The Purge (or: Why I Puked Last Night)

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.  —Hermann Hesse

He who drinketh and laugheth till midnight, and puketh and groaneth till daylight, getteth damn little sleep that night.  —Confucius?

     Last night I puked my guts out. That is to say, I threw up; I barfed; I hurled; I ralphed; I blew grits; I bowed before the porcelain god; I drove the Buick with the big white steering wheel; I gave forth the technicolor yawn. It struck me as a very strange situation at the time, and so I have decided to share it with you, good reader. I was as sick as the proverbial dog; and even today I feel a little hung over from it.

     So mainly what happened was my sweetheart was drinking a beer (something she doesn’t do very often), and so I decided to join her by having a drink myself. Over the course of the evening I drank maybe two or two and a half ounces of 100 proof Jack Daniels bourbon, and took four small hits of (legally obtained, I hasten to add) weed. Some time after this, about midway through a second small glass of whiskey, the room started spinning and I felt nauseous. This surprised me since, though I am not a heavy drinker I am not a total lightweight, and getting sick in the middle of only my second drink was strange. Also I am not a heavy smoker, and although four hits of not the finest bud is more than usual for me, it is nothing extraordinary. I politely excused myself from the living room where my sweetheart was watching some gawd-awful show with Gordon Ramsay in it, and went to lie down on my bed.

     Lying in bed I began a long and futile attempt not to get sick. Often I would be lying there AUMing for dear life: a dominant theme for the rest of the evening. Finally I gave up and lurched towards the toilet, where I remained for literally hours.

     My stomach was almost empty, containing nothing but one and a half drinks and some dark chocolate, but my body and mind were under sufficient stress that I was obliged to surrender what few stomach contents I possessed; and then for good measure I stood in the bathroom leaning against the sink, AUMing for dear life, emitting reflexive prayers and groans, and occasionally dry heaving.

     It was while I was in this state, leaning on the sink, panting, moaning, AUMing, and occasionally retching, that I began philosophizing about my present predicament. I could not believe that a mere two shots or so of whiskey and four little bong hits were sufficient to having me puking my guts out and remaining within a foot of the toilet for hours. What follows are the results of my nauseous introspection.

One and a Half Drinks and Four Small Hits of (Legally Obtained, Mind You) Weed. My sweetheart, bless her heart, considered my barf-fest to be simply the result of the relatively few intoxicants that I had ingested, and I have to admit that this was a factor. But I don’t think it’s just masculine pride at not being an utter lightweight that causes me to believe that there were a number of factors at play.

Indulging on an Empty Stomach. Again, this was no doubt an aggravating circumstance, but it is hard for me to believe that I would puke this easily from such small amounts.

Purging Negativity from an Unpleasant Altercation with My Sweetheart. I really believe that this was a major factor. It turns out that she was angry with me the evening before because I had tried, ineptly, to conceal something from her. I learned my lesson in that regard and have decided to be more open with her, even when I’m doing something that I know she doesn’t like. It’s better to aggravate her openly than to take the chance of aggravating her worse by trying to do it when she isn’t looking. Anyway, I slept on the couch the night before last; and it usually takes me about two days to recover from unpleasant scenes with her, because we love each other dearly and the separation caused by the anger of one or both of us is painful, it bruises my heart. I was still in recovery mode last night, and had much darkness (plus a bad night’s sleep) still lingering in the system.

     

Gordon Ramsay. This may seem absurd, but I really don’t like Gordon Ramsay. He seems like an utter prick, an arrogant ass who feels entitled to cuss people out to their face and treat them like crap. Just last night he made a black woman cry and an old chef faint from the stress of facing him. My sweetheart likes him though, and out of love for her I sat through probably two hours of the guy. Watching Gordon Ramsay was a minor aggravating factor, and I can’t honestly say that he made me want to throw up. But he was definitely in the mix, and may have caused at least one extra dry heave.

Energetic Vampires. There is a person I know via the Internet who introduced me to the idea of energetic vampires, or beings who drain the vitality from another. He was referring to humans and “paranormal” entities, but it reminded me of cats and dogs. I am of the opinion that house pets especially get high or uplifted from being in the presence of the higher consciousness of humans, much as ordinary humans can get high or be spiritually uplifted by the mere company of a realized sage. Anyway, last night while watching Mr. Ramsay chew out hotel staff I was still feeling pretty good, and our two dogs were fawning on me big time, trying to get into my lap, licking me, and just generally pressing up against me. Right about the time that the room started to spin a little, I felt that these two dogs were subtly draining life force from me that I needed in my somewhat stressed and vulnerable state. Again, two loving dogs didn’t make me puke any more than did Gordon Ramsay, but still they were somehow in the subtle mix of factors that eventually sent me to the toilet to make forceful offerings to the porcelain god.

A Stupid Puzzle Game I’d Been Playing on the Internet. This is another minor factor that contributed to my nauseous misery last night. I’d been playing some game with virtual wood blocks, somewhat like a cross between Tetris and Sudoku. It is not an inspiring game and not a very good one, and I felt like I was wasting my time with it. Anyway, while groaning with nausea in the bathroom I was having images of the game in my mind which were stupid and unpleasant, and definitely contributed to the sort of negative mood that had me dry heaving for over an hour and eventually had me passing out on the bathroom floor.

The Liminal Effects of a Video I Recorded Earlier That Night. This is a strange one, but I think a significant one. Earlier yesterday afternoon I recorded a video entitled “Studies in Archaic Buddhism: the Viyuha Suttas,” which was to some degree a crystallization of many years of deep study of Pali texts, and which also was a radical deviation from orthodox Buddhist philosophy—so radical in fact that I felt like I had violated some taboo or opened some kind of Pandora’s box. As I was leaning against the sink trying not to heave again (and intermittently AUMing for dear life), it struck me that I may have caused some sort of liminal disturbance in my mind, my karma, or my environment which allowed a freak bout of nausea to have me totally incapacitated.

     In addition to the above factors I also had little glimmerings in my nausea that I had simply been too happy lately, that I had been experiencing more pleasantness than otherwise, and that not only the unpleasantness with my sweetheart the night before but the unseasonable sickness of that night were somehow necessary correctives, the cosmic balance maintaining itself naturally.

     What I went through last night was not so much like mere drunken pukery as it was like the ayahuasca ceremonies I have participated in. My mind was still fairly clear (I really was hardly drunk at all), but, as with ayahuasca, there was a prolonged period in which it felt like the misery of the world was gushing through my body. I leaned against the sink panting and thinking that many beings in this universe suffer like this, or worse, regularly, that death throes are going on everywhere non-stop, and that many beings are simply trapped and wallowing in it. I was seeing the dark side of existence pretty well last night, as I could definitely relate to the First Noble Truth that all conditioned things are dukkha, conducive to unease. Plus of course in most ayahuasca ceremonies I have participated in, I puked my guts out.

     In conclusion, I make the perhaps silly observation that, if one has committed oneself to a life of spirit, then even a bout of puking after indulging in intoxicants can be a source of insight into the human condition, if not into the nature of Ultimate Reality. There is not a single cause for anything, but rather a network of causes, some of the exceedingly subtle.

     Despite the First Noble Truth, Be Happy.