better living through chemistry...

After a recent trip to the pharmacy to pick up refills for my ever-growing collection of pharmaceuticals, I thought I would take a few minutes to go through the large brown paper shopping bag that my pill bottles call home to see if I could make some organizational sense of the mess.
Let me just say it has been years since I've taken this particular bag and emptied the whole of its contents for inspection. I might as well have opened up one of my old high school yearbooks. Being the pack rat that I am, not a bottle nor an expired pill has been thrown away since the late nineties and instead have collected in a mountain of translucent orange plastic that resides under the bathroom sink of wherever I'm currently inhabiting.
Gazing at this collection I found myself taking a surreal walk down memory lane, each prescription indicative of a specific era, a specific event. The glossy, bulbous, red migraine pills conjured images of Patty Duke and Sharon Tate chasing their 'dolls' with a tumbler of scotch while flailing around in their best sixtie's Pucci.
The little round Antabuse and Revia tablets, my first stab at sobriety, that led to many episodes of frat party bush vomiting. The tiny white Trazadones, which when mistaken for aspirin had caused a very hazy Spring Break day in a wheelchair at the Magic Kingdom.
I saw the empty prescriptions of painkillers from my broken ankle surgery. Lortab, Vicodin and Darvocet: the opium triplets. There was the laundry list of anti-depressants, some that worked and some that left me crumpled up in a ball whining and cramping like a pre-menstrual cheerleader.
And of course I couldn't forget the Buspar bars that my college friends had fought over like they were mother's milk or the Lithium that kept me balanced but moving with the swiftness of a pre-TrimSpa Anna Nicole. Good lord what a mess...
I take only two prescriptions now for my bipolar disorder, and I take them as prescribed, yet I still can't bring myself to throw away the remnants of days past. Those tiny capsules and tablets are little reminders of good times but more often bad times, my scars to look at and remember the insanity.
The only leftover from my severely manic days is my uncontrollable almost compulsive desire to spend money. FDA, you on that one? Meanwhile though, I'm mellowed now with the help of medication but by no means have I fallen into the anti-depressant duldroms. I've always been a little too much, now I'm just enough...

Soundtrack: Erin McKeown- Cosmopolitans