Near Hysteria Experience

1.10.10

This morning around 5:30 am or so, I was driving up the on ramp to Hwy. 51 North in the Cedar Creek area. My car slid out of control, spun in a hundred circles and smashed itself up onto the snow bank by the edge of the on-ramp, very narrowly escaping rolling down a fairly steep incline and into an area of trees and bushes below. Had I been going faster, this very well could have been the outcome. Fortunately, it wasn't. I got out and not having my phone with me nor a coat, unsuccessfully tried to flag down vehicles but was difficult at this time of the morning and it seemed no one wanted to deal with issue of mine. I stumbled across the Interstate, cut my pants climbing over a barbed-wire fence deep in cold snow and made my way into a 24-hour Denny's restaurant to get a tow truck to get my car out, exasperated and deeply shocked. A Latino waitress gave me free coffee while I waited for the tow truck to pick me up at Denny's. Meanwhile, I had left my car running up where it was stuck and a waitress who I know from frequent visits to the restuarant was just getting off work and gave me back up to my car to turn it off. She dropped me off back at Denny's and a shortly after the tow truck arrived. As we pulled out of the parking lot of Denny's in the truck, I saw cop lights flashing up on the on ramp where my car was stuck. I knew I was fucked. Inside my vehicle I fortunately had nothing suspicious aside from an empty bottle of cough syrup lying on the passenger seat. When the tow truck arrived at the site, the tow truck operator told me to get into the car, turn it on, put it into neutral and stay put. The officer exited his patrol car and came over by me and told me to exit the vehicle. He performed a number of tests to ensure I wasn't intoxicated and I wasn't. He then interrogated me in the freezing cold about the cough syrup bottle in the car. He asked me if I had been abusing it. I told him no, but I had. Not anytime recently, but I had nonetheless. I had two bottles in my car before I left a house where I was hanging out with some people fortunately, one of them took one of the two bottles I had in my car off my hands. Why is this important? Because the officer asked me if I had any more bottles of cough syrup in the car. I honestly had no idea but I was pretty sure there weren't any more. I climbed back into the tow truck to stay warm as I watched the officer in a dreadful suspense rummage through my car, the blue and red lights flashing off the rearview mirror and into my deceptively calm face. I imagined him pulling out another stray empty bottle of off brand cough syrup, sealing my fate for an early morning trip to the Marathon County Jail. However, to my unspeakable belief, the search revealed nothing else of the sort in my car. I was not under the influence of anything at the time I had the accident, just driving erratically and immaturely unfortunately. I hated lying to the officer about the bottle but it was either my ass or the truth and I certainly never had driven under the influence of Dextromethorphan (the active psychoactive ingredient in cough syrups; a cough suppressant) before or since.