Melissa Bond - Blood Orange Night: My Journey to the Edge of Madness

Blood Orange Night

My Journey to the Edge of Madness

Melissa Bond

Gallery Books

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Copyright 2022 by Melissa Bond

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition June 2022

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Interior design by Michelle Marchese

Jacket design by Chelsea McGuckin

Jacket photography courtesy of the author

Author photography by Josh Blumental

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bond, Melissa, author.

Title: Blood orange night : the true story of surviving benzodiazepine dependence / Melissa Bond.

Description: First Gallery Books hardcover edition. | New York : Gallery Books, 2022. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021045637 (print) | LCCN 2021045638 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982188276 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982188290 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Bond, MelissaHealth. | InsomniacsBiography. | Benzodiazepine abuse. | InsomniaPsychological aspects.

Classification: LCC RC548 .B66 2022 (print) | LCC RC548 (ebook) | DDC 616.8/4982dc23/eng/20211110

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045637

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045638

ISBN 978-1-9821-8827-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-8829-0 (ebook)

To Jonny and Cash, under whose love and tutelage Ive become the kind of human Ive always wanted to be.

And to all those whove suffered or are suffering under this crisis.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Rainer Maria Rilke

may my heart always be open to little

birds who are the secrets of living

E. E. Cummings

W HEN I FIRST STARTED FALLING and the bruises formed a map of yellows and browns on my body, I touched them and said, This was my sway in the kitchen, This was when I stumbled over the chair, This was in the high grass outside, holding my daughter, Chloe. When I first started falling, I was blinded by a heavy fog of denial. It took a while for me to realize the insidious seep of drugs prescribed by my doctor for sleep were reducing me to nothing but bone and air. I was simply following my doctors orders. I was in a free fall.

When my doctor initially gave me a prescription for Ativan, I knew nothing about it. Now I know its a high-potency, fast-acting sedative hypnotic in the family of drugs called benzodiazepines, or benzos. Those in this family include Klonopin, Xanax, and Valium, among others. By the end of the 1960s, Valium was the top-selling psychotropic drug in the country. In the 1970s, it became the most widely prescribed drug of any kind. It was everywhere. Mike Brady popped a few on the television show The Brady Bunch. In the 1979 movie Starting Over, Burt Reynoldss character had a panic attack. When his brother asked, Does anybody have a Valium?, every woman in the store opened her purse. Most memorable is the 1966 song written by the Rolling Stones, earning Valium the memorable and iconic name mothers little helper.

In 1979, Senator Edward Kennedy held a Senate Health Subcommittee hearing on the perils of benzodiazepines, claiming they produced a nightmare of dependence and addiction, both very difficult to treat and recover from. Shortly thereafter, Vogue magazine called the pills a far worse addiction than heroin. Popularity dipped, but in the 1980s benzo popularity surged again after Xanax was brought to market as a treatment for those with panic disorder.

When I was prescribed Ativan in 2010, I didnt know the medical literature advised occasional use only, two to four weeks maximum. I had no idea long-term prescriptions were on the rise despite warnings of high addiction potential, or that overdoses and deaths from these drugs would soon rival those caused by opioids.

All I knew was I was a new mother with two infants, one with Down syndrome, and I wasnt sleeping. My marriage was faltering, and I was desperate to try to save it. I was desperate to care for my children without the constant struggle of feeling like an insomniac ghost. Take these, my doctor told me. And so I did. Frantic for sleep, I took them month after month, my mouth wide-open like a hungry carp, trusting my doctor, who I believed knew what he was doing.

NovemberDecember 2013

First the light sinks to shadows; then the light is eaten.

Have you felt this? Have you been in this room?

What does one do with nights when there is no fleshy velvet of sleep?

It happened to me, quick as a shot and out of nowhere.

I dont know how many days its been since Ive slept. Two? Four?

I TS WINTER, AND SNOW IS hunched like odd animals on the trees, when I receive the email from ABC World News with Diane Sawyer. One of the producers found my mama turned benzo withdrawal blogs. Im amazed Ive been able to write because of the sicknessthe shivering of my eyes in their sockets, the muscles flickering like butterfly wings. Reading becomes impossible until I do the needed thing to beat the symptoms back. But still I write. I must. I dont need eyes to tap, tap, tap the black squares on the computer keyboard.

Sometimes I think if I can tell the story, Ill survive. Also, Im pissed. For mefor others like me slipping into the dark. I try to write with technical and scientific accuracy to modulate my fury. I want people to understand this isnt anomalous. I cite the medical literature. Its all there, I say. Just look. Theres a mountain of us who have been buried with this sickness; a continent. I dont know if this works. All I know is Ive been writing about this thing thats happened and now ABC wants to talk to me.

The producer is from New York. Her name is Naria or Narnia and I imagine her with red hair, fiery and ready to dig in. I found your blogs, she says. We want to come to Salt Lake City to interview you. She asks if Im willing to tell my story on national television. I pause. Jesus. Diane Sawyer. Shes a legend, a high-ranking news journalist once suspected of being Deep Throat, the informant who leaked information to Bob Woodward in the Watergate scandal. When Diane became the first female correspondent on 60 Minutes, I was in high school. I watched the show every Sunday on the floor of my mothers bedroom. The TV was stuffed at the end of my moms bed and my brother and I had a six-foot swath of carpet on which to deposit ourselves for what we called tube time. Watching Diane, I felt a doe-eyed feminist ardor I feel to this day.