THE ORANGES ARE NOT FRIENDS
So on Fri, 23 Sept 2016 at around 9ish in the evening I sat myself down with 16 beautiful, hand-selected navel oranges purchased earlier in the day with the intent of getting a stronger sense of the possible psychoactive effects of the pulp and to see how far I might comfortably go eating them "hardcore" fashion. My intent was the satisfaction of my curiosity and to test myself. I got more than my money's worth of both by far. I'm relaying this tale as a WARNING coming from the very most sincere concern for folk's safety and well being. Eating ORANGES is potentially very hazardous, at least as much so as any physical sport or cultural ordeal might be, and then some extra hazardous points for seeming so completely benign to the uninformed. How you approach them is everything. Done with gravity, forethought, preparation, discipline, and caution I ate 32 in a well-planned day where my heart's primary intent was to honor the loss and pain of another. It only took 12, eaten carelessly, wolfishly, with blithe demeanor, and foolishly casual distain for possible risk, to lay me out fucking nasty and leave me there cold, on "their turf". It WAS their turf too. My bad for stepping heavy.
It would be wrong to say that I was repulsed by the flavor or scent as I set to at what I thought a fairly moderate pace, but they awoke in me, before I'd finished with barehand peeling and eating the first one, a sense of apprehension. It was not unlike seeing someone you despise, or maybe even outright fear, suddenly at your door smiling not unpleasantly. Even as I try to write this all out, nearly three days after the fact, the sense of PRESENCE I felt seems bizarre. It wasn't like the presence of a person or "entity" so much as a... consequential moment of consciousness, perhaps. Part of ME, the part that "I should have listened to" you could rightly say, was instinctively taking this as seriously as a deadly precipice or combative encounter. I was AFRAID of the ORANGES on something like a Pavlovian level, but it wasn't just some dumb phobic reflex. Turns out it was in fact an exceptionally intelligent phobic reflex, and I was the dumb one. Scientific fact.
My cognitive process was such that I noted and ignored the premonition out of hand. It was just a freaking orange, sweet and effin' juicy, and just the first in a long line to come that evening. Nothing was actually dangerous here even if I eventually ate all 16 right? Had I not proven my capacity already? Did I not wish to better understand, and perhaps even re-visit, the mysterious visionary ecstasy and unmistakable euphoric effects I experienced last time or perhaps at least rule out chemistry as cause? Surely I just needed to try my theory that the rind was the carrier of the suspected psychoactive compounds. Eating a notably smaller number without all of the, then seemingly excessive, process safeguards I'd worked out for the last time seemed like the way to go. I'd just peel and eat them without being quite so meticulous about removing all of the soft inner rind that inevitably clings to the outside of the sections. This rather small amount of extra rind, perhaps an extra couple of grams total from the 12 fruits I ate, and the sections themselves got an extra thorough, horribly bitter, chewing to unlock the chemical properties and to help physically pass what was pretty much otherwise all highly liquid retentive fiber with a fair load of sugar, water, metabolism effective vitamins, and acid. Did I mention I'd skipped dinner?
Things proceeded quite smoothly from there at first. I wasn't being at all hurried or trying to compete in any sense. There was no jackassery or bombast. My roommates were all out working or asleep and unaware of my evening's choice of activity. It just didn't seem like something worth mentioning as a simple off-the-cuff experiment in eating a fucking fruit. Truth is all there was to see from about 9pm until I crashed out a bit after 2am was a guy sitting in a room half-heartedly watching TV with what was surely a pained look of grim and contemplative disgust growing on his face as he chews down a small pile of oranges at a very slow and steady pace. The all-pervasive bitter flavor I experienced near the end of the previous experience had returned with a vengeance around 8 or 9 in and the urge to keep eating more of them to temporarily alleviate the bitter flavor, despite an almost spiritual revulsion at the thought, was the first real moment when I remembered what horrible little fuckers they are at all times, though we may think otherwise in ignorance or foolishly forget. I ate a few more in a strangely spiteful but casual mood, got to 12, called it good, got some milk in for the mild burn, and went to bed. No serious effects were in evidence, psychedelic, toxic, or otherwise.
I woke up reflexively around 3:30am with a quote from a biblical scene in my head. I looked it up to write this, turns out it was in Revelation 10:10. There's this bit where John is handed a "little scroll" by an angel and is told to eat it and that "It will be sweet as honey in your mouth, but it will turn your stomach bitter". I had a distinctly unworldly feeling as the quote was audible enough to have seemingly shocked me awake, but I seemed otherwise fine. I was a little hungry so I got me a bowl of cereal and sat down in the living room to eat. I won't go through detailing the thoughts that were in my head as I sat eating, or after. I have poor retention of the details and what little I do have on file is mostly in the "going to my grave with me" category. My mental state was unmistakably, though subtly, altered. We'll leave it at that for the purposes of this story because none of it was worth the price or even all that impressive as phenomena. I finished my cereal as my mind absorbed the apparent success of my experiment and was about to head back to bed intending to root around in the new "headspace" and see if the uptake was still increasing, which of course it sure as hell was. Lucky me.
I was passing through the kitchen to my room at about 30 min total time after waking when I felt myself suddenly begin to salivate extremely heavily without hunger or food stimulus, the clearest sign of oncoming emergency vomiting. It was the only warning my body gave me before THE ORANGES took their toll for my trespass. I had definitely lost all of the milk and cereal after about my third go of wretching, and I dimly recall passing my previous day's lunch without too much trouble around this time, but no sign of the fucking oranges either way. They had already begun their southern march apparently. It made some sense. If they were metabolizing in my upper GI and I only then experienced such intense nausea clearly my toxic reaction hypothesis for Cainad and Net's unfortunate experiences was also proving valid. I figured that since I felt ok (but by no means good!) after clearing the cereal I'd probably be just fine by morning. Wrong again Joe. THE ORANGES had just oodles of truly heinous plans for my day.
I think it was about 6:30 or 7am when I opened my eyes from the brief nap I had intended as sleep. I was fucking SWEATING and experiencing "chills" I now believe to have been mild toxic tremors in hindsight as I never presented any fever, but neither symptom was all that severe as yet. I was also in fairly painful abdominal distress I took for gas or something. Remember I believed myself to have been in control of the situation from the beginning still at this point. I was still quite noticibly altered as well, though this was merely incoherent and irritating background noise as I took stock of my status and went out to sit with my friends, smoke a bit of weed for my nerves and stomach, and let them know what was up. Within the few minutes it took to sit down, smoke some, and drink about half a glass of water I was in real abdominal agony and not long after the pain set in I lost the water with extreme prejudice, but managed not to make a mess.
It was at this point that I realized something was very wrong in an unanticipated way or several, and that I was in for MUCH more than I had bargained for. I'm not the sort to panic, even when maybe I should, but let me tell you I was shook hard by the realization that I was having a full on toxic reaction, and as the symptoms first presented I STILL wasn't thinking it was just the oranges because it was so severe. At first I thought maybe I'd gotten a nasty stomach bacteria from having forgotten to wash the oranges before I ate them or some other random fluke, but the timing was all wrong. Onset was too fast for a common bacterial toxin unless I'd had it with lunch the previous day, and that would have very likely showed other flu like symptoms and nausea long before I ate the oranges.
When I was probably into the double digits on trips to vomit from trying to get water down and hadn't seen any trace of blood in my issue whatsoever I finally understood what was happening. THE ORANGES' fiberous mass had caused an upper GI obstruction just below my pyloric sphincter, right under the stomach, and they were continually releasing large amounts of all those chemicals I was just SO interested in. The good news was this meant I was in no real danger and didn't need a hospital visit immediately. The bad news was I could be sure that I would suffer horrible pain and incapacitating nausea, plus toxic side effects mental and physical, until said mass of pulpy hell was dislodged. I helped this process along with direct thermal therapy, hydration through incremental oral absorbing (if the sweating dehydrated me enough no amount of external manipulation and heat would save me), and stretching my left side, and thank God for having a smokable pain reliever-nausea inhibitor handy. If a full day of the treatment didn't clear it I'd have gone to the hospital, but I was feeling 95% within 24 hellish hours of eating a mere 12 oranges TOTAL in a little under six hours.
TWELVE FUCKING ORANGES tormented me physically and in various senses annoyed me mentally for a whole damn day. That was what I got for thinking I could just roll on up to 'em and squeeze them for their secrets like so much juice. I got my ass handed to me by a bunch of brainless, toothless, immobile, iddy bitty little softies with acid for blood and alkaline flesh as bitter as the struggle for survival itself. THE FUCKING ORANGES can have their spot. That's not me feigning permissive authority in the matter. It's a statement of the facts. That is THEIR patch over there and they are damn well fit to keep it. If I ever go back that way do be sure to check the weather, because it'll be snowing in hell!!!!!
