drugs are bad, mmkay?

as i lay on the floor thursday night, trying and failing to manage to either harf or go to sleep, in a haze of quadruple-threat (hard-breathing allergies, piercing headache, immobilizing gut spasms, and almost-but-not-quite-enough nausea) full-system decrepitude (and possible poisoning from ingesting 7 year old pepto bismol (immediately after having thrown out month-old PB on account of it "was expired" but having forgotten to check the date on the other bottle)), i realized: i'd forgotten that hops' birthday was the next day.

my experience with the roids has definitely been a negative one, and one that i'll seriously think twice about before repeating. sure, the rash went right away, but for more than a week i couldn't lift, couldn't think straight, had hot flashes, flushes, and constant nausea, difficulty sleeping, and a zillion other unpleasant side effects. with the urushiol, there's just one effect and it's All Natural. the best course of action, of course, is to avoid the poison in the first place. short of that, i'll stick to caladryl next time.

worst of all, i haven't had a gorram drop of beer in well over a week. that's bad enough, but i'm a homebrewer fer chrissakes! how can i relax and don't worry if i can't have a homebrew?

also worst of all, i couldn't cold-turkey the roids because, they say, that's actually much worse than what i did, which was to gradually lower the dose from day to day. day today was the final dose and i'm still not exactly feeling tops. but i'm feeling better than when i had Lots Of It In Me.

bleh.