Back then, I tried to boost my brain by dropping a tab. Yeah, that stuff. And it was awful. And what scared me most, in that time of unrest, was my own silence. I felt mute.

Last week, what I experienced was even worse. I was at home, among friends. But this time the terror arrived without benefit of intoxicants or serious psychotropics.

For a short spell, my life went noir. It was like being taken to my own private Guantanamo, and held incommunicado.

So, how's about you? Has a government that tortures, spies, peeks, pokes and kidnaps also stolen your tongue?

I've got just the panacea for the paranoid.

There is a fine organization for the righteously frightened, which is what Daily News cartoonist Signe Wilkinson called us recently — and she meant it as a compliment.

"It's a pleasure to be here right among the paranoid," said Wilkinson to a couple hundred people who filled a big meeting room in the Friends Center. We came for the debut of what the local American Civil Liberties Union calls "Constitution Under Siege," and it's all about presidential abuse of power.

It's 1970 all over again, but this time Congress is capitulating.

Joining Wilkinson was the ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson, who monitors legislation in D.C.; Bal Pinquel from the Friends Center; and Michael Coard, who says his job as a criminal defense lawyer "is to keep the government honest."

Challenging the government is every citizen's first duty. So Wilkinson encouraged us paranoids to "do something to be suspicious about." As in, stand up and speak out. Though apparently, especially in the anti-war community, it's way easy to rouse the feds.

One man from the audience rose to tell about a child he knew who sent an AIM message to a friend. The message read: "Bush should die." Now that child is getting calls from the FBI.

What the hell. I'm gonna echo that kid's wish: Bush should drop dead, and burn in hell. (You got that, fellas? Call anytime, my number's in the book.)

Now, I know that a Quaker Meeting is supposed to be a sacred place of peace. Still, many around me were in an open rage. And they were shaking their fists at Sen. Arlen Specter, for his part in Congress' newest betrayal of our basic rights. As judiciary committee chair, our senator has just cut a deal with the spooks which essentially legalizes Bush's domestic spying.

In a recent editorial, "Wiretap Surrender," The Washington Post said that Specter's new wiretap bill would "legitimize whatever it is the National Security Agency is doing — and a whole lot more." What Specter has shepherded is "not a compromise, but a full-fledged capitulation ... to executive claims of power."

He's selling us out, and Specter knows it. In early February, Specter was widely quoted saying that Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — which Congress passed in the wake of Watergate. Now, Specter is leading a compliant Congress that's overlooking Bush's overreaching, and even rewarding him by enshrining his abuses as law.

George Bush is born again, all right. He's Richard Nixon reincarnated, with Sen. Specter playing the role of midwife. But in this newest tale of terror, our little Chucky won't die so easily. Because this time, Congress is letting a wilding president bury his abuses. It is, as the Post puts it, "a tragedy."

So, what's the local media's response? Despite Wilkinson's pleas to act up, neither of our two big dailies (as of this writing) has noticed this summer's blockbuster horror.

Like Michael Moore says, the media is good at amplifying government-sponsored terror. But apparently, the Inky and the DN are too busy kissing the bishop's ring or golfing with the Toll Brothers to echo our outrage.

So, while the local media searches for its gonads, I urge you to join the ACLU, and speak up. Do it for your America. Do it for your own sanity, as I have. Because rage unspoken is rage unspent, and having to confront our own silence will surely drive us all mad.