It seems the shaggy-haired gent had taken charge. He sent Sylvia off to buy some water and a banana, which he hands to me, explaining the benefits of potassium. I ask what day it is, what I'd been doing, what had happened, then let them talk. I'd been under for around ten minutes and my brain is slow and sludgy, emptied out. I have difficulty formulating sentences, my syntax garbled like verbal dyslexia.

T he boozy guy is real friendly. He'd been drinking with his buddies at a nearby bench (he gestured, they were still there) and had seen me go into convulsions. He knew something about seizures, though I didn't gather where his expertise came from, maybe the drinking life. Alcohol, as a depressant, acts as an anticonvulsant. Seizures aren't as likely to occur when you're drunk, but far more likely to during the hangover. I'd earned mine. Added to that, a lack of sleep will lower the seizure threshold, too. Hippocrates believed seizures were caused by an imbalance of the blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile-- the four humors-- and that they originated in the brain. He was closer to the truth than later men of learning, physicians and priests, who viewed epilepsy a sure sign of

demonic possession.

But most epilepsy is idiopathic, though tumors or head injuries can be a direct cause.