Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

For me the onset of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) came about after a massive overload of toxicity in the spring of 1989. To understand this potentially lethal event that heralded the arrival of MCS, I think it is important to under stand some of the events that lead up to it.

The academic side of school was always easy for me. Where the true challenge lay was in the social realm. Other kids always seemed to fit in a little better and interact a little easier. Most kids wilted in class and thrived at recess. I was exactly the opposite. The classroom was an alcove of logical thinking in a sea of messy social interactions. Socially, the best rewards often went to those who put forth the least intellectual effort. I perpetually felt isolated, alone and was convinced I was somehow flawed.

Now, it wasn't that I lacked an innate social ability (as I found out much later in life) but rater I suffered from an almost complete lack of learned social skills. When I first started to realize this I, like many when starting voyage of self-discovery, blamed my parents. What were they thinking? How could they do this to me? Why had they withheld these vital teachings? Of course the truth is they could not teach what they themselves did not know. The grandparents obviously did not know it either, and from the stories I heard, neither did the great-grandparents. How to interact with the rest of the social world was simply not part of the family tree. This left me permanently in the shallow end, scared and barely keeping my head above water while the rest of the kids frolicked in the deep end of the social pool.

Now I don't mention all of this for any cathartic reason but simply to set the stage for that magical moment when I found the cure for all the self-doubt, fear and anxiety I experienced in the social world. The day came early in my freshmen year of high school when I found the grand elixir of interactivity… Alcohol! To my great relief I discovered that after only a few drinks I was as seemingly relaxed and happy as anyone else. All the uncomfortable feelings of being with others were gone. This was wonderful! I was home!

If this story sounds familiar to you or reminds you of someone you love, I suspect you already know the punch line… The happy upside of drinking doesn't last forever. It was not long before the sense of ease and comfort I enjoyed was harder and harder to come by. More drinking was need and it was needed more often. By the time I got to college there was simply not enough beer to make me feel as if I fit in. The cure I had celebrated for so long was letting me down. Not having another option, I continued to peruse drink with an increased gusto. But no matter how much I drank, the feeling of being on the outside of it all could not be drowned.

Oddly, I could remember every detail of that night for years to come. Neither that night nor the next morning did I ever feel ill, my stomach was never queasy, I never even felt dizzy. Much later on I realized that I had drank much more then was enough to kill a man my size, and I still never even got a hangover. Although I may have dodged the bullet of the immediate effects of my over consumption, the bomb of long-term consequence had fallen squarely on me. I was lucky to have woken up at all the next day, but I awoke to a life that would never again be the same.

One night, after a particularly successful and stressful party that I had thrown, I started drinking. I had been sober from noon to midnight working hard at making others happy. All had a good time. It was time to make up for my last twelve hours of sobriety and I start drinking. I stared with a few beers, and nothing happened. I dove into last tray of vodka jell-o, still nothing was happening. I was starting to get frantic. Then in a seaming flash of brilliance I remembered that we had not used all the vodka. I opened a half gallon bottle and chugged. Finally some relaxation was coming over me; things would be all right once again. I sat on the front porch of the house and kept drinking straight from the plastic jug. Occasionally someone would come home and have a sip or two then move on. By one o'clock, an hour later, there was only about two inches left at the bottom. I sat amazed in the realization that between the beers, the jell-o and this bottle I had drank the equivalent of a half-gallon of cheap eighty-proof liquor. I hoped that maybe this time the alcohol would again bring the sense of peace and happiness that it once did. Maybe this amount would be enough.

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