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ROUND THREE
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Sure, there were other side effects of drinking that much. It didn't just flatten out the grayness, but everything else, too. Equations no longer curled up through themselves like they always had, conversations didn't spread out like three-dimensional scrabble games anymore, sounds lost their color and color lost its feeling and feeling lost its shape.
It was okay, though, it was all okay. He was trying to escape from all that. It was better with it all gone.
He skipped a lot of class that next month. There was no point in going if he couldn't see anything that was going on. He went to a lot of bars, and even tried to have sex a couple of times, but everything was so damn flat it was about as much fun as looking at a topographic map of the Grand Canyon and wondering how deep it was.
But it wasn't until week five of his binge that he realized he had to stop. It wasn't the way his place had kind of started to smell really bad, or how Obie kept calling, or anything like that. No.
He was working on a model, one of his proposed designs for his thesis project, when he sliced his thumb open with an exacto-knife. Through the nail, almost to the bone.
It hurt, Tony knew. It hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before...but he felt it. Tactile. Nothing else, though.
He couldn't see yellow anywhere.
Tony knew he was too drunk to drive himself to the hospital, so he called Rhodie instead, a junior from one of the undergrad classes he TA'ed for. They were something approximating friends, as close as Tony ever really got to it in his life anyway, and the guy said he'd be over in ten.
"Thanks," Tony said tersely, and tossed the phone away, squeezing the dish towel tighter around his bleeding thumb, thinking to himself that maybe this was what it was like to be normal.
Rhodie, being ever the responsible AFROTC cadet that he was, chewed him a new asshole on the way to the hospital, but Tony didn't really mind. He'd figured out a way to be like everyone else, and that in itself was almost worth the five stitches he had to get.
He never drank quite that much again, but if he overindulged every so often, he didn't think anyone could really blame him for it. Drinking was fun, being drunk was fun, and it was something of a relief to have a reliable, trustworthy escape from the constant, abnormally hyperactive machinations of his own brain. Nice to feel like everyone else, even if only for a little while.
Even if nobody else understood that at all.
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Synaesthesia is an interesting thing, I'll agree. But, like I said above, I've got a variation of it, and it used to be a real struggle when I was little to talk to people sometimes (I've had similar situations at the doctor's,for example). I don't think Howard was being cold towards Tony, though, just trying to get him to learn how to work through it, even if he was being a bit of a jackass in the way he went about it! ;)
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And for me drinking makes it stronger, not go away.
*foundanothersynestheteflail*
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The worst responses I've ever had was before I got diagnosed with celiac's, though, so I think that might have something to do with it. My whole family has some pretty serious psychological side effects to gluten. It's gotten better since I got on a gluten-free diet. Yes, I failed to consider this before writing the story. But then again... it's Tony, right?
Haha, yeah... drinking turns certain functions in my brain off. IDK why. Just does.
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Does make it hard to focus in noisy environments, though, when I get overwhelmed and can't sort out all the different colors. Kinda makes me dizzy. :/
Caffeine suppresses it for me, that's my go-to for calming down the overloads. Alcohol puts me closer to what you've described, where the color is stronger than the physical sensation, or the sound, or whatever it is causing the color. Weed (did it once, not really my cup of tea) made it a little stronger, but it kinda just focused all sensory perceptions so I'm not sure it wasn't just sensory enhancement... plus I was already drinking that one time so it's really hard to say... and I'm not really into the idea of smoking again just for the science. It kinda made me sick. :/
Interesting that celiac affects it like that! I never would have thought, but it does make a certain amount of sense!
I just... I love how all the weird stuff gets put on Tony. Because he's my favorite anyway and then all the fics that I can really relate to are about him, synesthetic or asexual or any number of things that just... gah. Love.
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Yeah, gluten (grain protein) is evidently psychotropic. I thought I was developing schizophrenia back when the symptoms got really bad. So... yeah. When I first went on the diet, I didn't "get" anything, and it was the most depressing thing ever. Took a few months for it to come back. I've always been too afraid to try drugs! I've got no idea what it would do.
Tony's a lot of fun, isn't he? He's my favorite, too (but more because I can sympathize with his high-IQ problems...)
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