But I had my first ever full syncope last night - a brief, mostly benign fainting spell that can be dangerous if you fall - which I did, but came out unscathed due to early-age martial arts conditioning that seems to still kick in, two decades on.
It involves drugs (of both colloquial kinds, legal and not), so I'm chucking it under a read-more rather than a full content warning.
So, ADHD meds have a well known side effect of raising blood pressure. When in effect.
I believe I've had a slightly above average, but otherwise decent blood pressure my whole life, despite being assigned DadBod at birth.
My meds had worn off, and I was getting ready to relax before a few hrs before bed, so I took a big keefy hit of weed.
Weed is famously a decent vasodialator - powerful, actually, in large quantities. I've had my head spin on a few rips before, but I must have aligned the timing and the size of the bowl well enough that this time?
Crash.
My head span, darkness crept in on my vision, and I blinked, and was on the floor, on my butt.
I got lucky, however. I came down unscathed, and only knew something was wrong b/c my partner said she heard a crash, which was the rigid plastic shower curtain I collected while unconsciously slowing my descent.
In the Tae Kwon Do school I went to as a wee bab, one of the things we learned right proper was how to fall. Like, if you get thrown, or knocked, or stumble, how to fall instinctively such that your head never hits the ground. Whether from standing, or flying through the air, no matter which parts of you hit the ground, always prioritize saving the head. The assumption, however, is controlling a fall when going Backwards, the most dangerous of directions, and the least controllable.
That can only be done, in most cases, not by covering the head, much easier to do when going forward, but by tucking the chin to the chest, locking the neck and preventing any flailing, and throwing your arms out to your sides, basically attacking the floor behind you. Not in a focused power strike, but literally sheer mass of your whole arms getting to the floor before your shoulders do, so extending past the vertical plane of your torso.
This combo means that, typically, when you come to a rest, your head has almost a foot of gap between it and the ground, with lots of shock absorption via your arms. There's more to it as well, crumpling from the knees, butt-to-ground, rolling along the back to a shoulderblade, etc, but these are the most vital things.
Apparently, I still do this.
And fuck me, am I glad I do.
Future post-meds pipes will be, for sure, sitting down now, especially knowing that I always have a few seconds to work it out before going down.