, although it was doubtful as airline travelers had spread it to major cities inside the US very quickly once the second wave broke out. The infection traveled in a similar way to a SARS epidemic that spread in the early 2000"s. Fortunately, the World Health Organization managed to get containment and stop international flights before it spread.

The fall of Los Angeles was labeled the first wave because the fungus that had caused the infection was unable to spread initially to other humans. Every victim had gotten sick through drinking the water supply. I speculated often about what led to the poisoning of the city"s water. Maybe it was an overwhelming desire to profit. Maybe a need to control the population. Or maybe it was simply an act of compa.s.sion to help an ailing society?

I don"t think anyone will know the motivation, but it was clearly human stupidity. My thoughts were always with the idea that it was greed that was the motivating factor. A desperate attempt at selling a product to a population quickly spinning out of control because of increased stresses.

Haste in bringing a new drug to market led to precautions being overlooked that were designed to insure the safety of drug manufacturing. That carelessness led to contamination by a fungus common to the region the drug was manufactured in. A fungus that had previously only affected ants in the South American rain forest, but was able to adapt to humans with the help of a unique delivery method.

At the time the first wave of infection began, a large number of US citizens were on some form of prescription anti-anxiety drug or anti-depressant. General pract.i.tioners were handing pills out like candy. I thought it was surprising that someone didn"t come up with a cute little PEZ dispenser for the modern versions of "Mothers little helper".

The drugs weren"t calming people down anymore. Benzo"s (Benzodiazapines) which was a common prescription given out was a very dangerous, habit forming drug that required a continuous increase in dosage to maintain. A drug that was almost impossible to stop taking.

Benzo"s had the power to destroy a life, spinning someone into a nightmare that there was no escape from. Trapped within your own mind in a h.e.l.l in which the path to escape is long and excruciating, or quick. If you killed yourself.

Many people didn"t make it through withdrawals if they tried to stop. They would often either kill themselves or die after going into seizures, or the strain would trigger a heart attack. Many simply would go back to the safety of the drug for the rest of their lives. The cost was phenomenal because the body acclimates so quickly to drug levels there is a constant need to "up the dose" to maintain a level of control.

I knew first hand what these drugs did. I had gone through a breakdown initiated by prescription drugs and that was the closest thing to living h.e.l.l I could ever imagine. I survived it and eventually recovered but the cost was terrible. I lost my family and the impact on my children was devastating.

Many of the drugs approved for treatment of depression and anxiety were developed and sold by large pharmaceutical companies, which made millions, perhaps billions profiting from the misery of their patients. But it was largely what people wanted, they wanted help with their issues and felt they needed drugs to function in their everyday lives.

A new drug company emerged just before the first wave that claimed to have the ultimate solution for depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorders, and all the other behavioral abnormalities that had crept into the human experience by the beginning of the 21 century. Unu Gallilum Lithium Ytirlum (U.G.L.Y) was advertised as the doorway to a happier life.

A pharmaceutical corporation, Fallecimiento LLC. which emerged out of South America, had begun advertising this drug before ever getting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Clinical trials were not completed but doctors and patients were lining up for information and getting on waiting lists to be the first to try it. Even more influential was the impact this drug had on the medical research field, not because of the promised euphoric effects of the drug itself, but rather its unique delivery method.

Fallecimiento LLC, had enlisted the use of H-Pylori, a common stomach bacteria, to deliver the drug into the digestive system of a patient. This concept became popular in research community after it had been adapted to delivering a drug that had a high profit potential, vindicating the work done by an earlier researcher who had been experimenting with using it as a delivery method for anti-viral medications. Eventually this interest would result in a modified bacteria that would carry U.G.L.Y into the digestive tract of an emotionally ailing patient. The drug itself wasn"t in question with the FDA, clinical trials showed a success rate that was better than any other drug trial in history. It was the delivery method that was still being studied.

Interest had grown in testing the potential for the delivery and biologists all over the world were eager to work with the bacteria. What hadn"t been considered however was how a contaminant would affect the biological delivery platform. Contamination of a batch of U.G.L.Y with a fungus would initiate a symbiotic evolutionary event. Leading to the end of the human race.

-Breakdown-.

Two years before the initial outbreak I had entered the most difficult period in my life. It all began with a single event that lead to a complete breakdown initiated by a reaction to prescription drugs. I was having a heart attack, or at least I thought I was. In the years before my breakdown I had been working at an IT security firm and spent more waking hours at work then at any other aspect of my life. One spring day I leaned over my computer, stressed, in a daze, and my chest began to flutter and cramp. I was terrified, I left work and drove myself to the hospital, feeling real panic for the first time in my life.

I remember staring at an EKG printout.

Name: Stevens, Duncan. H.

age: 37 s.e.x: Male.

Results of EKG: heart rate nominal, nothing to indicate cardiovascular event.

I began to carry the fear of heart failure from then on even though there was nothing wrong with me besides being continuously stressed out and scared. The weeks following brought one catastrophic event after another. First a car accident, then a death in the family.

Each event took more and more out of me. In time I learned that my heart was fine. It wasn"t the first time I had felt a fluttering sensation in my chest but it seemed different this time and I got scared. Inevitably it turned out my stomach had herniated and acid reflux was causing spasms. After weeks of doctors visits and coping with having the living s.h.i.t scared out of me, My psyche was damaged and I began to fall apart.

I can clearly remember knowing I had no reserve left. If something more were to happen I knew my life would collapse. In hindsight I realize it wasn"t Amanda"s fault, but for a while I had blamed what was happening to me on my wife. I was feeling pressure to keep pushing forward even though I knew I needed to stop.

I caved into the pressures of my marriage. In order to make Amanda happy, and in the hopes that my kids would be in a good clean city that was free of too much crime and had good schools, I agreed to move. I gave up on myself entirely. My days were long, commuting up to five hours daily and continuing the pursuit of a graduate degree.

I believed I was doing it for my family but by now I was just numb. I needed to stay compet.i.tive in order to continue driving my salary up. I understood it was necessary, or as Amanda put it "we were screwed if I didn"t". At one point I held two jobs that both entailed a great deal of stress and long hours. This all put me over the edge and I turned to my doctor for help. I was losing control, melting down on a regular basis. This lead to the doctors visits, prescriptions, and then side effects began. Ultimately my body began shutting down.

One particular drug that was heavily prescribed and a lesser version sold over the counter was one controlling stomach acid, Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPI). Side effects were noted as relatively minor and in very few cases, severe but the percentage was very small.

I ended up being in that small percentage and entered into the worst nightmare I had ever imagined. The pills began causing rapid heart rate, chest pains, stomach cramps, exceptionally high anxiety, and eventually led to episodes of complete panic. It was like being trapped in my own mind, terrified all the time.

Then tranquilizers were added to the toxic mix and in a very short time I went from having difficulty controlling myself to complete loss of control. I thought that the only way to stop the agony and terror was death. I didn"t plan to kill myself but the thought crossed my mind when I would react to the drugs as almost a necessity. I needed the pain to stop.

Once I understood what was causing the problem I began to detox myself and started on the longest road I have ever traveled. The first days were the worst, I felt death everywhere. I was afraid to even move for fear of inducing a stroke or seizure.

I pulled out of it eventually, took up yoga and regular meditation, Weaning off of all drugs. I got to the point that I wouldn"t take anything, not even simple pain killers. Nothing helped the pain anyway.

When the human nervous system goes haywire there is no relief, it simply has to heal itself and it takes time, patience, and faith. The strange sensation of continuous fear overcomes you. I became terrified to move because of the pain. Afraid to be alone inside of my own mind. Which I found to be the strangest reaction considering it is quite impossible to have another person physically inside your mind to comfort you.

Recovery was long and in the couple of years following, many things that would make life stressful continued to happen. Amanda suggested moving as a result of my breakdown and shortly after, she left me because of my declining condition. My health was failing rapidly as the drugs took over.

The following year was full of family tragedy, divorce, child custody battles, then ultimately an economic shutdown and the loss of my job. Losing my job was Okay though, and almost a relief. I had fought so hard not to die, by now I had detoxed and was calming down so losing a job seemed almost trivial.

I had an understanding that my life was a mess and I could only deal with one catastrophe at a time. So all new problems just had to wait for their turn at me. In the mean time I began building a better relationship with my kids, Amanda was out of my life for the most part and subsequently so was most of the daily stress.

I began to fall in love with a beautiful younger woman who for some ridiculous reason found me appealing. I was writing and doing research, and eventually finished my PhD. Things were beginning to look good, and I began to believe the future was going to be bright. But even though I had come to this realization, I was in a small minority, much of the American population was spinning out of control, and for much of the same reason that had prompted my breakdown. I had decided that this was just the way life was, but I had to almost die to come to that conclusion.

-Spiral-.

Many more jobs fell over the next two years and people began to get desperate. Drug usage accelerated as families were beginning to fall apart. There were even incidents of fathers losing their jobs, returning home and slaughtering their families. Employees were losing their jobs and returning to offices with loaded weapons. Many just killed themselves as a shadow of dread began to fall over the country.

I had become oblivious to the failing of our system, which was rapidly spreading across the United States. I found work at a small research facility tucked away in the mountains, I had my kids close by, I was involved with a beautiful little research a.s.sistant. Even though the rest of the world was beginning to spin out of control, my life was improving dramatically so I didn"t care what was happening to someone else.

The damage to the population now was too far reaching for anyone to even rationalize a solution. People were beginning to have difficulty thinking outside their immediate world and any suggestion from an outside source that they needed to regain control of themselves was rejected, sometimes violently.

Gradually, people stopped interacting with each other in a civilized manner, some civil unrest would pop up here and there. Riots erupted everywhere, first over political or civil issues, but later over what seemed like petty differences. Any reason to beat the c.r.a.p out of your neighbor seemed to be justified by most people. As an answer to the growing violence, someone made a poor judgment call, a poor decision that would inevitably effect all of mankind.

No one knew for sure if a new drug company, Fallecimiento LLC. Initiated the contamination or whether it was an official action by the Government to calm the population. The water supply feeding Los Angeles was contaminated with a large dose of U.G.L.Y over the course of a week. Los Angeles was where much of the civil unrest on the west coast was happening and it was growing at an alarming rate. It was discovered in the months following the first wave that the water contamination was due to high levels of U.G.L.Y.

My initial thought was that the drug company had decided to prove the effectiveness of their drug by forcing it on the population of the city without them knowing what was happening. They would administer the drug to a large target group and within days order would be restored. This act would prove the viability of the drug and inevitably approval would follow. Better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. After all, the city had already set a precedent with the adding of fluoride to city water. How different could this act be?

I, of course, was speculating. In reflection it seems intentional contamination would have been a little too vulgar an act for a drug company, too villainous. It could have just as easily been stolen and dumped as a means of disposing of it. If it proved to be an intentional means of calming the people out of compa.s.sion then it would lend truth to the saying "The road to h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions" and unfortunately it proves to be true too often. Inevitably it didn"t matter, the reason behind the contamination was never understood.

Within a day or two, people began to calm as the drugged water supply made its way through communities. Civil unrest that was becoming a plague began to come to a slow end as the people involved were exposed to local water supplies. After about three days traffic thinned and fewer people were seen out of their homes, even during the day. It became very noticeable that there was something effecting the population of the city. People stopped going to work or school, then it was quiet. No one was on the streets at all, for one single day there were no cars, no pedestrians, and eventually no people.

-First Wave-.

I regularly watched the news on a small TV hanging over the bar at a pizza restaurant where I often ate dinner. I didn"t have to be home most nights, if I didn"t have my kids at home I would hang out in the local village after work, eat dinner and make a feeble attempt at having a social life. I found it difficult to meet women being a single dad with graying temples and rapidly approaching middle age.

Although I was seeing someone at the moment, I was sure it wouldn"t last. Relationships always started off good. A girl would be interested and find me intriguing, but as the realities of my complicated personal ties came to light they would inevitably push away.

I often joked about a woman not hanging on long enough for me to f.u.c.k up myself. Usually the things around me were more than they wanted to take on. I understood this though and began to focus on getting used to being alone and being okay with it.

I decided that if I was going to go out I would swoon a younger woman and just hang on till it fell apart. At least we would have some fun. I was losing interest in finding a serious relationship anyway.

As I sat at the bar, the bartender slid a giant hotdog and french fries in front of me. The food at Ruger"s, wasn"t awful and the beer was good, so it became one of my favorite hangouts. "CIVIL UNREST IN MAJOR US CITY" scrolled across the TV screen, Interrupting a rather boring baseball game that the few people seated at the bar were blankly staring at. Like the opening volley in a George Romero zombie movie, the world seem to explode overnight.

The violence was incredible as the previously sedated people began emerging from their homes in what seemed at first to be a lethargic daze. They started attacking anything moving that was near them. The attacks were horrible, a violent rage filled the eyes of the afflicted people as they brutally tore each other apart.

On the television, A rather panicked female reporter was narrating the scene playing out in front of the camera, the volume was very low and it was almost impossible to make out what she was saying. In the background there were people running, and things were on fire, cars, houses, people.

"what the h.e.l.l is going on" I said out loud. The bartender who was talking to another patron stopped mid sentence and looked at me. "Look at the screen" I pointed. He walked over and turned up the volume.

"As of 3:00 pm pacific standard time, local officials have declared a state of emergency for major cities within the Los Angeles County area".

The reporter on the TV was screaming. She was very nervous and aware of the turmoil that was growing in the background. Her eyes were wide and she was visibly sweating.

"At this point there is no word as to the cause of this outbreak of violence." She continued with her report."Not one of the partic.i.p.ants is communicating anything intelligible. It almost seems as though they are in a mindless rampage. It does not appear that these riots have any apparent purpose, there is no looting occurring, just unorganized physical attacks. We are now dangerously close to the activity and my producer has just informed me we will be...."

She paused for a minute, lifting her left hand up to her ear listening, I a.s.sumed, to a headset of some kind. About 100 yards behind her, a small group of people were engaged in a vicious attack on each other. Even from the distance the camera crew was at, it was clear that it was devastating and b.l.o.o.d.y. Flesh was being torn from peoples faces. There was no way to separate the attackers from the victims and it appeared that these people were eating each other. Then as the news woman began to report on what she had been told over her earpiece, One of the attackers behind her looked toward the camera.

She had gotten the attention of what was probably the stronger of the group engaged in that attack. The moment he noticed the reporter, he began running at a full sprint toward her. She had no idea what was coming and apparently neither did her cameraman. By the time the cameraman saw him and shouted a warning it was far too late for her to react.

She only had enough time to turn and scream as a b.l.o.o.d.y, enraged monster hit her at full speed. In the same movement the momentum also took down the cameraman and his equipment. Now the only view the camera had was from the ground, lying on its side. the reporters feet were in the frame, kicking, as she fought for her life.

The attacker must have torn open her neck, blood splattered the lens of the camera in a steady stream then, within moments she stopped screaming, then stopped moving, her feet twitching as the attacker continued to devour her body. In the distance through the TV we could hear m.u.f.fled screams. In the bar, we all stared blankly at the TV, stunned by what we had seen. The TV went silent then static and finally to a test pattern.

I jumped out of my seat and ran to my car. As quickly as the car would go I drove west, up the canyon and further into the mountains. About five miles up the road there was a turnout that overlooked Los Angeles from eight thousand feet. If the weather was clear you could see all the way to Catalina Island from there. It was a popular place for couples to go for "inspiration".

I was interested in the view. I wanted to see how big this thing really was. As I sped up the highway, through the winding mountains I couldn"t help but feel some excitement. It was just like a zombie movie, and my mind raced as I drove. but the feeling disappeared very quickly as I crested the ridge and saw billowing black smoke rising from the Los Angeles basin.

As the night wore on, more and more people arrived at the overlook point. Once the sun finally set we could all see devastating fires that were by now engulfing the whole basin. It was similar to watching a large wild fire, which were common in the mountains. Many of the same people I would see daily from the local communities, were standing right along side me in the dark, looking on as if we were keeping a vigil over an approaching fire. This, of course, was not a wild fire, and from my vantage point, knowing what was happening below, I was certain I was overlooking h.e.l.l itself. I wondered how long it would take for it to reach us.

The death toll from this event was staggering. What we had seen on the TV was just a small sample of the chaos that was happening all over the city. In one suburban community a group of infected ran into a middle school, trapping students in a cafeteria. The children were frozen with fear. Only two escaped as a group of ten people that had been infected tore the rest to pieces. Tearing flesh from their throats and pulling their bodies apart.

Entire communities were destroyed by the infected. I can remember seeing the aftermath of what had happened in a number of homeless shelters in the downtown Los Angeles area. Hundreds of people were dismembered by what were best described as swarms of infected. Eventually they destroyed themselves when there were no more victims to attack. There was so much blood afterword that it flowed down sidewalks like a river.

Days pa.s.sed, and the people of my small town had taken up a defensive position to the disaster. The town was in a small valley with two ways in and the community leaders had recruited the towns residents" to take up arms and defend their homes until help, if any, could arrive.

After the first 24 hours, phone lines and cable lines were cut off. Satellite TV and amateur radio were still working throughout the event, and TV monitors and radio base stations were set up in community areas through out town. Emergency supplies were rationed to those that were not stocked up before the roads into town were blocked. At first any approaching vehicles were stopped and ID"s were checked, but even locals returning were quarantined into a camp area outside of town just to be safe. After several days it became apparent that what had happened was not related to an illness or a contagion that could be pa.s.sed from person to person and it seemed was not spreading. Soon paranoia began to fade so the guard was lightened up.

Over the following weeks information slowly leaked out about what had happened. Most of the violence was isolated to the greater Los Angeles area. It was over in days, only affecting those within certain areas. It affected people that had been living in specific geographical areas of the county of Los Angeles that were being supplied by the contaminated water supply. These same people simply stopped coming out of their homes one morning. Then something had happened, something had triggered this spontaneous explosion of rage and murder.

-Drugs a.

As the contamination spread, discussion on solutions to calm people down was wide spread. Even though it wasn"t immediately known it was a drug that had initiated the chaos, there was some suspicion that this may be a side effect of a number commercial anxiety drugs that were on the market. Ironically some talk led towards countering the effects by infusing another drug into the same water supply which I thought would absolutely make things worse.

In the 10 years leading up to the first wave, it was becoming more and more accepted for many people to be regularly prescribed drugs designed to sooth and calm. Life was stressful, terribly so for many middle cla.s.s families. Long commutes, job pressures, family pressures, along with politically fueled uncertainty.

Over time people began to lose composure more regularly, and I was no exception. I fell to the pressure of trying to succeed and became part of the "better living through pharmaceuticals" generation. And it was devastating.

Severe drug reactions initiated a shut down of my body and introduced the worst experience of my life. Drug induced panic and anxiety led to almost a complete breakdown. Amanda couldn"t take it and asked me to leave on Christmas one year, telling me I had an expiration date, and I was left to try to survive while sleeping on my mothers living room floor. I don"t think she meant my life had an expiration but rather our marriage. She didn"t understand what was happening to me. I was barely able to stand up. I would only sleep an hour at a time. My body shuttered so badly from drug withdrawals that I would wake up often, having what seemed like seizures.

I couldn"t breath, I hurt, I cried and wanted to die. But I had to hang in there, had to wake up in the morning and try to go to work. I had four kids that needed me and I wouldn"t succ.u.mb to death so easily. That would leave them in the hands of Amanda, and I didn"t think they stood a chance if that were to happen.

Somehow I managed to get up every morning and say to myself, "one day closer to feeling good again". The next year was filled with court appearances and custody battles. According to Amanda, I was guilty of everything a person could be guilty of. Abuse, neglect, infidelity, and mental illness were among the list of my failings. None of these things she could ever prove because none of it ever happened. I thought that I must be quite a remarkable man to hold a full time job and go to school full time while also being a bipolar alcoholic with aggression issues. It would have been funny if it weren"t so devastating.

I would stand in court time and again, and listen to accusation after accusation, a stoic expression on my face. Inside I hurt though, not just emotionally but the physical toll of all this was killing me. Even while standing in front of the judge, defending myself, the chest pains were so severe I would nearly pa.s.s out. I was still in recovery from drug withdrawal and had difficulty standing at times.

But somehow I did it. I survived the drug withdrawals and the divorce and more than two years later I felt normal more often than not. It still hurt sometimes, especially when I got stressed out. My insides had been badly damaged during the drug intervention and I suffered from a great deal of pain. The feeling of my chest muscles locking up was ever present and I couldn"t move. Sharp pains that were severe enough to make my legs buckle were frequent.

But this was life now and it was painful. I refused to take even the most minor of drugs and eventually grew to embrace the pain. The only way to stop it was to breath deep and meditate, a method which I found forced me to stop and take a clear look at a situation.

I would listen to my body now and try to live long enough to be there for all my kids to get to adulthood.

"Just ten years" I would mutter to myself. "that"s all I have to live, ten more years". Ten years was when my youngest son would be 18 and hopefully a grown enough man to be okay on his own.

Most people didn"t react so badly to the drugs that were by now being prescribed in volume at a rate of 13% of the adult population for tranquilizers. In one year alone, 118 million prescriptions for anti depressants were written. Doctors were prescribing antidepressants and tranquilizers at an exponentially increasing rate.

Over time, the drugs weren"t calming people as the effects began wearing off too quickly and higher doses were needed. New drugs were being introduced almost monthly, it was an endless cycle of drugs, side effects, and therapists as eccentric behavior began to present an almost epidemic situation. A new pharmaceuticals company entered the game of drug compet.i.tion and offered an alternative boasting its dramatic life altering effects. Fallecimiento LLC. would give us the answer to pain, emotional distress, and a better life.

-Safe-.

The small town I was living in during the first wave overtook Los Angeles was an isolated little mountain town that served as a getaway for those struggling to live in the bustling cities that stretched almost seamlessly from the foothills to the coast. I considered this to be a c.r.a.ppy little town with nothing really going for it.

The biggest attraction was a ski resort that was regularly overcrowded and would cause ridiculous traffic jams in the little town with only one two lane road in or out of the small valley. During the first wave however, this little burg had one redeeming characteristic. All water supplied to residences and business were well fed, there were no reservoirs and water storage was minimal. Almost all water was fed directly from the source on an as needed basis. The contamination of water supplies that lead to the infection of all those people was isolated to the cities that were supplied by external sources. We remained contamination free.

When the town closed itself off there was water, food, and the community pulled together. The people of this small town had a well organized system for supporting the community in the event of a natural disaster which, in everyone"s mind was eminent. Ma.s.sive wild fires frequented the area seasonally, and the town itself sat on the eastern edge of the pacific plate, on a section of the San Andrea"s fault line that was said to be on the verge of a major shift and was long overdue.

The potential for a major catastrophic event was always present and part of the daily lives of the people that lived there. So they prepared continuously, they were organized and had a strong chain of command. When it was time to sequester the town, the good people did so without much more than a question as to what each individual could do. This was a relief for me, I had been through so much over the previous few years I didn"t think I could make a good call if things got too rough.

But it was easy, like the years I had served in the Navy, all I had to do was ask where they wanted me and they pointed the way. I was able to keep my family safe, my kids, and even Amanda who was frantic.

I was comfortable in this environment for some strange reason. Maybe it reminded me of the many months I had spent at sea during the gulf war. Month after month of flight quarters, battle stations, ship and aircraft fires, and the chaos that comes with an operational unit in the military. Although there were long periods of stress and very little sleep, there was a serene structure to it that gave me peace and purpose.

This situation felt the same even though it was clear to me the world was coming apart. At least the world I knew was unraveling, but still there was that serene peace again. It made me consider how the different eras of my life had felt.

There were periods when I was in situations that felt out of control but I felt solid and excited to get up in the morning. There were times during my military service, that were perilous but I felt completely in control and calm. There were moments when nothing out of the ordinary was happening, just life as usual, but the pressures of those times initiated my health failing and I became a slave to the horror of my own drug saturated mind.