Liquid Lunch 2: Electric Panic Attack

from A Tale of Jobs Not Well Done

(Cont’d from Part 1)

I nervously type in ‘effects of Xanax and alcohol.’ I notice I spelled ‘Xanax’ with a Z, but Google got the gist of what I meant:

“Never mix Xanax (alprazolam) with alcohol, opioids, or other central nervous system depressants. These combinations cause severe drowsiness, slowed breathing, coma, or death.”

Well, fuck me. And fuck you too Google. Now what?

I had just inadvertently taken half a brick of Xanax after yet another boozy work lunch with the boys. I hadn’t intended on taking benzos considering I didn’t have a prescription and forgot I even had access to them.

The little stick of Schedule IV controlled substance looked like a tiny white crumb, kind of like a sliver of a broken Altoid, which I guess is why I put it in my trusty Altoid tin. Part of the post beers for lunch ritual, I tapped into my little box of breath mints like clockwork.

Michael had given the Xanax to me weeks earlier. He was my project manager and we had been hired days apart. He spent a lot of time outside the building lobby vaping and on the phone, as I would always see him on my way to drink lunch.

We were both running a con of sorts and became confidants. Michael came from a tough part of the city and was very street smart. His fiancee was pregnant. Then somehow she was his girlfriend and also no longer pregnant.

Regardless, Michael managed to get me to donate some old side tables for his new apartment and even my Netflix password. In return he kept it together enough to run our daily meetings and keep me out of the hot seat with the rest of the team.

He could see I was in no shape to be leading teams or accounts, as my alcohol induced anxiety was on full display.

We had a meeting with a potential new client, Tommy Bahama. Catering was set up in our overkill conference room that could easily seat thirty people. We had our top execs present accounting for six of the seats and the client came with another six or eight folks.

As with most kickoff meetings in advertising we would waste the first 10 minutes going around the room with a brief introduction by each person.

I had done this countless times before, and while I now know that my anxiety and alcoholism were wrapped up in each other, I had managed to get through these practices without much dread.

That day was different and I began to feel it as soon as the first person started speaking. I was getting warm. Then warmer. The next person began to introduce themselves; name- duh, current position- okay. Former experience- yes, of course. Then the next person.

And suddenly I’m not paying attention at all. I’m mentally counting the seats until it’s my turn. Over and over, I count, then recount. Now, seven to go. What am I going to say?

“Hi, I’m Chris”. Or how about “Chris Kavanaugh, I’m a..” Holy shit I’m having a panic attack. Five to go.

Where did I work? Do I lead with my agency experience or my Microsoft stuff? Do I go with funny sardonic, or just straight laced? What would Tommy Bahama people want to hear?

The blood is running away from my legs and they feel tingly.

I need to get up, maybe that will help. Two more people before my turn.

I push my chair back and walk over to the table of food and drinks. I think if I time my return right as I have to introduce myself it will alleviate this terror going through my body and I’ll come off as nonchalant and perhaps even confident.

I get back to my seat and our president, the gal who hired me and is sitting to my left, says something about my timing. Not in a good way, and out loud, so the entire group could hear.

I didn’t exactly hear what she said but it only exacerbated my panic and now I’m sitting down and my mouth is open. Its my turn.

But no words are coming out and I feel like I’m being strangled. I cannot speak more than one or two mumbles at a time.

Everyone is looking at me, and then they look with empathy. Or pity. I think my face may be purple, or sheet white- I can’t tell. People are trying to finish my sentences though, like we’re playing Mad Libs at the dentist’s office.

Somehow my boss is now speaking and my turn must be over. I am humiliated and this is a new career low.

We don’t get the account.

Michael, who wasn’t in the meeting, surely heard about the disaster, and later pulled me aside with the Xanax in his hand.

That is why I am Googling Xanax and alcohol effects in the late afternoon a few weeks before I am laid off.

I was almost out of mints, and at the bottom of any Altoid box, there will be scraps left, tiny shards of once whole mints that, should you need to cover the alcohol on your breath after drinking at work, will suffice.

If your thoughts are predominantly about when and how you’re going to drink alcohol, you too can forget your shady project manager slipped you a Xanax bar and mistakenly pop it in your mouth, to mask the three beers you had at lunch.

And then, I felt..nothing.

Feeling less of myself, and my thoughts was the point with alcohol. Having a racing mind, and attention deficit go undiagnosed for another decade made drinking a part of the solution. It worked until it didn’t, and now I was too caught up by the addictive parts to know it had stopped working long ago.

The Xanax realization could have spun me up but perhaps as prescribed, it just made me even- keeled. I didn’t really care about anything that afternoon.

I didn’t creep out to the kitchen for beers that afternoon, just for good measure. I’m sure I began drinking that evening, though it’s hard to remember when every day is filled with the same thought of alcohol on repeat.

On the last day, everyone knew they were getting laid off and instead of pretending to work, we congregated in the kitchen. The president of the company had come up from the LA office with an HR team and they were setting up meetings in the back conference room.

One by one people were ushered down the hall, then emerged and walked back to the kitchen to gossip. Soon enough there was a group who decided to head over to an Irish bar to continue the commiseration a few blocks away. It was barely noon.

My turn came and the owner was going over my business development contacts, trying to poach any remnant of future business to take back with him to LA.

There was no business to take back.

I joined the rest of the agency at the bar, and the jokes about drinking so early made me sad. This was just another day to me and the boys but we had to grin along as if they all didn’t know.

I kept up with the Creative Directors for a year or two, we continued to meet up and discuss the grand plan for opening a new agency, always over lunch and always over bottles of wine and too many beers.

The agency never came to fruition. It would take almost five more years for me to get sober.