Singing this Sunday got my sinuses literally abuzz and triggered a Montezuma’s frontal sinus headache by the time we were done with 3 songs. When the 4th and final song was over, the only thing on my mind was to crack open my pill bottle and extract one of my two Vicodin ES pills to find sweet relief. Things didn’t go as planned. Follow along and laugh at my folly and feel free to share your most embarrassing pill story in the comments. I won’t make fun of you… too badly.

Here’s what happened:

I got a Nalgene bottle for my college graduation, so I like to bring that to chug on my sweet tea or Gatorade to keep hydrated and avoid any coughing fits that can occur in any 75 minute span. Using an order of events that I’d like to have a mulligan for, I placed the (closed) bottle on my right leg, propped up by my left foot, which was crossed over my right knee. As I popped the cap off my pill bottle, the Nalgene bottle started to slip off to the right to come crashing down.

Pause.

My pill bottle is a regular, small pharmacy bottle filled with about 20-25 Zenpep, 10 Xanax, 1 Soma, and 2 Vicodin – yes, well over 30 pills.

Unpause.

As the Nalgene started to go, my cobra-like reflexes sent my right hand over to block its decent to earth. Unfortunately, that was also the hand that was holding my now open pill bottle. I saw a slow-motion director’s cut of all of my pills flying out as if they were buck shot from a 12-gauge, flying toward our youth minister and a Sunday school teacher a full 10 feet away on the other side of the isle.

This wouldn’t have been too terrible, except the pastor had just started his intro and he had a clear line of sight at my blunder, and at least half of the pills ended up under said people’s seats… so there we were, me and my bro-in-law’s girlfriend on our knees scooping them up as fast as we could and the other two guys leaned over picking them up from under their seats. Without calling HazMat, we got them all back in my bottle and got seated again. About 30 seconds later, another Xanax was discovered and returned to me.

I was sooo red that I could feel my heartbeat in my cheeks and forehead. If I didn’t need the Vicodin so badly, I would have switched plans and popped a Xanax instead.

So, remember, kids. Don’t do drugs at church… at least after the sermon starts.