This column brought to you by Parke-Davis, makers of Neurontin... the anticonvulsant seizure medication four out of five doctors don't recommend for sleep disorder. Then again, who ever said my dapper Indian head-tamer, Dr. Rao, flew with the rest of the gaggle?

Some of you more alert sorts may recall Neurontin from an earlier column of mine. I'd been to see Rao and a dispute developed regarding my refusal to take Neurontin for a test drive. I reasoned how I was weary of Rao's apparent ambition to further my conversion from Shop Rat to Lab Rat and the last thing I needed was another drug bobbing down the benzo trail. I stood my ground and Rao eventually went back to nagging on a more familiar front. "How is your drinking going, Ben?" "Just fine... thanks for asking."

So a couple weeks back I show up in Rao's office looking for some kind of pill-form remedy that'll help me get some sleep. I'm battling constant fatigue, bungling through the day like a fart stuck in a mitten. However as soon as night descends, I'm totally plugged in. My brain becomes the pushrod on a funnycar and I spend hours thrashing around in bed while ruminating on all kinds of nocturnal drear that has no real business landing on any dozer's docket -- mainly non-crucial pith like, "Why do I exist?" "Who is Jesus?" and "How come Fannie Flagg's boobs appear larger than my head?" (I often use the Game Show Network as a sleep substitute.)

The problem is that Rao, despite his saloon door medicine hutch, isn't all that comfortable prescribing sleeping pills to sadsacks like me who've been known to wax semi-wistfully on the merits of an endless nap. It's kind of ridiculous because Rao's gotta know that I've stockpiled enough of his ups and downs and all-arounds over the years to off myself over and over and over again, had I a mind to. I've got more dope than the Pope has knee bunions, and all of them came courtesy of Rao and whatever calamity we were trying to hog-tussle back there, whenever. Ah, memories. Wish I had some!

Rao ends up peddling me some Neurontin samples, claiming they'll fair well in my war against the rooster's wail. Sounds good by me. It's one thing to be sick and tired. It's another thing to be sick and tired and 80% vampire. Besides, I'm like any other American. I have responsibilities and demands and decisions to make. It's not like I can make a firm rational decision between box or soft-pack Winstons or fries or mashed potatoes or Sally or Springer without a sound night's sleep.

I decide to take Neurontin for a weeklong spin. If at the end of seven days I'm not either sleeping like a regular person or giddy enough not to care, I'm gonna do the right thing and sell off the remainder to the high school mopes dawdlin' behind the muffler shop. ("Is it Ecstasy? C'mon, Clyde... aren't all drugs at your age?")

That first night I sleep well. I sleep on my stomach. I sleep on my back. I sleep with one foot on the headboard and an elbow slung in Egypt. Owls peck my lids and roosters headbutt the eaves and the sun garrotes the moon and Martians quote sugar beet prices and bombs explode in my sock drawer and Tex Watson beats me with a revolver butt and log trucks collide in my mudroom and, through it all, I slumber on just like some gorged tic on a moose fanny. It represents the best night's sleep I've had in a long time... perhaps since the night I swore off combining Jagermeister, tribal women and truck-stop interpretations of the Kama Sutra. (Author's note: call me, Tupi.)

Just as encouraging is the fact that the next day I feel a real rejuvenated surge of energy. Though part of this likely owes to the fact that I've just had a restful night's sleep, it's clearly more than that. I feel confident and motivated -- a jittery kind of cocksure who-gives-a-shit. I'm so ding-dang fettle that I even leave my residence to have breakfast up at Eddie's Village Inn. I don't even eat breakfast. It's like I just want to be able to show the world (or at least a table full of cherry farmers) that I'm finally able to raise my arm and say "Present" when the rollcall is read.

But, just as sure as Spacely built sprockets, there always has to be some lousy side-effect residue with these anti-seizure meds that attaches itself to the skull wall like some grainy poster of Anson Williams. In this case, nightmares. Nightmares so frightening and weird that they totally undercut the value of a deep sleep because now all you wanna do is wake the hell up before they hear you wailing on the other side of the Mackinac Bridge. Nightmares so heinous and absurd that even to repeat a small portion of one here would be to launch myself into the crosshairs of every unsolved Northern Michigan homicide investigation to occur in this area since my ex-wife nagged me into moving up here. SHIT...I had too MUCH to dream last night might've been a decent rock tune, but it sucks as a defense strategy in circuit court.

I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised. I should've realized that any drug that lists both somnolence and hypertension as common side effects can't be all that helpful over the long haul. How is a drug supposed to cure anything when the drug itself is a schizophrenic?

All it did was remind me of another dumbshit doper imbroglio from my high school years. We'd gone to see this perplexing bill featuring Yes and J. Geils Band at the old Flint IMA Auditorium and there existed a peer group befuddlement as to what sort of drug we were supposed to glug down to achieve a maximum groove quotient. One faction cast their vote for acid, the other reasoned 'ludes. Being the indecisive sort even then, I opted to take both. I guess it was about midway through "All Good People" when I came to the conclusion that, 1) this tune wasn't employing me for it's inspirational basis, and 2) pulling taffy with one's cerebral hemisphere was nothing but a counter-productive act of stupid desperation.

You can go up or you can go down. Attempting to do both simultaneously is just a silly waste of psychiatrist's stationery and an invitation to magnify the goblins. And though I'd hesitate calling Neurontin the worst drug I've ever been dumb enough to ingest -- that honor would still have to go to PCP or Zoloft, both of which fall under the heading of Bad Dope on a good day and remain the two leading causes of mobile home havoc and decreased sexual appetite in return buyers of Tuesdays With Morrie -- I can easily assert that it ain't much good and I plan to tell Rao of my findings as soon as we next meet.

Until then, I'm going back to more tried and true methods of encouraging sleep. Anyone know whatever happened to Brett Sommers?

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