Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 185

You guys,

Back in college I took Ambien every night for over a year. 

One morning while visiting my parents, I came downstairs, walked into the family room, and saw a paper towel laid flat on the blue carpet. 

I picked it up and looked underneath. There was a huge, red stain. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to my sister. 

“Stephanie!!”

I heard a bedroom door open. 

“Yea?” Stephanie yelled back.

“Did you seriously spill cranberry juice all over the floor and just leave it there?”

“Charlie, are you joking?” 

“What?”

Footsteps. Stephanie appeared at the top of the stairwell and looked down at me.

“That was you.”

“Yea right, like I would even drink cranberry juice.” 

“Charlie, you went up to bed and then an hour later you came downstairs and went into the kitchen for a while. You came in here with a pint glass of cranberry juice and you were eating Triscuits and fluff. You spilled your drink everywhere, dropped a paper towel on it, and went back upstairs.”

This was a typical story about me on any given night I’d taken Ambien. I was prescribed the lovely little lozenge when I was 19 because my trouble sleeping had reached insomnia-status as soon as I started sleeping next to a stranger in a dorm room. 

When I was a senior captain for our Division I field hockey team we went on a little overnight camping trip during preseason. We slept six to a small cabin, in sleeping bags, on wooden planks. My group complained to each other that they would never be able to fall asleep, so I whisper-announced, “You guys, I have enough Ambien for everyone.” Stephanie was a freshman at the time and was in a cabin next to ours. She told me the next day that everyone in our tent was giggling loudly for a long time.

I always recalled these stories with laughter—and still do—but my Ambien prescription was a mask for something besides sleepless nights. It knocked me out early in the evening so that—most of the time—I wouldn’t binge eat after restricting my calories all day. 

When my sister told me I Ambien-walked into the kitchen and ate crackers dipped in a tub of marshmallow goo, I laughed right along with her even though my inner voice screamed questions in capital letters at me. HOW MANY CRACKERS DID YOU EAT?! WHY DO YOU HAVE NO SELF-CONTROL? WHO THE FUCK EATS FLUFF??!

Shortly before I left for college I became obsessed with what I saw in the full-length mirror, and junior year I took calorie counting to an extreme. A 140-calorie Nature Valley bar for breakfast at 8:30am, eaten in small bites on my walk to class. Back in my dorm for lunch, a 180-calorie can of vegetable soup, one serving of Wheat Thins, and a diet Vanilla Pepsi. For dinner, a trip to the dining hall for roughly 350 calories worth of Honey Nut Cheerios and fat-free milk. I rarely ate anything without a Nutrition label, and if I did, tried to round up on how many calories it might be. I always ate in front of people, so they could see I was eating and not starving myself. 

But I was starving. My body needed more calories and to keep myself from giving it what it needed, I took a chemical baseball bat to the head every night. 

Taking Ambien was my little handshake with the devil. It helped me finally become what I dreamed for myself: skinny. I was the unhealthiest I’d ever been but at least I was wearing a size 2. 

Eventually my doctor prescribed me a new medication that he called Ambien but was not Ambien and seemed to have no effects. I went back to my old ways, ceiling-staring at night until 1am when I would finally sit up in bed and scarf a 1lb bag of low calorie Utz dark pretzels dipped in sugar-free honey mustard.

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Until next week,

Charlie