I Accidentally Went On A Bender To Combat My Fear of Flying

To properly get into this story, I have to take you back in time to 2009. I was about 30,000 feet in the air, clutching my armrest for dear life as the tiny plane I was on dropped thousands of feet in the air. Maybe it wasn’t literally thousands of feet , but it was enough to inflict a fear of flying deep into my heart for years.

So when my best friends decided to have a destination wedding in Costa Rica (because f**k those guys) I knew I had to get onto a plane. Knowing I had a city full of seedy “psychiatrists” (and some very well connected friends) at my disposal, I was pretty confident that I could make this trip happen without any major psychological issues. Or so I thought.

You can imagine my relief when my new “psychiatrist”, in the heart of Chinatown, and prescribed me 130 pills Klonopin without a hint of hesitation. As I stuffed the prescription into my jacket pocket, I knew I’d found salvation and the whole world suddenly opened up to me—or, at least, that’s what the scribbling on the paper appeared to convey.

With my inhibitions left on the ground, I jumped on the plane and filled myself to the brim with drugs. I got over my fear of flying, but kinda destroyed my body for a few days. So now, with no detail left behind, here’s a timeline of all the drugs I took during my flight to and from Costa Rica to combat my fear of flying.

New York City, NY –> Liberia, Costa Rica (4 Hours and 56 Minutes)

12:00 AM: Two Klonopin and a Prozac to prepare for the next day’s flight.

6:30 AM: Two Klonopin to take the edge off a nervous morning.

7:30 AM: Half a Klonopin to get me through the stress of a TSA cavity search.

9:00 AM: Half a Klonopin to take the stress out of boarding and finding my seat + one Xanax to make sure I’d be too doped up to have any extraneous conversations.

9:32 AM: A Jack and Coke.

11:03 AM: Turbulence. Another Klonopin.

Total: 5 Klonopin, 1 Prozac, one Xanax, one nip of Jack Daniels

San Jose, Costa Rica –> Fort Lauderdale, Florida (2 Hours and 56 Minutes)

7:30 AM: One Klonopin and a Prozac to prepare for the three-hour flight.

10:30 AM: There was a pretty stressful line in which I was afraid the immigration officials would confiscate my Cuban cigars, Cuban cigarettes, and Cuban cigarillos. I took Another Klonopin for old time’s sake.

11:30 AM: Another Xanax.

12:40 PM: Turbulence? Another Klonopin.

12:45 PM: Fasten seatbelt signs? Half a Klonopin, please.

5:30 PM: Landed in Fort Lauderdale. Treated myself to a Coors light and turkey sandwich.

Total: 3.5 Klonopin, one Xanax, and a Coors light.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida –> New York City, NY (2 Hours and 40 Minutes)

8:00 PM: Boarded the flight, second Xanax with a Prozac chaser.

9:05 PM: Stressful amount of turbulence + pitch black sky outside. Two klonopin.

9:14 PM: “Hi, can I get one cup of ice and two nips of Dewars?”

10:00 PM: One-and-a-half Klonopin, second Xanax.

11:00 PM: Landed. Half a Klonopin just because.

Total: 4 Klonopin, one Xanax, two nips of Dewars

Grand Total: 11.5 Klonopin, 3 Xanax, 3 Prozac, Coors Lights, a nip of Jack Daniels, and two nips of Dewars. Yikes.

To be perfectly blunt, I have almost no recollection of the days following my return to the United States. I do recalled over 8 hours spent in front of my television watching Frasier proceeded by a email from my editor scolding me for copying a press release “word for word” for an article. Don’t remember that.

The following days were as if I was drunk and asleep all at once. I was exhausted and spaced out. I drank cups of water and smoked about a pack of my smuggled cigarettes. Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Don’t take anything a psychiatrist in Chinatown gives you. Ever. He’s not Frasier Crane; homeboy probably doesn’t even like tossed salad or scrambled eggs.