OYM Day 11: Ghost On A Plane

I used to be afraid to fly. Petrified doesn’t begin to explain it. I’m still afraid to fly, but now I take a cocktail of pills to help chisel the edge off and subdue me into a stuper. Ambien was my first love, but I built a tolerance quite quickly and well… there was an…incident.

I adopted a cat when I lived in South Korea. His name is Kobe, and honestly, he’s the worst. He’s crabby and he hates you. Yes, even you. I had taken an unknown amount of Ambien and boarded the 14 hour flight from Seoul to Chicago. Kobe was in a cat carrier, screaming his head off, and I put him gently under the seat in front of me (that’s the only way you can do things on Ambien…gently). The stewardess made sure to tell me that my pet had to remain in it’s carrier at all times. DUH, DENISE. The lights on the plane were dimming and I had just unfolded a blanket onto my lap, when I felt the buzzing numbness of paralysis creep down my limbs. Welcome to Ambien, folks. I didn’t have a care in the world and was ready to sleep for a solid 10 hours. Suddenly, I felt pressure on my thighs, a warming sensation. Jesus, I’ve wet myself, or so I thought. I mustered all my strength to raise my eyelids just slightly and low and behold, there was that damn cat, sitting on my lap, looking pissed as all hell.

I imagined him hopping out of my lap and onto the sweet, sweet Koreans around me. Scratching, hissing, punching them in the face.

I was powerless to the steady wave of time release Ambien. I couldn’t speak, let alone macgyver a cat into a small bag. Maybe I’d make the news. The headline would be something cheesy…something related to snakes on a plane. I wouldn’t have it. I channeled my telekinesis (the kind you only have under the haze of pharmaceuticals) and by the grace of God, was able to throw my blanket over him. And that’s the last thing I remember. I woke up hours later with that jerk sound asleep in my lap. Of course I immediately put him back in his carrier and gestured to the heavens like DAMN I owe you for real.

After that, I moved to Xanax. And white wine. I was awoken on an international flight to Prague by the stewardess and immediately panicked, because I thought I had gone blind… my vision fuzzy and shades of navy. But, as it turns out, I wasn’t blind. I just had an airline blanket draped over my head like a ghost. “Ma’am, we’re about to land and we need you to be able to see”. Oh. A handful of people were staring at me, puzzled. They had probably waited hours to see who was under there. Surprise! It was a tired looking white woman, slurring her speech!

I felt like a pad of butter on a hot skillet. I just oozed my way up the jet bridge and into the gateway, then slid on over to baggage claim. My colleague asked why my lips were blue. I told him it was probably the pills and all that white wine. “This is how celebrities kill themselves, Cassie”. Oh, I thought.

Right before I became a ghost on a plane, headed to Prague.

I obtained most of my xanax from friends or occassionally the type of friends that charged $20 a pill. I was convinced that if I asked for it from my doctor, they’d tell me to hit the road, you junkie. That all changed 4 or 5 years into my sales job. I learned how to wheel and deal and get people to give me their credit card number after 20 minutes. Surely I could secure a prescription! I went into my doctor’s office with a plan. I’d act calm. I’d mention my busy career. All the flights. I’d say the word conference a dozen times. The funny part is that was all true. I was normally calm. I did have a busy work schedule. I did go to conferences. But I still felt like a junkie asking for some candy.

“Hey. As long as you don’t wash it down with cocaine, you’re fine!”.

Those were the words of my doctor, as he laughed a little too loud at his own joke and scribbled down a prescription for the most amount of Xanax you can prescribe in one session.

Flying still keeps me up nights before I’m due to board. And I still sweat, and pray, and imagine the worst possible scenario every time I buckle my seat belt. But I have it down to a science now. This science does not include 4 tumblers of white wine, either. Instead, it’s a pill when I wake up that morning. A pill on my way to the airport. And a pill when I get through security. Exactly 45 minutes later, I’m dozing to the manufactured sounds of rain and wind chimes, waking in an often far away and strange land. It’s fucking fantastic.