Following is a running story, but it's not really about running. In the spring, prolly in March, I went for a two hour long run, hoping to get about 16 or 17, on the River Run/golf course/Grey Rd. loop (single 13+ mile loops are great) in Davidson, NC. Now I left around 2 or so in the afternoon, and I had only eaten a bagel that day, and I don't think I had eaten that much the day before. Because around 90 minutes in I started to feel pretty...different. Things were...changing. I started weaving and feeling a little dizzy, but it wasn't necessarily a bad feeling. At 110 minutes I forced myself to stop because I didn't know what the fuck was going on and I feared, but only slightly, for my physical self. I stumbled across campus in the direction of my apartment and everything was entirely funny, I was laughing a lot. I was also ridiculously fucking hungry and not thirsty at all. Weird? You'd think after 15 miles a person would be thirsty. No, just ravenously hungry.

I barged into my apartment (totally hilarious) and into the kitchen. I grabbed everything I could find: chocolate, an apple, cookies, peanut butter, a banana...there was a lot, I don't remember it all, cream cheese, maybe? I attacked the apple first, and followed with the swiftest double take I've ever subjected my head too. What the fuck was I holding in my hand? Surely not an apple. But it fucking looked like an apple. What the hell was going on? It was mana from heaven, I was convinced. Nothing ever tasted so good in my life as that apple thing.

It was a weird and amusing experience. I've had similar run-induced things happen, but never one that severe, or fantastic, or whatever (once in Colorado I ran 12 miles in a blizzard and started feeling fuzzy at the end and got into the shower afterwards and the heat wouldn't go all the way up so I chanted Heat, Heat....Heat, Heat in high wailing voice, alternately laughing and despairing, until finally the heat gods heard me and the heat rose enough for me to just laugh, and be grateful that prized bodily possessions had in fact not irreversibly froze). I'm pretty sure I was undergoing intense episodes of runner's high with cannabis like symptoms (makes sense since apparently endorphins and cannabis are molecular analogs and have the same receptors in the brain) induced by having little readily convertible energy in my body at the time.

Those episodes were pretty intense compared to the more mild and more common form of runner's high that I occasionally get. That kind is prolly the best drug-induced state I've ever experienced, better even than alcohol even though the homunculus in my brain is saying "NOTHING is better than alcohol," and he is an erudite, wise homunculus. Mild runner's high has, count em, 0 negative side effects.