Today for no particular reason at all it occurred to me that if assisted suicide were legal, there would be all kinds
of products and kits and over-the-counter drugs, with commercials saying how fast-acting and painless they are, with cute
little cartoon characters singing and dancing.
Or, you know those really cheesy commercials that sell crap you don't need? Like, they would show a woman with a
bucket and a brush, scrubbing blood off the walls and wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, and the announcer guy
goes "Are you tired of having to clean up after messy high-caliber handguns? Are you afraid that the rafters in your attic
won't support the weight of your loved ones?"
I guess I have to rethink the cartoon salesperson, too, since he would be dead at the end of every commercial.
People hate drug companies and I think somewhere along the way came to believe that the drug companies wanted to
kill them. Even as a kid I recognized the incongruity of a company that only cares about money believing it wasn't counter-productive
to just randomly kill the very people they were trying to get money from, but my questions about pharmaceutocals have more
to do with the nature of their product than with their business practices.
Some time ago, my doctor told me that I was probably depressed, and he prescribed me a mild anti-depressant. But
to help me adjust, he also prescribed me an anti-anxiety drug for a few weeks. The Anti-Anxiety was habit-forming and I couldn't
stay on it, but the anti-depressant wasn't.
It seems backwards to me for some reason, and I couldn't see why it's a bad thing to not have enough anxiety in your
life. Unless, I guess, you have a job where anxiety is probably a good thing, like a rodeo clown or one of those TV weathermen
who have to report the news from inside a tornado.
"...and now to Action 5 weatherman Jimmy Dugan, reporting live from inside Hurricane Jacob in the Florida
Keys. How are things there, Jimmy?"
"Not too bad."
"...aaaaand....aren't there winds up to 120 miles per hour?"
"That's what they're saying, Dave. Other than that, though, everything's cool here."
One of the things about Anti-depressants is that they warn you to contact your physician if you have persistent
thoughts of suicide. When one of the side effects of the drug you're on is that it worsens your condition, something's seriously
wrong. It's like a diet pill that may cause weight gain.
Anyway, I'm not depressed anymore.
