“Consciousness is a born hermit.”
~ George Santayana
In a galaxy far, far away, due to the fact that his third-year English teacher warned him that if he fell asleep during her class one more time he would be suspended indefinitely, he began an after-lunch ritual of removing two white ones from their thin metal-wrap cocoon and washing them down at the closest drinking fountain.
Then, after continuing to nod-off and receiving further threats from the academic-in-question, he bumped-back the official ingestion period to the interval before-lunch that followed Chemistry, of all things. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.
In a fashion, that particular modification to his “meds” scheduling appeared to solve the drifting-off during class problem. The issue then became one of incessantly raising his hand and answering questions prior to they being asked. So, as logic dictated, he began reducing the dosage.
Another problem, however, manifested itself once he began toting his crashing-in-class preventatives in his wallet. The cocoon being a non-protective enclosure (a vial would have been nice), would, by forces of gravity and the collective body-weight vector at his posterior, turn what once was ten into a singular mash of indiscernible increments.
So, not unlike a cowpoke stuffing a “pinch” of chaw between his lip and gum, our mightily confused English student could never be quite certain that his intake had not crossed beyond the thresholds used to treat children with ADD or adults with narcolepsy.
What he had set out to prevent, of course, was indefinite suspension from school and time was running out. He had best get serious. So, each morning thereafter, one tablet of the synthetic mood-altering substance would wake up inside the cellophane outer wrap of the pack of smokes he carried in his front shirt pocket.
Like Schrödinger’s cat, any possible suspension due to the secondary infraction of showing up with a visible nicotine-delivery system might well depend on whether or not a decaying atom would answer a subpoena. But I digress.
Thus, with the scientific method being what it purported to be in those days, it wasn’t long before the teacher, the student, and the amphetamines-in-question had achieved in the time it took Max Plank to almost dribble-out-the-clock on Quantum Mechanics, a balance of sorts, a quantified equilibrium.
These days, his meds scheduling operation is somewhat more complicated. Each Sunday night, he refills his weekly medication organizer for the following week. The small snap-lock boxes associated with the specific days are each dutifully crammed full. It’s getting to a point not totally unlike sitting on a suitcase in order to close it.
The current daily requirements: nine little-white-ones, one quarter of a pill coming in at around 620-nanometers (nm) on the visible light spectrum (the word “orange” distresses him), two from around 610-nm, two white capsules with blue stripes, one thick white tablet, and one-half of a white oblong bugger shaped like but not quite as large as a rugby ball.
Did I mention the 10-drops of full-spectrum hemp oil that he nudges under his tongue each morning and night? He figures, if nothing else, it helps keep him in touch with the bohemian aspects of his misspent youth. He tried “edibles” but too many middle-of-the-night assaults on turkey-pot-pies began interfering with his reading.
With snoring in class no longer an issue but with many more pills in play, recalling which needed to be taken with food and which with a Speyside Single-Malt relied on memory, a process requiring both storage and recall, crops of which have been in short supply with our hero of late.
Side effects, of course, are an issue when one ingests fourteen and three-quarters medication pills plus the twenty drops of CBD (Cannabidiol) per day For instance, it has been reported that our test-subject has recently taken to keeping an ever-growing stack of poetry books as part of his bedside stash. Word has it that little good can come from such reading habits.
Friends have taken to commenting on his solitary lifestyle, his seeming avoidance of other people. “He’s a bit of a recluse,” they say. “When was the last time you saw him on a dance floor?” they ask. “Or out at one of the local watering holes?” “He sure is a quiet sort,” they add.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.