I have had problems sleeping for as long as I can remember. My mother would come into my room at night with the belt already ready because she knew I would disobey her and watch my television with the volume muted to hide it. As a now mid-30s man in an apartment of his own, I do not fear the belt, but I do try my best to get a good amount of sleep. This has led me down several different rabbit holes. None have offered much of a solution. After the strongest prescriptions that I could get my hands on failed to aid me, I started looking in more abstract places.
Do not make the same mistake I did.
I found a website that touted a sleeping pill that takes effect within thirty minutes and will allow the user to sleep through the night. I will not share the website here because I do not want anyone else to fall into the same trap that I did. I decided to pull the trigger on the miracle drug late one night. I figured it would be snake oil but conceded that there was nothing to lose in trying. How stupid I was.
I paid with PayPal and didn’t think much of it again. Roughly two weeks later, I found a thick manila-colored envelope in my dropbox at the entrance of my apartment. There was no return address. In black sharpie, my information was drawn in large uppercase letters in a kind of juvenile handwriting. I was suspicious of the mystery package until I remembered my order. If this was their attempt at being discreet to avoid the authorities catching onto their drug business, they were going about it horribly. I was so excited to get an uninterrupted night of sleep that I nearly skipped up the entirety of the three flights of stairs that led to my apartment.
Miss Eldridge was sweeping her walkway as I nearly bounded into her. She asked what had me so excited and joked that it had to be a girl because this was the most giddy she had seen me since I moved in. I laughed and told her I was looking forward to catching up on my sleep over the weekend. Bidding her farewell, I let myself into my abode and tore the package open.
The story should end here. The envelope contained a single pill bottle with no markings and a piece of paper covered in what I could only assume was Russian writing. That should have been enough to stop me from ingesting the mystery pills. Of course, if I had stopped there, I wouldn’t have anything to warn others about.
I grabbed a beer from my fridge and chased two of the suckers down. Slumping onto my couch, I turned on the tube and flicked through the few channels I had access to with basic cable. Many people have tried to talk me into getting any of the hundreds of streaming services over the years. There is something comforting about commercials and hanging onto the nostalgia that comes with that era of entertainment. Maybe I am simply clinging to a simpler time. The comfort that comes with refusing to change.
Within ten minutes, I could feel my eyes begin to grow heavy. I remember cracking a sleepy smile and moving to turn off the tv. That’s when I saw the manila envelope. Not my envelope exactly, but one that looked identical to it. Bold sharpie letters were blurred out to obscure the personal information that was written there. I was sure it was by the same hand that had written my information and sent me the medication.
I turned the volume up to be able to hear the reporter commenting on the story.
”..not sure how widespread this may be yet. As of now, there have been three casualties reported from ingesting the capsules. While testing is currently being conducted to find out what is contained in the pills, the victims’ families have all reported similar stories. Buying the medicine as a sleep aid off of the internet. Ingesting the capsules before going to sleep and passing peacefully in the night.”
I was terrified and worst of all, I was tired. No amount of fear was helping to alleviate the waves of drowsiness that were washing over me. I needed to act fast. I immediately thought of exercise and how elevating my heart rate could combat the overwhelming tired that felt like it had crept into my very bones.
I must have rattled off fifty jumping jacks in a row before my lungs made me stop. It had done the trick. Fearing the come down and what felt like my unavoidable demise, I began looking around my apartment for my next move. My next fix. Anyway to keep my heart rate up and my eyes open.
This is a good time to explain why I didn’t do the obvious and call for an ambulance. The answer was simple at the time, and absolutely foolish in hindsight: I couldn’t afford it. I hadn’t had insurance in longer than I care to admit.
While the worst night of my life was only beginning, I feel like this a good place to stop recounting the events.
I will continue it later when I have more time if people want to hear how it all turned out.