Written by Skip Miller
Some time between the third cup of coffee and that other thing I swallow a handful of pills. I’m not going to tell you the names of them. I will, however, give you a hint: this stuff is typically taken by a crazy man with a heart condition.
How I wound up crazy is open for debate. I like to think it was a by-product of genius. Remember the professor who talked to people who weren’t there while solving the world’s most complicated math problems? Something like that. Not crazy as celebrating the full moon by ripping off my shirt and running around Waller Mill Park going “Woof! Woof!” I take two pills that protect me from even the slightest twinge of that primeval instinct.
Back in the sixties some of us took pills that made us say, “Oh, wow man.” Because it was the sixties we didn’t like anything. We talked about creating a new society and marching to the beat of Ginger Baker, who was the drummer for Cream. Now that we have reached the 21st century with an ample supply of gray hair and bigger britches, we take pills to make us feel like we did in the sixties.
Is that crazy or what?
Oh. You’re right. We’re not supposed to refer to people as crazy. Nor can we call them lunatics, bonkers, banana heads, or maniacs. And we certainly can say they are missing a screw, don’t have both oars in the water, have a dim porch light or are light in the loafers. In certain situations we can call them neurotic, even eccentric. Sometimes we can say they have issues. I don’t think we can refer to a guy as off his rocker.
Even though you may have a stout reason for telling somebody the short bus left without him, such a statement could be considered slanderous. Ours is an ambush society. People don’t like something about you they sue and have Social Services take your kids. Except me. I won’t sue you, and there were plenty of times I would have given you my kids no questions asked. My medicine makes me reasonable, fills me to the brim with a certain pococurantism.
I will never be lonely in this hall of issues. The American Psychiatric Association reckons 45 percent of all Americans have issues. Think about that the next time, just for the heck of it, you want to break out with Stewball Was A Race Horse while standing in a long line that doesn’t move. Remind me to tell you about the time I stood in line for so long I forgot why I was there.
Ancestors gave me the heart condition. One of my grandfathers was a cobbler. One day his heart went boink and he didn’t make shoes anymore. Aunts and uncles had similar episodes. So did I. Twice. For that I earned three prescriptions. It was going to be four but one of them gave me the hives and had to be discontinued.
And that brings me to the purpose of this exercise.
As science and big computers continue to grind away at the things we do to ourselves we find that any kind of a pill presents a degree of risk. Two great examples were handed to us last month. A popular drug used to control cholesterol leaves women with a 50-50 chance of developing diabetes. Novartis, the Swiss company that makes over-the-counter stuff like Excedrin and Bufferin, issued a recall because broken pills of heavy-duty pain killers such as Percocet.
Neither can lay a glove on some of the stuff I take.
I am warned of side effects such as fatigue, muscle pain, drowsiness, weakness, headache, shortness of breath, trouble concentrating and gas. I am instructed to seek immediate help if I am slapped with bouts of depression, panic attacks, aggressiveness, agitation, anxiety, impulsiveness, irritability, hostility, or an exaggerated feeling of well being.
What else … here it is. I may experience ringing in my ears and I may surrender to the munchies and gain weight. Nobody will dare tell me that I am getting fat, however, for fear one of the other side effects will take over and I will box their ears.
And that’s kind of where we are these days.
Everybody has what in our political correct
haughtiness we refer to as “issues.” We don’t know where we’re going and we’re in too big a hurry to get there, which means if we don’t leave pretty soon we won’t be able to afford the gasoline unless we miss a payment on that confounded, expensive health insurance policy. And that would be OK with the Republicans because they didn’t vote for it anyway even though it did have excellent provisions for the avian flu virus and the E-coli that keeps showing up in the hamburger patties.
Everybody takes a pill for that. Or something
like it.