Talking To Your Meds

216 Talking to Your Meds

This is not “talking to Prozac,” which was a famous book back in the day. This is about talking to all your medicines, the group. In some cases, the chorus. In some cases the mob (as opposed to The Mob, which we all know doesn’t exist.)

Filling the box marked with letters representing days is a weekly chore. And there was some discussion the other day when a stray Lipitor fell into the sink. Fortunately it wasn’t drowned. But the pill was told “okay, all the boxes are filled and you get a week’s reprieve on your execution.”

Wait a minute. Execution? Well, sure. When you swallow the pill, you kill it, right? Or do you really free it to do its job, end its incarceration in the drug store bottle?

Just as that contemplation began to take form, an 81 mg aspirin bounced out of the grip and onto the countertop. “Ahah! Not only is your execution NOT postponed by a return trip to the container, but you’re going into ‘S’ for Saturday, which means you have to wait out the execution until the end of the week, knowing your number (or your letter) will soon be up and it’s all over for you, you little yellow bird dropping.”

Somehow, the laconic Zoloft never jumps. It’s probably so happy just being itself that it feels no need for medicinal athleticism.

Since it doesn’t, you have the opportunity of putting something back into the system. You can offer aid and comfort to your antidepressant. After all, the little pill is going to work itself to death for you. It will dissolve in your system and make you happy – or at least less unhappy. So you can be kind to it before it goes to its execution (or its liberation.)

You can’t do the same for your Alka Seltzer. After all, pills don’t have stomachs. But a kind word now and then wouldn’t hurt.

And what about your cough medicine. You overdose sufficiently and you can get high. Do you ever thank it? Probably not. Shame on you.

Talking to your medication (there’s a word that shouldn’t exist, medication. Along with “utilize.”) Talking to your medication is not as nutty as it seems.

People talk to themselves and don’t listen. They talk to their plants, which don’t respond (or if they do, the talker is in really big trouble.) They talk to other drivers who, thankfully, can’t hear them. They talk to mechanical and electronic devices that answer the telephone, so why not their medicine.

If you’re not ON any meds, you are the exception, not the rule these days. But you can still perform a public services for these unheralded guardians of other peoples’ health.

Go to the drug store. Go to the head or stomach ache aisle and mutter a few words of encouragement to any box or bottle or tube that’s on the shelf. Your fellow shoppers may think you’re nuts. But you know deep in your heart, you will be recognizing the efforts of individual vitamins, minerals, decongestants, pain remedies and cold symptom relievers that their work is not for naught.

It’s the least you can do.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR