Why I don't do drugs

I was at the Mall today. I had a very successful trip to Black and White (the store has some other, longer name, but you know the one I mean), picking up just the wardrobe basics I was looking for (in a combination of sizes: Small, 10, and Large, showing that sizing of women's clothing doesn't mean anything and definitely shouldn't be a measure of one's self-esteem).

I then wandered down to the sporting goods store, because I'm going to my first live Green Bay Packers game next weekend and wanted to get some stuff to wear. Among the rows of sweatshirts and baseball caps is where things started to turn. I wasn't finding what I wanted and the store is so huge that you can't easily get your bearings and work out where the right thing would be. I was walking up and down aisles scanning, but what started happening is every time I moved my eyes to the right, the world would keep spinning that direction.

Also people were knocking into me, or moving into my way just at the spot on the shelves where I wanted to have a closer look.

And it was pretty hot, with all those people trussed up in warm coats and scarves all moving around in a small space.

I decided this store didn't have what I was looking for, and I could always come back next Saturday anyway, or one evening during the week, and so I made my way out. The hallways had filled up with bodies while I was in there, some kind of rush of teenagers on a cold, wet day with nothing to do. There was a din coming from the Food Court. I was having trouble seeing out of my right eye.

Walking down the main corridor to the hall where Black and White is and where my car was parked (I didn't want to go out the Food Court doors and walk around, even though I was craving fresh air, because it was getting really cold and had been spitting rain and I didn't have my gloves or my umbrella with me - it's that time of change of season where you don't know quite what you need to bring with you when you leave the house), something was sending a strong perfume all through that hallway - a bath goods cart in the central aisle? A perfume shop? The high school girlies walking in packs with too much makeup and too much hairspray? I don't know. But the dizziness was increasing so that I was having increased trouble seeing, and definitely didn't have the energy to hold my stomach in or hold my face in a poised, beautiful-enough pose which I'd been trying to do. I knew my eyes and nose were red already, from looking at myself in the dressing room mirrors. I knew my hair was fuzzy from walking through the rain, and it needs to be cut as well. I was just trying to get out - wasn't sure I could drive, once I got to the car, but I needed to get out of that mall.

The feeling was exactly like being really drunk. And it had been brought on my pollen in the autumn air, an overly perfumed shop or passerby, temperature difference, and maybe a little bit of claustrophobia. Not from being drunk.

The story has a happy ending - I got to a less crowded hall, sat down for a second, worked out I wasn't going to vomit, went and got a drink from a vending machine, my brain straightened right up when I got outside, and I drove home without incident or worry, listening to Prairie Home Companion on the radio.

But this is why I don't do drugs. In my midwestern childhood I was around all these allergens all the time. My head felt this way all the time, and I couldn't hold my face in a poised pretty-enough pose back when I was a girl so I never learned how to be a pretty girl, I am just a weird girl making strange faces and being quite vague, and slightly scaring everyone. And here I am back like that again. Like all folks of my generation who don't do drugs, I have often been strongly pressured by my friends that I should do them. You have to have a really good, compelling reason for turning them down. And I have always told them, I have spent my whole life struggling every day to feel normal. I absolutely don't need to experiment with brain-altering chemicals. I have enough of those already, inside me.

I went to the shopping mall and got dizzy and got room-spins and couldn't see and thought momentarily that I might vomit. That is absolutely enough chemically-induced excitement for me, thank you very much. This is why I don't do drugs.