Just Like A Pill

I have a lot of friends who have been getting on anti-depressants in recent days. Surely, they’ve helped people I know through very tough times, helped them to avoid feeling the deepest pains, the darkest hours. There was a period of time (about 6 months) where I had a headache, every single day, from the moment I woke up until the second I fell asleep. My neurologist put me on anti-depressants. They didn't help my headache, so I stopped after about six weeks. (Turns out, I wasn’t depressed, I was gay. Once I kissed a girl, my headache disappeared—like Sleeping Beauty…if she were a dyke with a headache.) I have friends who take pills every time they get on an airplane, to help them avoid anxiety attacks high in the sky. I know people who take bong hits every evening after work, to help erase the day and ease into their after-work mode. And while I don’t condone escapist tactics for surviving life (I prefer to enjoy the emotional rollercoaster ride—no matter how upsetting it is to those around me.), I understand the desire for relief from the hellish circumstances we sometimes find here on earth. What’s been my drug of choice, you may ask. Women. Obvi.

Some relationships are like drugs. When you first take them, it’s a high like no other. You know they’re bad for you; you know you shouldn’t get involved in them; but something draws you to them. Maybe they change the way you think. Maybe you have some amazing insight while you’re on them… (ehem, excuse me)— under their influence. Maybe they just make you feel good, help you relax, or make you temporarily happy. But in any serious quantity, or with any regular habit, they end up running your life. You find yourself feeling empty and inadequate when they’re not in your system. You get paranoid when you’ve spent too much time away from them. And when you decide enough is enough, you find yourself shaking, crying on the bathroom floor for hours on end, promising yourself it will get better if you can just cut yourself off completely, just get through these next few weeks. The effects are ugly. You’ve lost yourself in them. You cease to exist as the person you once were. As long as you’re in their grasp, you’re not you; you’re a junkie.

Some relationships are like medicine. They take away your pain, help you heal, and cure what ails you when you first start taking them. They nurse you back to health, make you feel better, and kill off the broken-hearted diseases of dysfunction that perhaps previously plagued you. But even medicine can be addictive. And, if taken past their expiration dates, medicine can bring you more discomfort than joy—more suffering than relief. (We’re still talking about women here, remember.) Medicine is important, but shouldn’t be taken frivolously or irresponsibly. It’s important to take it only in the amounts necessary to cure the infection, and only for the length of time prescribed. Medicine is tricky because one day you’re on the right track to health, getting better and better; but this can easily transition into a chemical dependency that is twice as damaging as the original injury. This could leave you worse off than when you started. It’s okay to take medicine to nurse you back to health, but once the wound is healed, it ceases being helpful.

And some relationships are vitamins. There’s no high here, just good old fashion wholesome goodness. These relationships add an imperceptible amount of nutrition to your daily diet of discourse and diversion. Vitamins aren’t exciting, and it’s questionable as to whether or not they’re even necessary. But psychologically, you feel like you’re doing something good for yourself when you take them. You feel like a healthy person and so you keep popping them, day after day, and hope they’re enough to keep you healthy/happy. It should be noted, though, that even vitamins, when taken in unreasonable quantities, cause liver damage, or even stop your heart.

So what’s the answer? A healthy lifestyle and a balanced, substance-free diet? Ah shit.

Drugs are unnecessary. They may bring a certain something to the party that nothing else can; but, by and large, you can get through your life without them and have a reasonably happy, even exciting experience. Usually drugs are taken to escape. If you’re not looking to escape your life, if everything is copasetic as-is, drugs become superfluous at best, and at worst, a hindrance to the real human experience.

Meds are great—if you’re sick. Most of us are so quick to pop a few pills every time we get a headache (instead of drinking a glass of water, closing the computer screen for a few minutes and taking a deep breath). Seriously, I don’t want to sound like a Scientologist, but most of the time, we can cure the little aches and pains with some stretching, a good night’s sleep, and proper hydration. Most of us haven’t been so injured that the emotional equivalent of these things (identifying feelings, expressing them in a healthy way, and reflecting on the experience) would fail to heal us. But it’s much easier to take the Tylenol-equivalent of a girl out for a spin on the dance-floor and try to erase the past with a big sweep of your feet: to quote the Teaches of Peaches: “Fuck the Pain Away.”

And vitamins, let’s face it, are meant to be absorbed via their naturally occurring vehicles. When you pop the pill, you piss out most of the product a mere moment later. But if you ingest the ingredients of nature’s nutrients direct from their ripe resting place on the bins of your farmer’s cold-case. One-by-one, you’ll replenish, repair, and renew each depleted resource your body has been begging for. Tedious? Certainly. But worth it? Theoretically.

So what does this all mean in the matter of relationships? I think it means this: There’s no magical fix one can find to be the cure-all joy-filled one single pill to complete the package. People who are looking for that simple answer would have better luck turning to drugs—at least they’ll provide that illusion for a while. I think, when it comes to people, you’re better served getting your vitamins one at a time from separate sources. If you need witty banter and camaraderie, find a friend who provides it—there are plenty on the web. Then to get your confidence, compliments, and courage, find another person who provides these things happily and willingly—your vitamin “C.” Give these things in exchange. I know I’ll need sex, love, loyalty and friendship from someone whom I’ll call my girlfriend—at some point. I’d be thrilled to find someone who comes with much more than those few nuggets. But I’m using that as a starting point. There’s no one super-food to fulfill your daily requirement of vitamins and minerals, protein and carbohydrates. And there’s no one person who could possibly be your everything. We all need friends. We all need different things from these friends. Let’s take the pressure off of our lovers, away from the pills, and go foraging for fruits in the forest of love—pun intended.