Melissa Bond, BLOOD ORANGE NIGHT: My Journey to the Edge of Madness
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[1:13]Melissa Bond is the author of Blood Orange Night my journey to the edge of madness poet a narrative journalist Melissa
[1:19]Blogged and became a regular contributor for Mad in America in the years of her dependence on benzodiazepines
[1:26]ABC world news tonight interviewed her for a piece in January 2014
[1:31]Melissa is a respected writer on the perils of over-prescribing benzodiazepines and has been featured on the podcast's
[1:38]Risk IG and TD and the addiction podcast. I probably should not admit that I took a value of last night
[1:44]To go to sleep because she would
[1:46]Really not like that. I'm kidding, but sort of not kidding
[1:50]Welcome Melissa. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss blood orange night
[1:55]My journey to the edge of madness. I could not be more thrilled to be here with you. This is super exciting for me
[2:02]Oh as soon as I was pitched this book even just the name in the subtitle my journey to the edge of madness
[2:08]I was like oh yes, I have to read this
[2:10]That's amazing and I was so looking forward to reading it. I like savored it and your writing is so good and your experience was so compelling
[2:18]And I just felt like I was in your head going through all of this with you as great memoirs do and
[2:25]Anyway, I'm I'm a big fan of you and your writing in this whole story and just feel like I have been through this journey with you now
[2:31]So thanks. Yeah
[2:33]Absolutely, and you know one of the things that was really interesting as I was writing the book
[2:38]I was the two parts of my kind of writing history
[2:42]Just as a poet and then as a journalist
[2:45]They were kind of duking it out like you know, how do we want to tell this story?
[2:49]What's going to be the most potent way for people to really
[2:53]Understand how intense it is to become dependent upon
[2:58]Do you know your doctors prescribed medicine and then suddenly realize oh?
[3:02]I don't know how to get off and they don't know how to get me off. Yeah
[3:06]And I ended up
[3:08]Deciding that trying to bring people along with me in the real like visceral experience of it
[3:14]Would be so much more important in the heart of it
[3:19]Then just just speaking to their heads
[3:21]Which the journalist part of me wanted to dig in and say what do these drugs really do
[3:25]How you know much do they change the brain structure?
[3:28]So my hope is that I created a balance of both
[3:32]You know, but I'm so excited to hear you say that like oh you felt it
[3:37]I felt that
[3:39]But what tell listeners a little bit
[3:42]About what this book is just give the your synopsis of it and
[3:48]And when you also when you knew it would be a book. I
[3:51]So I'll start with this synopsis the the book starts with my marriage and the birth of my son who's born with
[4:00]Down syndrome so this sudden like upheaval in my life and
[4:05]It kind of follows this trajectory of a number of
[4:09]Really intense life events
[4:12]And I think we've all kind of experienced that where you're thinking there can't be something else like I can't handle another thing
[4:18]So for me it was
[4:20]Losing I call it kind of my personal Fukushima
[4:23]You know, there was the earthquake of my son being born and having to navigate being
[4:28]Not just a mom, but a mom to a special needs child
[4:32]Then losing my absolutely beloved job as a magazine editor and poetry editor of this, you know
[4:39]Great glossy magazine and
[4:41]My desires to be a narrative journalist like we're crushed in the recession
[4:46]And then getting pregnant again and having all of these identities that I had really lived with for so long stripped away
[4:53]And having pathological insomnia so
[4:57]So though that's kind of where it starts and it follows this trajectory of this
[5:01]Level of desperation. I've never felt in my life and getting prescribed drug called ambient or sorry out of
[5:07]Ann first ambient but then out of Ann which is a
[5:11]drug in the family of benzodiazepines which we all know as
[5:16]Xanax
[5:17]Klonepin
[5:18]Valley and mother's little helper and
[5:20]My doctor had said these drugs are fine
[5:23]You have an adrenal issue if you don't sleep. You're gonna have a psychotic break
[5:27]We have got to get you to sleep and I said I was so desperate after months and months of getting like
[5:33]Maybe two hours of sleep a night
[5:36]That I basically said it's that or take a two by four to my head because I cannot take it and
[5:43]What happened that I didn't realize was these are drugs that are so potent and so addictive which
[5:50]It was in the medical literature, but they're prescribed like candy nowadays
[5:54]And I kept he kept raising my dose and raising my dose until I started having neurological symptoms that made me think
[6:01]I had MS or a brain tumor and
[6:05]Then it follows the path of
[6:08]Kind of who I've became and what I had to do to get off of these drugs so
[6:13]You know trauma, but also lots of humor and the love that I found and the the will that I found in that process
[6:22]Which I think a lot of people can relate to because we don't get out of this
[6:26]Life without suffering at times
[6:29]Oh my gosh. Yeah, the descriptions of your insomnia. We're just so
[6:35]Compelling. I mean, it's not just like you couldn't sleep a little bit. I mean, this is like
[6:40]You know you were like ill. You know you were I mean, it was like people saw you in order like what's wrong like are you
[6:48]I
[6:49]See I am interrogation level insomnia. I mean
[6:53]I had never in my life experienced anything like it
[6:56]I had experienced maybe like waking up and being awake for two or three hours and then feeling really hammered the next day
[7:03]But this was like hanging on for dear life just to my sanity
[7:06]You know like there was this moment. I remember where my son was gosh, maybe seven or eight months old
[7:13]I was pregnant with my second
[7:16]And I
[7:18]Couldn't remember where I had left him. He had been in his little like they're these little rockers
[7:22]You know with a little mobile over it and I remember being in the kitchen and thinking
[7:28]Oh my god. Where did I put him and just having this absolute terror and of course
[7:33]I'd put him somewhere
[7:34]responsible but half of my brain was absolutely just being ravaged by the insomnia and I just sobbed
[7:42]Like holding his little feet in my hands when I found him. He was just on you know on the bed
[7:47]But I was it was this terror so
[7:50]You know and I more and more that when I talk to people I
[7:55]Hear these stories and a lot of people just feel like they suffer in silence
[7:59]You know because we got to get up and go in this culture and
[8:03]And it's just I'm I'm amazed at how many people suffer through it and
[8:08]You know, and we just want something that will help them the level of desperation we get to so these drugs were
[8:15]You know what were prescribed me and they're prescribed lots and lots of people
[8:19]My gosh, yeah, and I also feel like with insomnia just starting as as a starting point like
[8:27]the effects of sleep deprivation on mood and
[8:32]food and cognition and
[8:35]You become like a different person. Like I feel like I've become a different person after one night of like
[8:40]Four hours versus one night of eight hours. You know, and that's just
[8:44]You know, but to be chronically sleep deprived
[8:49]Anyway, it's just again, it almost is this is like psychosis in a way in and of itself
[8:54]I think you're exactly right if feels I remember it felt like I was kind of crawling through this underground tunnel
[9:01]You know, and my my points of awareness were make sure my kids are okay
[9:06]Like track that I have like fed him on you know on a schedule
[9:11]Try to like and then just trying to make it through the day
[9:14]You know and feeling like my skin on fire
[9:17]And I described it as like these gaps. They would just be this gap where it was like
[9:22]My brain couldn't quite catch up because it was so exhausted by being away for so long
[9:28]And and I thought I was like if I was being interrogated right now
[9:32]I would say anything
[9:35]Anything to get sleep and I feel like you know
[9:38]Not to throw your husband under the bus here or anything
[9:40]But you know, I think that was a challenge
[9:42]I don't know that he you know
[9:44]I don't know that you were getting the support
[9:46]Perhaps that maybe you needed in that moment and that of course
[9:49]Exacerbates everything and the night when he went out Shawn right Shawn went out for drinks with his friends
[9:55]And it should have you you're like it should have just been in normal night when he went out, but instead
[10:00]You know, I was I was sure somebody was breaking into the house and really was your cat and you know
[10:05]You were just like over there. You're like you can't do that again
[10:07]He's like what like I went out for beers
[10:09]Right right. There's that that sense of like wanting to retain normalcy, you know
[10:14]I so I had so much guilt which you know was something that I had to work through of like suddenly becoming this
[10:20]Fragile like glass spun creature. I was like where's the where's the woman that traveled to terrible countries alone?
[10:27]Like where's the woman that was a rock climber and was so strong like suddenly I was brought to my knees and
[10:34]And I was embarrassed by that. I wanted to be that strong
[10:39]woman and to
[10:40]Try to sort of give him a normal life and at the same time like not acknowledging my own pain
[10:47]Yeah, so yeah, there was that moment and I remember I'd been pacing the house
[10:51]I was sure someone was gonna break in and and and you know
[10:55]Do unmentionable things to my son and I was pregnant wouldn't be able to defend him and and my my
[11:02]Husband at the time walked in after a night of beers and I'm crouched by the back door
[11:08]with contractions
[11:11]From my pregnancy and absolutely desperate and he looks at me and he's like what's going on?
[11:17]And I just broke down and so obviously yeah
[11:21]Oh
[11:22]Can we fast forward for a second to today because I really want like the update
[11:26]On how you are and like it's the bucket mat and like what's going on with you and I know it's like a spoiler
[11:33]But here we are. I don't know, you know, how are you sleeping? Like what is going on?
[11:37]How are your kids like tell me what is the update?
[11:40]Yeah, I mean you're asking the question that everyone
[11:43]You know after they read the book we're like okay, but I just need to know are you okay?
[11:47]And it's true because it's such a radical trauma
[11:52]So what I will say is that I mean, I'm really it's 2022
[11:57]I'm definitely like about seven years out and I will say that
[12:02]The amount of time to recover from a brain injury which which I really do believe these drugs cause
[12:10]Signific and structural changes that just take a long time to recover from I sleep great
[12:17]I now divorced my husband, you know, it was just we just got torn apart
[12:25]It's much better. So I'm basically like a single full-time working mom
[12:30]Writing all you know like I'm back in my artist's self like
[12:36]I just feel like
[12:38]Coming out of the mud like it's almost like Persephone's underworld. It felt like and then coming back into
[12:45]The sunshine. It's so much brighter and so much more precious
[12:51]and I am
[12:53]Stronger than I've ever been. I do my nervous system
[12:58]Is more fragile than it was before this
[13:02]But I know how to take care of it for the most part
[13:05]I really know when I'm like oh, I can feel that burn in my skin
[13:09]I can feel that I'm starting to shake and I know what I need to do to take care of myself
[13:13]So I'm fully functional. I am like joyous to be alive
[13:20]And and I feel just incredibly grateful that I've been able to come out of it without significant damage and
[13:27]You know communicate my story which feels like the story of
[13:32]Of hundreds of thousands of people to the world
[13:35]And so
[13:37]And my kids are great. They are 12 and 14 now
[13:41]Yeah, I mean, they're just so much fun and so
[13:46]You know, they're they're just like the lights in my sky really going back to the drug piece
[13:53]What were some of the worst that you can share some of the worst side effects the worst
[13:58]You know like what was
[14:00]What would surprise listeners the most? You know what surprised me
[14:04]So when I finally started researching it after I had
[14:07]There's a there's a seminal scene in the book where I'm holding my one half-year-old daughter
[14:12]She just gotten out of the tub
[14:14]You know, I'm wrapping her in their towel
[14:15]And I take a step out of the bathroom and I fall like a dead body from a bridge
[14:19]So my the signals that tell your muscles to contract just stop
[14:25]Like they they just don't they don't have the air traffic control. They're just like do we go?
[14:30]Do we not so sometimes you're up sometimes you down. I think
[14:34]the
[14:35]Intensity of the withdrawal symptoms and the fact that they're so varied is one thing that shocked me when I started doing research
[14:43]So I would have vision
[14:45]Sometimes and then it would go black and I would be fully conscious
[14:49]But there was something that was happening with the muscles. I don't I don't even know what was happening
[14:53]But it made it scary to drive
[14:56]I would have nausea and fire all over my skin
[15:01]Every single day. I mean it felt like I had a really like high-level flu every single day
[15:06]And that was just kind of my working state. There would be emotional swings. Oh my gosh
[15:12]Something that I had never experienced before that gave me a tremendous amount of compassion
[15:17]But I would swing from rage
[15:19]to like despair
[15:21]Constantly and I had been a pretty even keel person
[15:24]And so I think that was the instability of everything
[15:27]You know, am I gonna like barf in the parking lot while I'm trying to go get groceries for my kids
[15:32]You know, or am I going to like fall while I'm just trying to you know, pick up some diapers
[15:39]Am I going to be clutched with these? I would get these really
[15:44]Radical muscle cramps that would fold me over
[15:46]I describe it as like a rot while or had suddenly attacked my stomach and it was just
[15:51]And I would just have to fold over and wait knowing that this was neurotransmitters that were not
[15:57]Sending the release, you know, chemical to my muscles
[16:02]And so I was in this contraction
[16:04]I would literally be like barely breathing for an hour like on the floor. It's just it's crazy, isn't it?
[16:12]I mean it's something I could not have imagined going through
[16:14]It was like it was like the Olympics but without any kind of like clear sense of what you're going to face on a given day
[16:22]I'm so sorry that you've had to live through all this
[16:25]Well, yeah, thank you and
[16:29]I mean what I will say is coming out of it like the humility and the joy at being alive is something that I really
[16:37]I really really deeply value
[16:40]It's not something I would wish on anyone and I feel incredibly lucky that
[16:45]Somehow I was able to devise and put together a system that helped support me
[16:51]You know to survive it a lot of people don't
[16:55]Or they stay in disability for a long long time and and you know, that's
[17:01]A lot of part why I wrote the book was because it wasn't just like a really rough story that I had something I'd gone through
[17:07]But I mean just the like hundreds of emails that I've gotten from people saying please, you know
[17:13]Keep riding like are you okay?
[17:14]I'm four years out and I still have like really debilitating withdrawal symptoms
[17:20]Oh
[17:21]Yeah, so I feel I mean it's crazy because my story is really rough, but I'm lucky. I'm lucky though
[17:29]Do you feel like people should not take
[17:33]Any of these drugs like what is your takeaway from the whole thing?
[17:36]Yeah, so I love that you asked that because people might think that I'm totally like anti
[17:41]You know Western medicine, which I'm definitely not
[17:45]What I want is they're two things that I would love people to take away
[17:49]One is this idea of informed consent so that doctors will tell you I was told these were not addictive and that
[17:57]That my doctor said I've known a guy who's taken these from 19 years and never had a problem
[18:02]So I felt this sense of safety and following his
[18:06]You know prescriptions to take them every night
[18:08]So having a real you know
[18:10]There's a black box warning around them now saying these are highly addictive within the space of one or two weeks
[18:16]And they're extremely difficult to get off of so
[18:19]Had I had I known that there's so many other tools in the medical toolbox
[18:25]So knowing that you don't have to use the sledgehammer
[18:30]You know, we all go through really trying times and we have to create kind of our own toolbox of
[18:36]What helps me what what keeps me in a more stable?
[18:40]You know, what's what's our wellness kind of recipe?
[18:43]You know, so for me that is eating well exercise like all your basics
[18:48]But I also do acupuncture, but if you do get to a place of more cute medicine
[18:53]Really knowing and being educated and having the doctors being able to tell you like this
[18:59]This is really heavy-handed and you can only use this for a very short period of time
[19:04]There are other things that are much softer and and won't cause that kind of disability. Wow. Yeah
[19:10]So what what now for you?
[19:13]You've got the book out you're talking about it letting people know you got your kids your back right?
[19:18]I mean, you know, where are you going from here? Oh, I have so many dreams
[19:25]You know, it's just like after drunk after like crawling through the mud for so long. Yeah, now it's just like my heart feels so
[19:35]So open and the creativity is like this this incredible like tsunami
[19:40]I feel like the tide of my creativity is just so much higher because
[19:45]Of what I've been through and I appreciate it
[19:47]So I mean, I have I'm working on a book of fiction that is like two thirds done
[19:53]Because my son has special needs. I feel very much an advocate for the special needs community
[20:00]You know, I have my soft spots and there's lots of creativity around that.
[20:04]I mean, I'm really interested in film and they've done like a short film about my son.
[20:09]But it feels like, you know, kind of the world is this like beautiful ripe fruit that I am just digging my teeth into.
[20:20]And, and wanting to connect and also support and advocate in specific areas because I, you know,
[20:29]once you've suffered like that, you don't want anyone else to go through it.
[20:34]Yeah, wonderful. What advice would you give for aspiring authors? Oh my gosh, I would say believe in your work.
[20:44]And the idea that you have to wait for inspiration to strike before you actually write is a disservice.
[20:52]You have to invite the muses in and then open the door so that what that looks like in practice is sitting down to write every day, if you can.
[21:02]I have a practice of writing in my journal every single morning and with my creative piece that I'll give you should I give you like a teaser.
[21:10]Yeah.
[21:11]Yes, please.
[21:12]Well, we'll see if my editor wants to keep the name, but I think it's a great name. It's called streamline.
[21:18]Oh, love it.
[21:21]It's something I've been writing for 15 years. So I think it's interesting. It's ripening and I really excited about it. But that's your teaser.
[21:29]Can you say anything about what it's about.
[21:32]It is it's a kind of an experimental novel about interestingly, a visual artist that has, she has like a form of epilepsy that can't really diagnose and she goes into these kind of alternate realms.
[21:46]But there are all these like really juicy characters that are pretty quirky and she had to give it away.
[21:54]The other thing that I want to say to aspiring authors that's so important. One of the things that I did for a long time was to say, I don't think I'm good enough.
[22:05]And that is your death. No, you have got to absolutely be your best ally.
[22:11]So really just sitting at space of being an ally for your work. Melissa, thank you. Thank you for your powerful beautiful story and sharing it with everybody and just the warmth that I can feel like sort of coming from you.
[22:24]It's just awesome. It's really really wonderful. So I don't know. It was really great to meet you.
[22:30]And just to delight. I love what you do on your on your podcast and all of the other things you do. It's just really remarkable. Thank you. Thank you.
[22:38]Okay. I hope to meet person sometime.
[22:41]Where do you live by the way? Where are you in the world?
[22:43]I'm in Utah.
[22:45]Wow. Okay.
[22:46]And we are you're on the East Coast. I'm on the East Coast. Yeah. I'm in New York area.
[22:50]Okay. Okay. Well, I, you know, I love New York. So I might.
[22:56]I'm usually in the city, but not right now.
[22:58]Okay.
[22:59]Well, hopefully to be continued.
[23:01]Absolutely. Okay.
[23:03]Thanks.
[23:04]Bye bye.
[23:06]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[23:10]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbowens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[23:22]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Beck, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:26]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.