99% Dream

If this is fiction to you, then it is fiction to you. Perhaps it is safer to think of it as such. This story begins about 17 years ago.

There is a man who worked for a counterculture magazine in a very big city. He had made friends with some of the biggest figures in the counterculture world and ended up writing for an anti-Drug War magazine. It was there he criticized the major Drug Warriors in the USA and the most powerful Federal agencies fighting mostly peaceful drug users. He was there at the magazine for a few years, made few to no enemies with his co-workers. But he still kept insisting that the Drug War must be stopped so that medicines outside of the day’s orthodox pharmacopoeia might be used to helped chronically ill people and that peaceful, non-violent drug offenders may be free from the nation’s worst prisons. (Per capita, the USA has more people in prison than any other nation, then and now.) At that time, he also thought it was OK for people to grow and smoke pot for whatever reason they wanted, so long as they didn’t hurt anyone — “The American way,” he thought. He also thought the criminalization of drugs had made matters worse overall and created more addicts and criminals.

BTW this person was using Mac Classics networked throughout his office to communicate his ideas and for production at this magazine.

He had something of a falling out with his editor-in-chief, who seemed to feel threatened by the man’s writing and editorial skill. The editor-in-chief very much wanted to keep his status as number one at the magazine, and he did so through questionable means. He began a campaign to drive the man out of the magazine and, after a few months of wielding corrupt power, the plan succeeded.

Before he left the big city, the man got a flu and went to see his doctor. Instead of his usual doctor being there, someone who looked liked the late Professor Irwin Corey was there instead. The man was given no notice of this and he even observed a man who looked highly covert leaving the doctor’s office while he entered. While there, the doctor checked out the man’s swollen glands. The man felt a sharp and painful “something” when the doctor pressed hard on the left side of the man’s neck where the carotid artery is, and he wondered what was happening to him. Upon returning home, the man looked at his neck and, indeed, there was a small blood mark at the site of the pain. The man wondered if something had been injected or pushed into him. Was there something there that could monitor his thoughts? Mind control? (The carotid artery runs to the switching centers of the brain.)

Returning to his home state, he found that his family, old friends and his new church welcomed him. In his late twenties he was baptized and accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior. But there were certain other entities at work that did not want the man to live anywhere in peace. One night as he approached a friend’s home, the man saw a pop. pop, pop of lights coming from the brushes at the edge of a field and then he felt a sudden rush of pain throughout his whole body. No, the man was not shot with bullets, but with some sort of mysterious microscopic particles. Metals perhaps? In any case the man for years felt impossible pain when helicopters and certain planes flew by. He also had his food tainted at restaurants numerous times (he often felt depressed or confused after eating out at diners and such).
But he lived with this strange but often severe pain that confused his mind and made him suspicious of people that he didn’t know before working at the counterculture magazine. He still had the church and his old friends, but a whole lot of people “coming out of the woodwork” seemed to hate him and attack him with awful words, high-tech pain-delivering gadgets, and so on.

But the man pushed on. He was confirmed in his church, married a year after the “attacks” started and tried his best to keep a good job. After a difficult stint hand-coding in an office that made handheld electronic books, he decided to return to one of his first loves: horticulture. After all, the man had worked for a real, traditional Japanese landscaper in high school and knew how to garden like a pro. He relished the idea of a simpler life. He began contracting for landscape architects and other worthy horticultural pros. The man met with some success here. Work was consistent and the pay pretty fair.

Still, the man fell off the path and began to use cannabis at times to relieve his pain. He was advised to see psychiatrists, but the drugs they prescribed just disturbed his mind as much as the perceived harassment.

The landscaping jobs only lasted a few years. After having been in an office for so long, the man found it hard to adjust to outdoor labor. His back suffered. He returned to school, a large university, to learn Web site design and then went to work at some large corporations and also back to work as a journalist.

Then the migraines first started. The man could not tolerate this intense pain and eventually began to see a neurologist for the headaches. To boot, his wife developed Multiple Sclerosis and this made life even harder. But he (and she!) worked through the challenge and served his wife as best he could. Managing the medicines was a different story. Prescribed narcotics, psychiatric drugs and whatnot caused him than to feel just paralyzed, and he couldn’t do much of anything. He went on disability and has been hospitalized four times in the past four years.

Now he’s seeking help from the faithful and a 12-step program. He doesn’t mind much that he’s not the “Hep Cat” he once thought he was, only now that he can now live in truth, drug-free, and begin to get on with his life. His wife, his church and family all love him. And while he thinks past offenses by the covert agents against his person should be looked at, to stop this kind of abuse and torture from happening to others, and that certain people should be ordered to explain their actions, the man is not holding his breath. His focus is on his own personal recovery. Day be day.

The most important thing for this man is love. The man has it from many sources. He’s lucky.