Back when I heard about altered states of consciousness, the descriptions didn’t make a lot of sense to me until one of the books mentioned reading. Then it all became clear. That’s right: my drug of choice is print.

This has obvious implications that the kids figured out early on. I can be “told” or “asked” things while I am reading and make answering sounds, but it bypasses my usual judgment.

Last night, I experienced a different sort of repercussion. Brent recently finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and passed it along to me because it is set in Sweden. My intention had been to read it later, but he explained that he thought I might like to read about some of the places we’d be going, so I bumped it up the list (more accurately, the pile on the shelf of books to read). By bedtime, I was about halfway through and figured I’d read myself to sleep.

Bad plan. The book is a mystery and I got sucked in. I noticed nothing until I finished, sometime after midnight, which is well past my bedtime. My head hurt. I was feverish and hot. I was desperately tired, but also anxious. None of those things had presented themselves while my eyeballs were busy soaking up the drug. It took a while to get to sleep.

I suppose I could describe my state this morning as hungover. I’m tired and blurry, slightly headachy. And I am already wondering about my next hit.