"What are ya on, PCP or Acid?" he shrieks in my ear. Feeling the cop’s 250-pound frame pinning me face down to the carpet, my mind is composed of a million tiny incoherent shards. Although the mental faculties are returning in small increments, my body becomes quickly aware that I’m handcuffed and shackled.

Cognition after an epileptic fit, much less a Grand Mal, is not exactly on the Stephen Hawkings level. In my current state, the pig’s words are as intelligible as Wodabi tribal grunts. Wait! The fog is lifting! I’m in a record store! I must have had a seizure! This chucklehead thinks I’m having a bad trip!

With all the breath in my lungs I yell, "I’m not on drugs. I have ep–" Before I can finish the sentence, my words are muffled as a knee drives into my lower back and my face is shoved deeper into the shag carpeting. Stuck.

After listening to an endless lecture about the perils of drug abuse, the paramedics finally arrive. My loud-mouthed nemesis shuts up for a second and allows me to speak. I inform the EMT of my condition and immediately, the paramedic orders the obese blackshirt to "get the hell" off my back and "take all the hardware off of him." Looking embarrassed, the proud lawman takes the cuffs and shackles off, mumbling something about PCP giving its users superhuman strength and his subsequent bravery in saving everyone from being killed.

Feeling the wave of nausea that passes after every seizure, I inhale oxygen and examine my purple, swollen wrists. I find myself both shocked and repelled by the stares of the crowd. Their consumerist mission to purchase "units" in the dull, non-threatening atmosphere of a "Music Plus" has been shattered in the blink of an eye. Judging from my experience that night, one could make the compelling argument that the Grand Mal seizure is perhaps the most powerful form of performance art. Although these ephemeral, impromptu displays go unrecognized by the aesthetic community, the powerful looks of hate, fear, pity, horror, and discomfort I produced that night would make any NEA grant scribbler envious.

Visitations from Gods and Cops

Snapshots like these are paradigmatic of a day in the life of America’s estimated 2.5 million human supercolliders. According to PWE (People with Epilepsy), a non-profit epilepsy group, one in every 200 adults or 25,000,000 million earthlings possess the ability to produce cerebral explosions varying from a trembling arm to a one-man-show like mine.

Like Prince Mishkin, the seizure-driven protagonist in Dostoyesvsky’s The Idiot, we walk the streets constantly wondering if the hand of God will yank us out of our reverie with an ear shattering mindbender. Each shakefest is preceded by what is called an "aura," a set of sensual cues warning you to strap yourself in for a ride. Although I enjoy reading, sometimes I have to refrain, because my pre-seizure "aura" tends to occur while glancing at the printed page. The blurring of words followed by a subtle feeling of deja vu lets me know it's time to get into crash position.

These ingrained beware signals are markedly different for each individual. One epileptic may not be able to attend sporting events because the roar of the crowd sets him off, while another may fear going to sleep because his aura tends to rear its ugly head in the early phases of slumber.

The different types of seizures the brain can produce also vary but are symptomatic of the same illness: epilepsy. Considered a mental disease, its many causes can be linked to pre-natal trauma, head injury, allergies, lead poisoning, encephalitis, liver disease, stroke, and low blood sugar to name just a few. Simply put, we possess supercharged neurons prepared to wreak havoc at any moment.

In the average brain, vital nerve cells communicate to other parts of the body our various wants and needs in short regular bursts of electricity occurring up to 80 times a second. While my neurons enjoy this same regularity, in a chilling second, like a fully automatic rifle, they’re capable of instantaneously firing off 500 blasts, thereby causing a seizure. The hard part is not knowing when the trigger will be squeezed.

Hippocrates, the Grecian scholar many consider the Father of Modern Medicine, deemed epileptic seizures a "visitation from the Gods." To understand how this devolved into a "visitation from the cops," a short historical rundown is in order.