This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.

So, last week I got my wisdom teeth removed, and I almost died – and not because of the drugs... but because I'm an idiot. You see, after the surgery, I went home, took a nap, woke up starving, and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Turns out, my tongue was too numb to let me swallow and my jaw was too sore to open wide enough to let me scrape the food from the roof of my mouth. So I stood at our kitchen sink wondering if this was how it would end, if this was how I'd meet my Maker (or at least the paramedics) – unshowered, slightly stoned, and wearing a Clash t-shirt with drool all over it… a fear that I honestly have not had since college.

And that made me think of whippits.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ve probably never been to a Grateful Dead show… and you could not only pass a drug test… you probably never actively studied for one… unlike some of the people I knew when I was a sophomore at Penn State, but I digress. The point is that a whippit is when someone sucks nitrous oxide out of a can of whipped cream to get high. They call it hippie crack, but you probably know it as laughing gas, which is what oral surgeons give to patients to relax them before and while their wisdom teeth are being removed. Having had it last week for the first time, I honestly don’t understand how people become addicted to it. Really. It may not have ruined my life, but it damn sure ruined one of my favorite albums for me, Appetite for Destruction.

However, in order to tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first.

Before my appointment, everyone said, “mkromd, you’re a coward. Take your iPod and listen to music. The drugs will stop you from feeling the pain, but the music will stop you from hearing the dentist’s drill.” So, I not only listened to them… I listened to Guns N' Roses… at full volume… before, during, and after the procedure. Now, if you've never had your wisdom teeth removed, it goes something like this: they put the nitrous oxide mask on your nose, they put numbing sticks in your mouth, they inject four shots into your gums (one by each tooth) and another shot into the roof of your mouth, then – after fifteen minutes or so - once you’re completely numb, they start the extractions. So there I was, insanely stoned, with very little jaw control and absolutely no self control, singing Welcome to the Jungle at the top of my lungs, while I waited for the doctor to get started. No. Really. Imagine a talentless Axl Rose, totally baked, with a horrible lisp, screaming, "you're a very thexy girl thath's very hard to pleath..." It was like MTV Unplugged meets Kafka, the Home Edition.

Honestly, the whole experience was utterly horrid… for everyone. I can only imagine small children in the waiting room, crying, and begging their parents to take them home and creepy sadomasochist patients like Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

At any rate, it was awful but at least it's done. And, with that, talk to you later (even though it hurts to do it).