“The Drugs Don’t Work...”
My good friend passed her 6 month anniversary on Prozac/Paxil/Zoloft/Effexor, not sure which exact pill really…. She tried them all. She and I were the last hold outs. Most of our friends had long ago gone the serotonin re-uptake inhibitor for better living through chemistry route. I refused, she refused... Why? I don’t know. I had my share of truly black moments and she did too, it seemed natural and part of the whole “10 years of shit “theory I have. I also believed mood elevating drugs should be entirely recreational... One by one they pulled me aside at some function, over some telephone call, for coffee etc. to tell me they had been feeling a little blue and had decided to try an anti-depressant. I was always mildly shocked and wondered why they had not told me and if I should have noticed and asked.
My friends are still my friends but I wonder when emotion became such a dirty word. When did it become unnatural to feel like shit sometimes? Maybe you are supposed to feel like shit sometimes. Maybe it is a sign you need a change. Maybe it is because things are just shitty and you would have to be insane not to feel like shit about it..
No one is really angry about anything anymore. Passion is passé and apathy and boredom have been elevated to an art form. Not giving a shit is pretty cool and nihilists are as ubiquitous as Baptists. We watch War (The Ultimate Reality Show) like we watch Law and Order.
My friend that just had the anniversary used to call me in the middle of the night because she was so outraged about the war, the homeless, genocide in the Sudan etc she could not sleep. She used to cry at movies or even commercials if she was pre-menstrual. She used to laugh. I mean really laugh. The kind of laugh that turns peoples heads and makes them laugh too. I knew she had her black moods, most of my friends including me were prone to going in the hole periodically. It was part and parcel of who we were/are.
Don’t get me wrong. I know there is a legitimate need for these medications in some cases. I also know this it is selfish to feel the way I do. I can’t help it. I miss my friend. The one who thought nothing of eating brownie batter from a spoon and cried when she could not balance her checkbook. She says she is happy and loves the medication, but the happy seems brittle and gratuitous and I wonder.. I wish I had the words to tell her that I thought she was perfect before and I hoped that this was something she wanted to do and not something she did to make herself more palatable to someone else. I wonder how long it will be before a friend recommends something for my abstract moodiness.
I wonder what would have happened if Edgar Allen Poe had gotten a scrip for Zoloft, or Howard Hughes, Einstein, Edison or Bukowski and Kerouac Would there have been any madmen, poets, visionaries, tragic lovers, heroic deeds or noble gestures ? I don’t know. I miss my friend.
In Absinthe Veritas,
Tallulah Crankhead
