I wish I had a pill

First posted 7-19-07

"Sometimes I wish I had a pill to make people disappear."

- Cat On a Hot Tin Roof

Written 30 seconds ago in a Google document as a way of avoiding work.

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He stares at the bottle in his hands. An ugly brown plastic bottle, the color of decaying foam rubber. He grips it in his hand, neanderthal-like, so that only the stark white cap showed. His other hand, without tremble, pries the cap away and a probing finger slides two pills out.

Prozac.

It's a hard thing. It's a hard thing to admit that something in your head isn't right. A body is frail. A body is weak. A body gives over time, everyone knows this. A body is imperfect, a flawed vessel to the mind, and in the end, for everyone, the machine stops working. The mind is the eternal. Every religion knows this. It's the mind that continues on. The mind is the true self.

It's a hard thing.

To admit to yourself that your true self is flawed.

Hard but not impossible.

He gingerly places the pills on the center of his tongue, so as not to bite them. It is bad to bite them, he is told. They are time release. Let them release over time. He wonders what would happen if he bit them. He assumes nothing.

A small swallow of water, a jerk of the head to flip them down his gullet, and they are gone. Not even a lingering taste.

It's still a hard thing.

He waits.

There should be a feel. There should be a moment of enlightenment, a cessation of worries, a feeling of lightness on his shoulders. There should be something. But there isn't. He feels no different than before.

It's his first time. It's a hard thing.

Months pass. He accepts the pills as a morning ritual. A nightly ritual. An occasional lapse. Take them, each time not as hard as the first. But every so often he pauses and thinks to himself about what he is doing. A drug. A mind altering drug. A drug designed to alter his mind, and to take the drug is admit his mind needed...needs...altering. In those moments, it's still a hard thing.

Has he changed? Ask him. He knows he has and he hasn't. He feels his same impulses, but things don't bother him as much. The highs are less high, the lows are less low. Everything is more even. And he likes it. He doesn't miss theroller coaster. Who says that life needs up and downs. The middle isn't so bad.

But is he the same person? The mind is altered, is he still him?

He cannot say.

It's a hard thing.

Then he goes off them. And the lows are back, and he makes things bad for himself. He remembers what it was like before. But again, there is no feeling. No weight is suddenly there. No sudden strife. He doesn't feel the change, but the change has changed nonetheless.

He misses the middle. He admits that he needs them. He admits that he needs them. He admits that he needs them.

It's a hard thing.

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	Posted by Coyote @ 07/19/2007 06:20 PM PDT
	If this is the result of avoiding work then I say you should avoid work much more often.