The Cure for Epilepsy: An Outrageous (and partially true) Short Story about Desire and Luck by JJ Herkenhoff
It’s December 13, 2017, and it is the biggest day of my life since I turned eighteen. This specific date is my twenty-first birthday and it’s the day where all of the epileptics are getting their cure for epilepsy. The cure is a vaccine that’s been trying to be developed by scientists and researchers alike. But before I begin writing the good stuff, I’m going to give you a little background about myself.
I used to be a loner who would sit in my room all day doing nothing. I would shut out the real world and I would fake being sick all the time to get out of activities including hanging out with my friends. I was basically a loser if you put in perspective. There was one day that changed my life forever, with one long conversation. The conversation that I had was with my older brother named Tyler, who at the time was twenty-four years old and he had graduated from the University of Oregon with a major in advertising. The other person that was a part of the conversation was my cousin named Lee, who at the time was twenty-eight years old and he was a part-time film editor for a little known company known as Universal Studios. I can recall what happened during this conversation very lucidly. The conversation that occurred with them is as followed…”Hey JJ! I just found out online that there’s finally a cure for epilepsy!” exclaimed Tyler. “You, Lee, and I should all go to Washington, D.C. to get the cure so you can finally become seizure-free!” exclaimed Tyler. “I’m too busy right now”, replied JJ. “What do you mean you’re too busy!?” asked Tyler. “I have fucking stuff to do, what else do you want me say?” asked JJ. “Look, I know you don’t have anything to do…You probably watch movies, make lists, and you fap as well” replied Tyler. "I don't fap" said JJ. "What do you mean you don't fap? I've walked in you fapping multiple times which was disgusting" said Tyler.“JJ, all we're trying to say is that you need to go out in this world and do something with your life” “Life is too short, and you have to make the best of it, and if you don’t do anything with your life, then you’ll regret it” replied Lee. “So let’s go to Washington, D.C. you’ll get the cure for epilepsy there that you’ve been waiting to getting your whole life, and since it is your twenty-first birthday, the three of us could all go to Las Vegas” replied Tyler. “Ok fine, I’ll go with you guys, just let me pack my bags, and then we can go” replied JJ. The long conversation was over, and we were headed off to get the cure for epilepsy, and then the trip to Las Vegas.
Now we are back to the good part…I have been waiting for this day to arrive starting from when I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2008. There have been three medications that I was consuming at different times in my life all with different side effects. The first two medications that I was on were terrible and it gave me more seizures than I bargained for. The most recent one that I have been on is called Lamictal which is the best working drug out of the three. But I would pass out, and I would have bad headaches on that medication.
The reason why I’m getting the cure for epilepsy is not only I don’t want to have any more seizures, but also I want to get drunk and high! I realized that being drunk and high was something that I was looking forward to, after I had the long conversation with Lee and Tyler. As for the road trip to get the cure, I had to drive from Agoura Hills, which is where I lived all the way to Washington, D.C., where the vaccinations were taking place for the cure for epilepsy. I was eventually next in line and I was nervous and excited to get the vaccination. When I’m getting the vaccination shot I was realizing that the nurse giving me my vaccine shot was having trouble getting the needle in my arm. I told her that I had “small veins”, which lead to three pokes, because she couldn’t find that damn vein. My small veins seem like they are like rubber. You try and poke them to get blood and vaccines that they just move away. Anyways, the shots were painful, but I’m used to it whenever I get shots. The shot was finally over and the nurse told me, “Congratulations! You are now seizure-free!” I was excited and happy that I don’t have to worry about having those annoying and revolting seizures anymore!
Now that the shot was over with, I was ready to have a fun and crazy birthday. My brother, Tyler, my cousin, Lee, and I were all going to a four-day vacation at Las Vegas to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. On our road trip to Vegas, we had to make a couple stops along the way. The first stop was a drug store where we bought a whole bunch of alcohol. The varieties of liquor that we paid for were Rum, Beer, Grand Marnier, Bourbon, Whisky, and tequila. Let me tell you…we had it all! Unfortunately, none of us were sober so we were going to drive at our own risk. At least my cousin, Lee, who drove my brother and I was surprisingly very careful and had his ID with him at all times. As I’m writing this right now, I am realizing that this may have not been his first time being drunk and high while driving. Lee seemed focused and he was able to drive safely, even though he was pretty messed up.
Our second stop was a medical marijuana shop where we went to get my own medical marijuana card. As we were in the waiting line to talk to the doctor and then get some weed, I realized how many people were getting their card. I understand that half of them were getting their cards, because they really needed it. But the other half that was waiting in line wanted to get the card so they could get baked every day, and I’m proud to say that I was one of those people. When I went to see the weed doctor I told him that I had epilepsy, OCD, and anxiety. I was lucky enough to be able to get the card but I had to pay the $100 fee. We bought bags of marijuana such as Kush, pot brownies, cookies, hubbies, and other wonderful mary-jane goodies. For the Kush and other non-edibles, we bought pipes, blunts, and of course, a lighter. Buying all of these things is every stoner’s dream. My brother, Tyler, chose to drive this time, and was also focused and drove safely. We smoked and drank a lot on the road trip to Las Vegas, and the feeling of the two combined was pure sinful heaven! To my surprise, I didn’t have any seizures, and even better we didn’t get pulled over!
We decided to make a third stop, which this time was to In N Out. I decided to drive this time, which was really scary for me, because I’m a terrible driver, but I thought it was fair since Lee and Tyler drove to the first two stops. For those of you who don’t know what In N Out is, it’s a “healthy” fast food restaurant. They serve awesome burgers, fries, and shakes, which you can go inside the restaurant and go the easier route, which is drive-thru. The food that I had was by far the best I’ve ever had! The effects from the alcohol and marijuana really made a difference by the taste as when you’re completely sober. The flavors really popped out and it gave me a better insight on how awesome In N Out really is.
We drove two more hours and before we knew it we were in Las Vegas! The long road trip had paid off, and we were thrilled that we made it safely, even I made it safely! As we were driving in “Sin City”, we were astonished by how beautiful the lights were on the buildings. We also noticed how crowded the Las Vegas Strip was at night. A few minutes later we arrived at Caesar’s Palace. My parents were so gracious to us for having them offer to pay for our hotel room at Caesar’s. When we arrived to our hotel room we went all ape-shit around the room in excitement and astonishment, like five year-olds on Christmas Day. There were three big bedrooms with individual bathrooms, which is a plus. The kitchen was huge and was abundant with everything you need to cook with, and it was also every chef’s dream. The beds in the bedrooms were king sized. There were long, big couches in the TV room and it were fucking amazing. The television was a plasma screen 3D glasses-free TV that seemed like it was made for a king. After we saw our hotel room, Lee, Tyler, and I, decided to go to a bar to celebrate my 21st birthday the right way.
When we got to the bar, Lee told the bartender that it was my birthday. He was willing to put all the drinks for us on the house. Our group decided to take this opportunity and to get even drunk then we already were. Tyler, Lee, and I, drank twenty-one shots of tequila, and we played beer pong. After the fifth shot, I started to get a buzz. The eighth shot, made me feel dizzy, but by the 18th shot, I started to puke. But that didn’t stop me! I kept on taking shots until after the last shot was done.
After going to the bar, which we were drunk as fuck, we hurried to a strip club and we bought some female hookers to join us back in our hotel. The female hookers that we bought were all really sexy with perfect tits and asses. We had a nice trio of hookers. The first hooker, named Whitney, had long blonde hair and she was tall as well. The second hooker, named Victoria, had black hair and was medium-sized in terms of height. The third hooker that we bought was named Alexis, a brunette who was also tall like the blonde-haired hooker. Tyler chose Whitney, Lee chose Alexis and I chose Victoria. We were greeted by a limo which looked like one of those limos made for celebrities. In the limo we realized that there was a Jacuzzi inside the limo. The Jacuzzi was amazing! It was not small like you’d think it would be. The heat from the Jacuzzi was the perfect temperature. Our group and the hookers were treated like celebrities. Tyler, Lee, and I received blowjobs in the limo by the hookers before we went to our hotel room. We all agreed that the BJ’s felt amazing to this day. When we got to our hotel room, we all went to our individual rooms with the hookers…and after we had sex with the hookers we all agreed that we definitely got our money’s worth.
The next morning was a combination of feeling both horrible and fantastic! Tyler and Lee told me that they had their worst hangover yet. I woke up that morning, not with having a seizure, which meant that the cure worked, but that it made me rush to the bathroom which I puked my guts out. After the puking stopped, I oddly, was still down to get drunk again sometime on the Las Vegas trip. Tyler and Lee started to feel a little bit better, and Lee suggested that we should go to IHOP. When we arrived at the local IHOP, Lee convinced us that eating French Fries after a hangover helped the blood alcohol from the liquor to go down, because of the saltiness and grease from the fries as well.
On that night, we all headed to one of the casinos. In the casinos, we played slots and my favorite…Blackjack! As I’m writing this story, I remember exactly what happened during that game of blackjack. While I’m sitting in one of the chairs in front of the Blackjack table, my nerves start getting to me, but I’m also excited to play. There were five other players, who seemed very serious. At the time, I didn’t realize that the other players were professionals who have already won games before. Five minutes later, the game had started. My very first bet of the night was $300, and as I check my cards after the dealer dealt, I luckily received blackjacks, which are 21. So far, I’m on a pretty impressive roll, getting more blackjacks, but it’s not about how you start, it is how you finish. It was by far one of the best nights, because I won $1 Million!
After we went to the casino, Tyler, Lee, and I headed back to our hotel room, to put the money-filled brief case there. I took out $100 from the brief case for the next attraction. Our next attraction was to see the Cirque du Soleil show. Our group was very tempted to trip on some acid to make the show even more thrilling. In order to do that, I called a drug dealer that my friend suggested me to buy from. The drug dealer’s name was nicknamed “Alfred”. He was a Persian man, who was small in stature, but was big in personality. “Alfred” had a very thick accent that sometimes I couldn’t even understand what he was saying. We were able to buy some acid from him. The acid came in a pill form and it looked white. Right before the show started, we took the acid, and one hour later the effects took in. The effects during the show was mind-blowing, I started seeing different colors and contrast. I was hallucinating, because everything seemed distorted, and was in a twirl. The Cirque du Soleil performers looked like they were distorted as well. This was a feeling that I have never felt before, and I’ve also never seen anything like what I saw during this trippy experience! I knew what the effects were from both marijuana and alcohol, but tripping on acid was ten times more trippy and hallucinogenic than the other two. The LSD trip was twelve hours, and we didn’t even notice how long it actually was.
The next night, we bought tickets to see The Lion King musical. As the show begins with the song, “Circle of Life”, I started to reminisce from my childhood. I remember playing Beanie Baby Wars with my brother and a couple of friends. Beanie Baby Wars are a mixture of dodge ball and food fights, but with beanie babies. There was a playroom where we would engage with the game. The playroom was an extra room, and was very big. In the playroom, there was a Tv, with a VCR, a pool table, a huge library of both books and movies, a game cube, and a huge collection of board games and puzzles. Another event that I reminisced during the show was on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day, my brother, cousins, and I would watch The Santa Clause early in the morning. After that, my brother and I would go to my neighbor’s house, to make gingerbread houses. During that event, not only did I make the gingerbread houses, but I would eat every condiment for the house, until I got sick. So you could say that when I was a very young child, I was a fatty. One other thing that I remembered was at either age 4 or 5 there was a local Halloween costume contest where the cutest kid in a Halloween costume won. The event took place in Pacific Palisades at the rec center. I was voted the cutest kid in a Halloween costume at that contest. I am willing to say that my costume was the green teletubby. I remember that brother was pissed off that he didn’t win, because he thought he had the best one, which was the grim reaper, and it was the coolest one but not the cutest one.
The next day, I decided that I was going to attempt something that no one in this world would ever expect me to do, and that was taking bath salt. My brother and cousin chose not to take the drug, because if something bad had happened to me during that experience, which they would try and help me. In order to buy the bath salt, I hooked up with my drug dealer, “Alfred”. Once I bought the bath salt, he suggested that I should shoot it. When he meant to say shoot it, was to inject the drug into my arm. The bath salt is not what you think it is. The salt is contained by different chemicals, and the appearance looks as though if it is a crystal and just thinking about snorting the bath salt sounds disgusting, because it would hurt like hell. After I injected the bath salt I was ready to feel the unexpected. After thirty minutes of when I injected the drug, the effects started.
The first thing that I remembered from the drug was I felt like I was in a different body. My mind went into a daze, where I thought that I was flying. From Tyler and Lee’s perspective, I was flapping my arms all around the Strip rapidly. The next event that occurred during the bath salt experience was very drastic and traumatizing. The drastic and traumatizing event that happened was I basically turned into a zombie. Of course I didn’t know what I was doing at that time, since I was on that drug. From what Tyler, Lee, and a few spectators saw, I had eaten a random man’s face off of, and I was fucking bare naked during that fucked up event. This was the second time that a man had eaten a guy’s face off on bath salt.
The next thing I know is I was in jail along with Lee and Tyler. They were arrested as well as me, because they didn’t prevent me from taking the drug and from me turning into a zombie. I don’t blame them for not preventing anything and I don’t think that they are assholes. The reasoning for that is I bet it was funny as fuck to them. I would be cracking up if one of them started to become a zombie, maybe which means that I am a douche bag, but from my perspective it wouldn’t be that way. As we are walking to our jail cell, I saw a bunch of the other inmates looking at us with a scrawny evil looks, like when the cops weren’t watching, they would jump us. We were very intimidated by them, but we didn’t act that way. If we did act like we were intimidated by them the other inmates would see us as pussies. As we were in our jail cell, we started realizing all of the fucked up stuff that we have done during this long trip. There was one point during that realization that I wanted to quit the vacation, so that we wouldn’t get into anymore trouble. But Tyler and Lee convinced me that I was not a quitter and that we were doing the right things. Even though we did all of these drugs and alcohol, and putting our health at risk, we knew that we had one life to live. If it means getting fucked up and potentially dying then so be it, at least we lived our lives to the fullest.
As we are sitting in our cell, we also faced the fact that we could be in jail for the rest of our lives. But to our surprise, the cops told us that were free and warned us to not get into anymore trouble. He also said that if we do get caught doing anything bad then we would get sentenced to life in prison. So later that night, we went back to our hotel, and had a relaxing night in. Thankfully, we still had all of our bags of marijuana in our room. To make sure that we wouldn’t get in trouble, we ate some of the pot brownies instead of smoking the Kush. Thirty minutes in, the THC kicked in, and I am happy to say that it relaxed us from all of the shit that happened earlier that day. During that high, I realized that other than marijuana and alcohol that I didn’t really need the other drugs. That night has to be the most relaxing night of our entire trip.
On one of the last days of my Vegas vacation, we saw an Elton John concert, where we were able to get VIP passes, which meant that after the show was over we were able to meet him in person. When the show begun, Sir Elton John started to play one of his most popular songs, known as “Bennie and the Jets”. As he starts playing the first chords of his song, the crowd went wild and I started to get chills, because his music was a big part of my childhood. His outfit was very glittery and he had his signature glasses on. Even though he was sixty or seventy, he still had it in him. His voice was in tune, and it didn’t seem like he was lip synching. Watching this concert was very surreal to me. As with The Lion King show, the songs brought me back to my childhood, as I’ve mentioned before. During his performance of one of my favorite songs, “Levon”, it took me back to the times when my family was driving on the road to go check out Lake Mary in Mammoth Lakes. I’m not sure if my Dad, who drove us everywhere in Mammoth, intentionally played that song during the drive to Lake Mary, or if it was just a coincidence. I’d think of it as intentional that my dad played that particular song, but in reality it was probably just a coincidence. Another reason why this concert was surreal, was it was the first concert that I’ve went to other than my cousin’s concerts.
After the concert ended, we were able to meet the king of pop, Sir Elton John. When we met him, we noticed how nice he was to us. You would think that a high-caliber celebrity like him, would be an asshole or superficial, but he surprisingly wasn’t. He politely asked us if we would like to go to a bar with him, and without hesitating, we agreed to go with him. When we arrived to the bar, he told us that all of the drinks were on him. He asked Tyler, Lee, and I how our Las Vegas vacation was going, and what we did. We told him everything from taking bath salt, tripping on acid, getting extremely hammered, and how I had epilepsy with having absolutely no seizures because of the vaccination. Elton John cracked up laughing about all the crazy shit that occurred to us, and before you know it, we were getting drunk with Elton! We drank unlimited shots of tequila, amazing margaritas, and the best pina coladas you could ever have! During the meeting, we both agreed that he was a lot of fun to be with. After we were done getting hammered and are ready to puke, Elton John allows us to back into his limo, so that we could get back to our hotel room.
The next morning, we felt blessed that we were able to chill with Elton John and to get drinks with him. We head off to the hotel’s brunch buffet. When we got to the buffet, Tyler, Lee, and I saw a boat-load of food. We headed off right to where all the fried food was, and that helped our alcohol levels to go down. While we are sitting at one of the tables, a tall man with very dark black glasses approaches us and asks for me. I was wondering whether this man was from the CIA. Unbeknownst to me, this man was an agent from Jimmy Kimmel Live. He tells me to go with him to his van, and blindfolds me. A few seconds later, the agent takes my blindfold off, and I could see Jimmy Kimmel sitting right next to me. He lets me know that they are not kidnapping me, but they would like me to be on his show. Jimmy Kimmel told me that the reason why he wanted me on his show so bad was he heard that his agent was at the bar that I was attending with my group and Elton John. The agent had told Jimmy Kimmel that he happened to be at that same bar by a coincidence, and he overheard me telling Elton John that I had epilepsy and I didn’t get a seizure from having alcohol. I agreed to be on his show, and Mr. Kimmel told me that my part on the show was going to be the first man with epilepsy to not have a seizure while drinking alcohol.
The episode that I was going to be on was going to be all about me. I can lucidly remember how the show began. After Jimmy Kimmel gave his introduction he greeted me to the stage. His first question to me, was “So tell me all what happened about your Vegas vacation”? I responded with, “Well…let’s just say that I did things that nobody in this world would think about doing.” Jimmy Kimmel proceeded with constant questions about every detail that happened. I told him a whole list of what I had done. Part of the things that I told him, were how I got the vaccination for the cure for epilepsy, getting baked, the strippers, tripping on acid, shooting bath salt and getting hammered with Elton John. A few moments later I remember Mr. Kimmel telling me that there were unanimous tweets from the epileptic community and celebrities congratulating me for the fact that an epileptic person didn’t get a seizure while taking the drugs and alcohol. There were three tweets that were the most memorable to me. The first tweet was from The Epilepsy Foundation, and the tweet was @JJHerkenhoff Congrats on doing the impossible, and making it possible! We’d love for you to represent us. The second tweet was from Prince, and the tweet was @JJHerkenhoff Congrats on doing something that I couldn’t ever have done, which is not having a seizure while drunk! The third tweet was from Lil’ Wayne. His tweet was, @JJHerkenhoff Congrats Boi! You are the fucking bomb, and I want to get that dank cure for epilepsy bcuz of u! All of these tweets that I received were amazing, and it was the biggest recognition I have ever gotten in my life. I was truly surprised that I received positive feedback and not negative feedback.
All in all, live life to the fullest because you only have 1 life to live. Whether you think these events actually happened or not, it is up for you to decide. #tengaged#short#story#raunchy
