(Fall '94)
I thought all the particulate matter on the ground was bugs all crawling, flying, and jumping towards me. I was in the kitchen and I looked at a piece of peg corn that was lying on the floor and stared for maybe five seconds. The piece of corn divided into two segments and crawled an inch or an inch and a half towards me and shot a tiny projectile at my leg. I felt the pinhead-sized bullet hit my leg and I jumped. I then went into the living room and sat down. I looked at three pieces of thick black yarn individually. Each time they turned into slug-like organisms that slowly crawled toward me. This was rather creepy. I then looked over at my phone cord, which would wiggle, left and right for maybe a second, and then stop. I would look away and back and it would do this again. I looked maybe a dozen times and then a few times a couple hours later. It moved in exactly the same fashion each time. Very annoying. Later that day I was looking out the windows after it was dark and I saw ANSI color text scrolling vertically quite rapidly. The text was strings of commands that one might type on a DIKU MUD. I tried to make this go away by closing my eyes but when I did this I would see faint motion pictures that resembled TV. Over the course of two or three days I saw a basketball game, Africans on a Discovery Channel type documentary, mythical beasts fighting one another, soap opera style scenes, parts of unfamiliar episodes of Scooby Doo, and many others. None were very frightening, but after trying to sleep with these images constantly playing under my closed eyelids, this became unbearable. Finally, I was taking a shower and I saw, through the hazed glass, a man that looked like a miner from CA in the 1890's. He started dancing and signing this _really_ loud song to me. I yelled extremely loud for him to get out of the bathroom. He went on for about 60 sec's until I whipped opened the shower door and he disappeared. One of my roommates, hearing me yell, came running and asked what was going on. I told him and he took me to the hospital. (parts left out) I was put on medication, which helped tremendously, and I didn't experience anything abnormal for three years.
(Spring '98)
In Jan. and Feb. I started to see people flashing in and out of my peripheral vision. They weren't really scary or bothersome, just weird. At this point I knew I only had about twenty days left in the Army. After experiencing these mild hallucinations on and off for a few days, I had maybe six pints at the local mini-PX. I had been reading almost all day, every day, for almost two months. I had also been working out on my own before and after PT everyday, so I was in pretty good shape. Even though I started to have these hallucinations, I was rather confident after a positive campaign of interaction w/ a very wide array of females. I had social encounters w/ enlisted chic's, 40ish house wives, a captain lawyer in her mid-twenties, a few girls right out of high school, almost every female in my platoon, some random civilians, strippers, and my favorite, a young doctor still in her residency at Roosevelt Medical Center Fort Gordon, GA. Anyway, I had six beers one night and decided that I would go to Roosevelt and see what kind of responses I could get out of the young officers their. I had been practicing biofeedback techniques for controlling my heart rate during my late morning exercise sessions at the brigade gym on a treadmill that monitored your heart rate. I had a friend of mine with me in the ER admitting area and showed him this trick and the male nurse there was not impressed. I then criticized him for taking my blood from a chair that had several blood stains on it and a syringe that had been simply thrown in the trash, not a sharps or biohazard container. I was latter interviewed by a rather attractive intern. At first we talked about business. I demonstrated, I believe, a commanding knowledge of exudate, the lymphatic system, cytochrome P-450, somatic nervous structure, the pharmacodynamics and mechanisms of action for Zoloft and Stelezine. I doubt that she had encountered anyone on active duty that had ever been on a major antipsychotic. She asked me how I knew so much about medicine and I told her something stupid, in a weird voice, and w/ a bizarre look on my face. I then proceeded to do a little trick I was working on. The sayings in fortune cookies and astrology apply to anybody. It is my belief that "psychics" and evangelists use the same principals. I then asked her a few basic questions and told her maybe a dozen things about herself, of which I was explicitly wrong on two. Extrapolating and making educated guesses, I told her about books she had read, her relationship w/ men as an undergraduate and graduate student, including "specifics" such as their body type, mannerisms, and interests. I told her about her inspirations and dreams. I told her/guessed about some of her political and religious ideals and beliefs. I got these almost entirely correct. I did miss, however, that she was pro-life and that she had dated as a graduate student. Her supervising physician came in about an hour later. I was straight w/ him, told him what was going on and spent 10 uneventful but very restful days in the psych. ward.
(April '97)
Coming soon!
(Spring '98)
Coming soon!
(Fall '98)
Coming soon!