#they called the amphetamines ‘go pills’

[mythserene]

DRUGS COST MONEY (MARK LEWISOHN, DRUG BUDDY)

I'm late, but I'm here, and this is something I've thought about since I read Tune In the first time.

First of all, Lewisohn's definition and description of what Preludin was is wildly underplayed and misleading, so I have to just get out a few quick Preludin facts. They're helpful.

Lewisohn:

Preludin was an appetite suppressant, an anorectic drug introduced into West German society in 1954, when commercial pressures were making women become more image-conscious. Users maintained an appetite but quickly felt full when eating, and the reduced intake brought about weight loss. Preludin’s primary ingredient, phenmetrazine, was not an amphetamine but an upper, giving the user a euphoric buzz. It was soon sold internationally and used recreationally, and though available in Germany only with a doctor’s prescription...

- “Tune In” - Chapter 19; Piedels on Prellies

(Oh, those women and their obsession with weight.)

I know Lewisohn's not a chemist and I don't expect him to have done extensive study before writing “not an amphetamine but an upper”—which, first of all is just a weird, grade school sounding statement about any stimulant in general that no scientist would ever say or write—but also he makes it sound like it's a fizzy little pill that gives you the sillies.

But definitely not an amphetamine or anything bad like that.

Look, even Wikipedia says right at the top, “[i]ts structure incorporates the backbone of amphetamine,” and although I didn't spend more than a few seconds there, I saw it because it came up first in the search like Wikipedia always does. Just saying it's basically impossible to miss.

And whether he was trying to hide the ball or not, since he wrote so much about them I am going to quickly set the "not amphetamine" record straight before I go on.

“Methamphetamine hydrochloride (Desoxyn) and phenmetrazine hydrochloride (Preludin) are two variants of the amphetamine structure.”

- “Amphetamine Abuse”, Sidney Cohen, MD, JAMA

“The experience in Sweden seems to indicate that phenmetrazine (e.g. Preludin) has the highest potency, and the greatest risk of psycho-toxic, acute and chronic effects (Rylander 1966). Amphetamines and methylphenidate seem to show less dependence-producing and psycho-toxic effects than phenmetrazine.”

- (United Nations Bulletin; Vol XX, No. 2)

Basically, Preludin was synthesized by taking an amphetamine skeleton and boosting tf out of it by adding a very common sort of chemical scaffolding to it called a morpholine ring, allowing them to tweak it by sticking on a nitrogen group. But morpholine rings by themselves also increase potency and usually bioavailability.

So in the narrowest technical sense, Phenmetrazine (Preludin) is classified as a morpholine instead of an amphetamine, but in every way it is an amphetamine on speed. (And every description of it anywhere says so right up front.) It was Amphetamine Plus. The little added synthetic kicker the pharmaceutical company figured out how to attach to the amphetamine made it stronger—gave it the Preludin "kick"—made the high feel better in general (according to all this crap I spent way too much time reading) and also made it way more addictive. It increased dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake, and the compound itself displayed “some entactogen properties more similar to MDMA." It made Preludin far more psychoactive than straight amphetamines. Made smells stronger, sensations more intense, and made you horny and "increased performance." It was taken off the market in 1980 because it was so hyper-addictive and the “psycho-toxicity” was so extreme. People reported doing things they barely remembered, including to a kind of freakish degree, like a lot of users committing crimes for the very first time in their lives. And so the company tried to replace it with a similar drug called Prelu-2, which is apparently still available but also almost never prescribed because even that was excessively addictive compared to non-boosted amphetamines.

And also, it made you feel body odors?

"...perfumes and flowers get a stronger smell, and body odours are felt more strongly than under normal conditions."

- (United Nations Bulletin; Vol XX, No. 2)

What are normal conditions? Maybe my normal conditions are different from everyone else's because I don't normally feel body odors?? But tbh I would literally try this drug just to see if I could.

Okay.

So... John was feeling some serious body odors because my man took a lot of them. Usually with lots of booze.

And apparently they made him more awesome.

George spoke graphically of how they would be “frothing at the mouth … we used to be up there foaming, stomping away.” John, as always, dived straight in, wholeheartedly grabbing another new experience with an open mouth and no thought of tomorrow. The Beatles called them “pep pills”—the commonly used British term of the period—and also “Prellies.”

...Two pills a night were more than enough for most but John frequently took four or five, and in conjunction with hour after hour of booze he became wired, a high-speed gabbling blur of talent, torment and hilarity.

- “Tune In” - Chapter 19; Piedels on Prellies

Yeah, he sounds like a blast. Good thing you got a quote there, my guy. I'm sure the first description that would’ve come to his roommates’ minds would be “hilarity.” Or second, after “hero.” (Sorry, I don't want to be hard on John. I have a lot of bandwidth and patience for drug indulgences, especially in a situation like this, but Lewisohn is unbelievable.)

Ruth Lallemannd, a St. Pauli barmaid who knew the Beatles from 1960, recalls an occasion when “They crushed ten Prellies to powder, put them in a bottle of Cola and shared it between them. They were always wound up.”

Drugs cost money

Amazingly enough though, these prescription-only pills didn't just magically get from people with nice doctors to John’s hands. Someone sold them to someone else and they ended up with “the toilet lady,” Tante Rosa, who sold them.

They looked like little white sweets … but these were no mint drops.

- Chapter 19

So cute!

Preludin small-print advised against its being taken less than six hours before bedtime, in case of sleep disorders.

- Chapter 19

So if Lewisohn is reading the small print of a drug that was discontinued 44 years ago he did not miss the Wikipedia page and must know that “not an amphetamine but an upper” is wildly misleading. Technically true in the chemical classification sense, but not in the medical or pharmacological sense. And true in the same way that “fentanyl isn't morphine” is true.

But that's not my point.

My point is that these “little white sweets” were strong, had wild “psycho-toxic” effects, John took a lot of them, and they weren't free.

Because drugs cost money.

Paul slept fine on just the one pill, John and George didn’t. George would recall “lying in bed, sweating from Preludin, thinking, ‘Why aren’t I sleeping?’ ” John simply took more: “You could work almost endlessly until the pill wore off, then you’d have to have another … You’d have two hours’ sleep and wake up to take a pill and get on stage, and it would go on and on and on. When you didn’t even get a day off you’d begin to go out of your mind with tiredness.”

Or, put another way, John was “a high-speed gabbling blur of talent, torment and hilarity.” And Paul did uncool stuff like sleeping.

Also, what in the...

Tony, George, Paul, John and Pete, along with Rosi and perhaps some stray females, would stagger wearily and noisily up three long flights of wooden stairs...

“Stray females”??? Is he talking about cats? Don't call human beings “strays,” you self-important oddity.

THE GROWNUP

John was never much into paying for stuff. Like rent, for instance. But that's what friends are for.

John was blessed with a particular talent for frittering away his funds (the council grant designed to provide his working materials) and was rarely in a position to pay [rent]. As Rod remembers, “During the week I’d go and have a pint with him and he’d always have money for a beer, but when it came to the day to pay the rent he was always hard up. ‘Could I owe it to you?’ ‘Would you like this jacket?’ One time he paid me with a Mounties-type Canadian jacket he’d probably nicked from someone else.”

- “Tune In” - Chapter 13; “Hi-Yo, Hi-Yo, Silver–Away!”

He paid rent with a jacket? Landlords take those?

I'm not gonna lie, the only real issue I've ever had with Paul—the things I have the most confusion and hesitancy about—are when he seems inexplicably cheap. Like paying the Wings band so little for so long. There's only a few cases that come to mind, but they're my weak point with him.

Still, having done my share of experimenting—as well as dating a guy who became a high-functioning addict before becoming a non-functioning addict before becoming an ex who died of an overdose—I know very well how it feels to see money flow through your hands like water and into someone else's bloodstream. And what happens then is you either both starve or you are the only one eating. In the end, someone has to have money to live, and the more drugs my ex took the more I was forced into being a walking, talking, pissed off safety net.

Stu supposedly got in a fight with Paul because Stu owed Paul money. (Although that doesn't explain attacking Paul out of nowhere on stage half as well as a three-days-awake-Prellie-binge psycho-toxicity does.)

It does, however, mean that at least one guy in the band who was taking Preludin was running out of money between paychecks.

And there's no way that if Stu was running out of funds that John wasn't too. And faster. And according to Lewisohn, George was eating a lot of Preludin, too. Because he was also cool.

That leaves Paul.

John was notoriously bad with money even when he had a lot, and when everyone is living and working together it's almost impossible to be the only guy eating or the only guy smoking. But at the same time if you know you can't do anything to stop your friends from going hard and never thinking at all, it tends to make you more careful. Because you're all you've got and all they've got. You didn't ask for the job, but you drew the short straw. So you hide some cigarettes and share too many, and get increasingly sick of it and resentful, but there's no good answer.

John heaped a ton of spice into the mix by suddenly moving back into Mendips. He’s unlikely to have told Mimi of the Gambier Terrace eviction, but Rod Murray knew little of this hasty departure: John left most of his possessions in the flat and several weeks’ rent unpaid—to the tune of about £15. He just scarpered.

- “Tune In” - Chapter 15; Drive and Bash

“Spice.” Dude really said “spice.” That John, so spicy. And fwiw, that's £300 today.

Maybe John had another jacket to pitch in.

Paul says he's more cautious by nature and I'm sure that's true, but also you know they all relied on him because they knew he wouldn't be as stupid as they were. Who knows what he would've done—whether he would have lived a more libertine life in Hamburg—if he'd felt like that was an option and he didn't have to be the grownup. Who knows what he would have done if anyone else gave a shit whether they ate or smoked.

I'll end by repeating the freakishly weird way Lewisohn told a John psycho-toxicity story that the AKOM ladies pointed out in Ep 8: No Greater Buddy, since it's almost impossible not to talk about John and Prellies without it.

“PAUL AND GEORGE’S HERO-WORSHIP STAYED FULLY INTACT”

George was second only to John in the swallowing of Prellies and knew better than most the sum effect of taking too many for too long, how the combination of pills plus booze plus several sleepless days caused hallucinations and extreme conduct. He’d describe one occasion when he, Paul and Pete were lying in their bunk beds, trying to sleep, only for John to barge into the room in a wild state. “One night John came in and some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut all her clothes up with a pair of scissors, and was stabbing the wardrobe. Everybody was lying in bed thinking, ‘Oh fuck, I hope he doesn’t kill me.’ [He was] a frothing mad person—he knew how to have ‘fun.’ ”

Handling John was something his friends were well used to doing. If he didn’t murder them in their beds there was no greater buddy. They might fear for their lives but they loved him still. No way would they walk out and join another group. John was just John, and Paul and George’s hero-worship stayed fully intact.

- “Tune in” - Chapter 28; You Better Move On

Mark Lewisohn knows nothing about drugs or drug culture. Which is fine. Good. Great, even. But the thing is, it doesn't stop him from knowing everything about it. He has confidently and emphatically stated that John and Yoko weren't doing heroin in the daytime during the Get Back sessions. He even claims that they weren't on heroin during the Two Junkies interview. Even repeating this paraphrase makes me feel ridiculous, but he says that was a hangover from the night before, and that they were too lucid to be high. Which, first of all, is not how heroin fucking works. They were blasted. The aftereffects would be them being antsy and jumpy, not going in extra-slow motion and puking. Blows my mind, the hubris this guy has. To confidently state something he unquestionably pulled out of his ass without even a moment's hesitation. Not only is that not how heroin works, but it is the drug that people wake up to do. Not wake up and do. Wake up to do.

And you can tell from the way he talks about John on Prellies—“a high-speed gabbling blur of talent, torment and hilarity”—that he has never experienced anyone who's been up a few days. And I still have a more daring nature than most of my friends, and am in no way shocked by the drug use. Me and my friends in Houston used to take Fastin and go midnight bowling every Saturday. The memories are good and I regret nothing. But the naive way Lewisohn romanticizes John and low key mocks Paul—as if Lewisohn was the ultimate drug buddy and Paul a total prude—is so weird. It's freakishly, embarrassingly, weird. Like he wants to be the cool guy. Like he thinks he can be the cool guy, and is being the cool guy, but to me it's painfully embarrassing and nothing else makes him look more desperate and delusional.

[sarahdogoc80]

Lily is totally left guys.

Lily Orchard: I'm totally against capitalism it's evil.

Also Lorch: These drugs have a bad reputation unless I'm the one who decides to take them. Also addicts just spawned in addicts it's their fault.* Completely ignores the two huge pill tragedies that spawned both drug out breaks. Ignores that the pharmacusal industry is a billion dollar industry funded by the government. Ignores that doctors were paided to push oxycodine during an economic Reccestion and a rocky time due to it being Bush's administration. Ignores the women forced on amphetamine because they had to conform to unrealistic beauty standard so their husband can have a perfect LOOKING wife. And when she couldn't handle the amphetamine just give them Valium. Then they got hit with the hell that was 70's America and caused the cocaine/ crack epidemic that targeted black people. And has caused untold damage to their communities and culture. Ignores how mental health and tragedy and PTSD play into addiction. Spreads old propaganda made up by the LUMBER and OIL industries to get rid of hemp so their capitalistic empires would have no competition as the part you don't smoke can be used to make paints, toilet paper, paper, etc. Spreads old American propaganda about weed that has very strong roots in the anti Mexican racism of the late 1800's- early 1900's. Used a family member's death as a shield when she gets criticism and is proven wrong. Dehumanizes addicts the same way people like Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon did.

Lily would make Reagan proud. I get that not everyone has the time to look into the huge problem that capitalism has done to the medical system. But if you don't understand then shut the fuck up. Because by talking out your ass your hurting the victims and helping shield the companies who did this and are already trying it again with Adderall and Xanax. Lily you are literally spewing right wing talking points. You claim you hate capitalism but no you don't. You hate the systems that don't benefit you. But you happily spread their propaganda like the good little puppet you are. Stuff like marijuana has it problems but talk about it's actually problems not the shit made up to go after Mexicans or the propaganda made up by lumber and oil industries so they could build their capitalistic empires. Banning weed has only benefited the systems you hate so much. And hurt the people you claim to care about/ be a part of. Idk a lot on the subject but in America, Native communities have huge drug problems because of government systems. The very people you dress up as are being hurt by you spreading this garbage. But hey you are immun to propaganda and are the smartest person in the room aren't you. Who cares about the victims you are helping burry. Who cares about the families of all races destroyed by capitalistic greed of the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. You got your pain pills.

"So let's all do drugs and waste away and die. That's what they want. So what ever you want they will precipice it. No matter how high you get.... They put it in your brain that it is the solution. For depression, weight loss, spinal contusion. So take this better yet take two ."

Edit. I am Mexican American Lily. So judging by how you hold people with darker skin's voices as word of God or something (as seen in your SU videos). You by your own morals can't argue with me on this. As my community was hit the hardest by anti weed bullshit. But because I don't agree with you and you can't fetishize me you will probably go full trump supporter and start calling me a border jumper, or a half breed, or other non slur, racist remarks. Just like you did with that Bisexual guy who made a video on why your pokemon takes are ass.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

The right-wing media strategy of branding President Joe Biden as senile has always suffered from the major flaw that his public performance in major moments bears no resemblance to his depiction on Fox News and other Trumpist outlets. But with the president’s first debate with Donald Trump of the cycle looming on Thursday, the network’s hosts are building a rhetorical escape hatch in case Biden’s presentation once again exceeds the low expectations they’ve set for him: They’re claiming that before the event, Biden may take performance-enhancing drugs that conceal his cognitive decline. The right has baselessly pushed this conspiracy theory — for which no evidence has ever emerged — since at least 2020, when Trump tweeted that “only drugs” could explain Biden’s energetic performances in the Democratic primary debates. The narrative escalated earlier this year when right-wing influencers needed to concoct an explanation for Biden’s strong delivery of his State of the Union address. And it has reemerged as one of their preferred narratives in the lead-up to Thursday’s debate.

“The Joe Biden we’re talking about tonight I don’t think will be the Joe Biden we’re going to see on debate night,” Sean Hannity, a Trump political operative who also hosts a prime-time Fox show, told Lara Trump, the Republican National Committee co-chair and daughter-in-law to the former president, on June 17. Hannity added that Biden would be “hyper-caffeinated” and said he supports the idea of drug-testing the candidates before the debate. Hannity returned to the narrative all week long. He claimed Biden would be “jacked up” on “a lot of Red Bull, a lot of caffeine pills, whatever” to hide the “cognitive decline” which he called “obvious and troubling.” Those substances, Hannity asserted, would explain why Biden would be “screaming” and aggressive at the debate rather than “mumbling, bumbling, stumbling, and fumbling” and confused, as he is in the out-of-context video clips the host regularly shows his audience.

Hannity isn’t alone. Last week, Fox contributors Tyrus and Newt Gingrich both pushed the notion that Biden is using drugs. So did Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo’s panel.  On Donald Trump Jr.’s show Triggered, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) suggested Biden would be on a “cocktail” before the debate which could include “amphetamine-type drugs like Adderall and things of that nature” as well as “things like Provigil, you know, that also just increase your alertness.” He reiterated his claims in a Fox Business interview over the weekend, demanding that the president “submit to a drug test before and after this debate, specifically looking for performance-enhancing drugs.” (Notably, Jackson’s medical operation as White House physician reportedly functioned as a pill mill for Trump White House staffers). 

“Biden always performs better than expected on big nights,” Fox host Jesse Watters said on Friday. “It could be that he’s well-rested, studies hard. Or maybe it’s whatever’s in that orange drink. What is in that orange drink?” (Biden says his “favorite drink is orange Gatorade,” and numerous media outlets have reported that he drinks it regularly as president.) Trump himself has repeatedly gotten into the act on the campaign trail. “He’s gonna be so pumped up. He’s gonna be pumped up,” said the former president at a Wednesday rally, before suggesting that Biden uses cocaine. He claimed on Saturday that Biden would get “a shot in the ass” before the debate and come out all “jacked up.”

The right-wing have a sick fetish for pushing the “Joe Biden is senile” narrative to distract from the fact that their champion Donald Trump is far more senile.

See Also:

Daily Kos: The right can't decide if Biden is senile or superhuman

MMFA: Study: Top newspapers fixate on Biden's age while mostly downplaying Trump's age

[kervl-klear]

💥 For Yuseong

💥 - A witch has turned your OC into a militaristic vehicle. What vehicle would that be?

…………………………………………………

Huchu and Yuseong sneaked into a mysterious storage in the middle of nowhere. There were a raised of terrorism on the eastern part of nation C and C2ISTAR was hired to find out where did these terrorists get money to fund their activities. Angae’s sleeper reported that the group is self sustained through some form of business and Noeu found some traces of underground transactions on private water vessel in the high sea which Beagcha confirmed to be a common practice between illegal goods dealers.

Orenji had identified the location of congest activities through surveillance by air and Seoltang analyzed the photos. They found that there’s one particular isolated storage clearly under a camouflage attempts with interesting security measures and so the scientists duo are dispatched to identified the chemical compounds hidden in that storage.

Huchu and Yuseong are now inside, it’s full of cardboard boxes stacked upon each other. Huchu swiftly cut one of the boxes open to take a look, a bunch of brown glass bottles are arranged inside but what caught Huchu’s attention is their caps.

Huchu: “It’s cough syrups”

Yuseong: “But if this is what they sold, why be so secretive and suspicious?”

Huchu: “Probably because they are not selling these for medical use, to simplified; cough is a respond to an irritation in your throat where the brain tells muscles in your chest to push the air out of your lungs. This resulted from the stimulated nerves sending a message to your brain and cough syrup suppressed that function”

Yuseong: “Wait, so all allergy pills directly suppress your nerves system?”

Yuseong frowned at the horrifying implication toward the current allergy treatment and how many MDD patient have history of allergy pills usage due to some form of chronic allergy but then he beam other sunny smile.

Yuseong: “That’s so cool!”

Huchu doesn’t know what to make of Yuseong’s reaction.

Huchu: “Yeah…..we call them antihistamines. When mixed with the right NSAID in the right amount, you can creat a handmade drug that are a lot cheaper than heroin or amphetamine”

Huchu prays that this will not give Yuseong any weird ide-

Yuseong: “That gives me an idea”

Huchu sighed, now he has to ask Seoltang to kindly re-indoctrinate Yuseong again.

Huchu: “Yuseong, NO”

Yuseong: “But-But a food that prevented body from getting Ghrelin is really interesting, it could be use as a cure for some case of obesity and eating disorders! We can get a funds for this research by advertising to the executives that these are food that make soldiers unable to feel hungry no matter how little nutrition they have, it will sell well and all we need are antihistamine that bind to H-2 receptors-“

Before Yuseong could accidentally invent other market of people’s right violation. They hear a sound of shatter glass followed by a small thud, like someone had collapsed. They took a second to quickly check on each other before deciding the next move; should they move toward or away from the sound?

The scientists duo are way too curious to considered their options and just immediately go to checkout where the sound came from because SCIENCE.

They found one of the terrorists collapse on the ground alone next to one of the open box and a shattered cough syrup bottle, no blood, no injuries.

Despite the risk, Huchu reach out to check on this terrorist. Looking at the skin beneath his fur, it’s somewhat yellow. Indicating that his liver has difficulty functioning, the heart is okay and the breathing is normal. Huchu dig into the terrorist’s pocket to check if he has chronic illness or is taking any medication which he found a small package of Naproxen. This lead to Huchu checking the terrorist pupils which appear to be expanded, having a theory in his mind he lean in and smell the leftover substance in terrorist’s mouth to confirm his diagnosis.

Huchu: “It’s a case of overdose. Unlike Ibuprofen, Naproxen last longer in your blood so it is harder for your body to clean it off and so it is easier to get an overdose once diluted in cough syrup that are designed to be easily absorbed”

Huchu slowly inserted a tube through his patient’s throat, careful to not trigger a gag reflex. Through it, he feed terrorist some activated charcoal to absorb as much Naproxen and Dextromethorphan as possible.

Huchu reach into his pocket for Acetylcysteine, but he found that the bottle is empty. It appears he accidentally took a used bottle with him…either that or Angae wasn’t seeing correctly when he help Huchu pack the supplies.

Huchu: "He needs a liver transplant, I will let him borrow my liver for a bit. Let’s see if his body is compatible with mine"

Huchu unbutton his uniform, prepare to open his skin and dug a tube into his Portal vein and Hepatic artery but Yuseong stop him.

Yuseong: "No! You already trade your liver and kidneys off a couple of times this year not counting when you replace the broken blood-pumpimg machine with your heart! You can’t always resort to these kind of method!"

Yuseong shakingly squeeze Huchu's hand but then suddenly, Yuseong lighten up and he wags his tail somewhat excitingly. Huchu is clearly startled by the sudden shift of expression.

Yuseong: “You just need Acetylcysteine right? Can you tell me its chemical formula?”

Huchu: “…..C5H9NO3S…..?”

Yuseong: “Okay, so it’s Cyclopentyl radical, Nitrate and Sulfur”

Yuseong start to look around. He goes to the open box and took the foam piece that keeps the cough syrup bottles in place. These foam are called polystyrene foam. The blowing agent use for these foam is Pentane which has the chemical formula of C5H12, only a couple of Hydrogen atoms away from Cyclopentyl radical.

Yuseong then took terrorist’s gun on the floor then took a couple of bullet. Sulfur can be found in gunpowder, and lastly Nitrates can be extracted from Potassium nitrate which can also be found in the gunpowder.

Having all main ingredients, Yuseong start constructing his portable miniature chamber. He make this chamber a while back and he always carried it with him, it cannot breakdown every atomic bound at will like the life size one but removing 3 hydrogen atoms and extracting Nitrate from potassium nitrate is not beyond it capabilities.

Although atomic physics is not Huchu’s specialty, he does recognize the procedure to take a while and so injected Beta blocker into his patients to keep his heart BPM as low as it will allows him to live so that Naproxen and Dextromethorphan spread at slower rate.

After a while of breaking some atomic bounds as well as rearranging molecular structure, the liver detoxification chemical is done.

Huchu injected Acetylcysteine into his patients followed by Epinephrine to return his heart BPM to normal rate.

The overdosed person woke up, dazed at first but then jolt up trying to get away from Yuseong like a pilot spotting SAM.

Yuseong on the other hand is smiling brightly. This is the first time anyone he cannot recognize had a specific reaction to him. It gives Yuseong a lot of hope, so much so that his knees are on the floor. May be this overdosed person knows who he was, a first lead to finding his daughter.

Yuseong beam his sunniest smile to the stranger and quickly crawl to him while speaking excitingly.

Yuseong: “Greetings mister, my name is Yuseong! I suspected myself of having one daughter and that I committed arson with the intention of robbery, do tell me if you recognize my name or appearance-“

Ignoring Yuseong, Huchu slowly and carefully approach his patient.

Huchu: “Shhh… it’s okay, I’m here to help. I will not let anyone hurt you…”

The overdosed stranger pointed at Yuseong and yell that a Mobile CBRN laboratory is chasing him.

This prompted Huchu to forcefully grab the overdosed terrorist by his collar and shone some light into his corneas.

Huchu: “Ah, He’s still high. Probably hallucinating but at least he would probably survive now if we leave him alone”

However, Huchu didn’t let go of the guy’s collar.

Huchu: “Right..?”

He look deep into his patient’s eyes….who doesn’t exactly seeing correctly and is slowly slipping away from Huchu’s hand because he’s still high-

Huchu: “You think you can get away and go ingest unhealthy stuff again?? NOT A CHANCE, you are my patient now you hear me?! I didn’t spend-….Yuseong, how long does it take us to treat this guy?”

Yuseong: “……about 2 hours?”

Huchu: “2 HOURS of sweat and effort so I can let you out to die in the outside world like the other soldiers I’ve treated!!”

The terrorist attempted to get away from Huchu who legit is just trying to kidnap the man at this point, but Huchu gripped strength is too strong, and the guy got slap in the face by Huchu.

Huchu: “SToP ResISTINg mEDicAL HeLP”

Guess the ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you’ part didn’t include Huchu himself-

Huchu carried the terrorist over his shoulder.

Huchu: “You will never lay eyes on cough syrup or NSAID ever again! You will live with ALT of 34 U/L, AST of 32 U/L, ALP of 92 U/L, Albumin of 4 g/dL, total protein of 8 g/dL, Bilirubin of 1.0 milligram, GGT of 30 U/L, LD of 175 U/L and PT of 10 seconds until you are 65 at minimum!“

Yuseong pick the rifle on the floor up then approach Huchu.

Yuseong: “Hu, I know you are concerned but wouldn’t it cause problems if they realized that one of them went missing”

Yuseong spoke with nurturing empathy.

Yuseong: “Also if his liver actually manages to reach these values then I think his liver will become a world record statistical anomaly”

Just when they are about to leave, a couple of footsteps can be heard. A big group of terrorists surrounded the duo with guns.

But then the terrorists hold their gun up. They stare at Huchu and Yuseong and oddly that's all they do, no one shoot or charge at neither of them which really confused the scientists duo.

Yuseong: “Wait could it be…”

Yuseong’s light up into the sunniest smile.

Yuseong: “…because we save their comrade..?”

Suddenly their earpiece buzzed and Angae speak through it.

Angae: “Huchu, Yuseong, what’s going on? I got the report from my sleeper about the situation but how did things lead to that?”

Huchu: "It appears they refused to do harm to us because we save one of their friends"

Although he knows that Angae cannot see him, Yuseong still do a little nod while smiling.

Angae went quiet for a second.

Angae: “That doesn’t quite alight with what I received, my agent said there’s a hostage situation in the storage”

Yuseong, Huchu and the overdosed terrorist look at each other then at the other terrorists who surrounded them.

Huchu: “…..Who’s the hostage..?”

Angae: “The leader of this terrorist group?”

Huchu and Yuseong look at the overdosed terrorist who is still a little high.

Angae: “Wait a minute….You two didn’t-“

Huchu furiously stole the rifle from Yuseong and smacked the terrorist leader head with the handle.

Huchu: “YOu SOld tHis ShiT So YoU KnOw iT’s bAD bUt YOu STiLl InGEsT It-”

…………………………………………………

I considered going with YuSAM joke at first but my conscious say no.

Thank you for your patience in the TFC circuit and thank you for tuning into my frequency. 32G1, RWY CLR. 🛫✨

[murmuur-vanilja]

On cocaine, identity and autonomy.

I do drugs. That is not some kind of secret, and that’s pretty much something I mention every other day without showing much restraint about what I reveal on it. In theory, it is my special interest, it’s something I have a genuinely insane relationship to, both as a practice and as my little niche inside the bigger interest that is biology. Therefore, in theory, I am in love with all of them, from the sedatives to the psychedelics, from the dissociatives to the amphetamines, and would be down to try each and every at least once. However, there is no doubt, when it comes to what really tickles my mind, to what I really vibe with: those are the stimulants (with or without hallucinogenic properties).

This has been a surprise to some people in the past, and continue to be, occasionally. Specifically, the main curiosity about this would come back to that point: why would I, already experiencing “schizophrenia” and chronic dysregulation of my sympathetic nervous system (tachycardia and throwing up a lot, notably), would willingly expose myself to the same effects, nay worsen them? To which I couldn’t quite answer, because it was more of an urge than a premeditated essay. I’ve thought about it though, and even when I couldn’t really explain it, I’d somehow mumble it had to do with autonomy, and somehow, identity.

That is to say, in a life where experience has proven time and time again that, whatever I shall do, my health concerns would never be listened to anyway, I would always be stuck with the symptoms. Under such circumstances, if whatever I do will result in tachycardia and arrhythmia anyway, I suppose I’d rather choose to go through it and give it positive connotations than merely suffer through it at random. That choice, yes, made my general health worsen; my heart is behaving in stranger ways than it’s ever been, and more frequently. Yet, as a personal way of living, even though it doesn’t benefit the general health, I do feel happier taking back autonomy over it for a bit even if it’s not “good”, or even if it were to shorten whatever my life expectancy is.

On the other hand, although there is no saying when I’ll get sick from something different again, no saying when I’ll be in pain from the chronic pain again, even “negative” effects such as throwing up on drugs feel nice. They do, because I’m in control. It doesn’t matter if swallowing a pill of ecstasy got me to get rid of everything in my stomach within an hour, because even if it weren’t also associated with a positive experience, I would know those effects fade within eight hours or so (or any other time frame depending on the exact effect and substance and dose, yada yada). And that is the only time I know when it ends.

In a way, you might call stimulants an aid to me. In my case, it’s not really anything like coping, or at least that’s seriously not a big part of it at all (in fact, in a bad mood, it might make me worse, and cannabis with the aim of relieving pain, for example, actually makes me more aware of background pain I had somehow forgotten about).

There are other reasons, very much related, for which they also help. I could name the memory loss as something that I live as positive, when my habit is to remember most everything, to be unable to forget. I could name even the hallucinations, for they’re closer to a happy fever dream than to the fears I sometimes get at night.

In addition to that, there is another big part to the why of drug use, in my eyes. As I mentioned previously, I do have a strong interest in them, and that’s to such an extent you might call it a core part of my identity. I do not believe drugs have to be a big deal, at all, whether it be positive, negative or anything in between. However, I think that just because they don’t have to be that doesn’t mean that they’re not effectively a big deal to some people.

In my case, because they allow me to thrive in an interest that define me (biology) and because they allow me to live at all, they’re definitely something that are deeply intertwined in my personality, and I was craving the stimulants from before I even got my hands on them. On top of it, you have the subcategory of psychedelics that play a major role in identity in the way that they (especially psylocibin) allow me to introspect and figure out some pretty important decisions and directions in life. You know, the rearrangement of the entire default mode and all.

I mean, if you were to lie down in the middle of a public park with birds and see a bunch of trans flags in front of you, would you want to think about how your identity and your drugs feed into each other? I sure did. Well, from this point on, it’s more like I could go on and on about a bunch of anecdotes and explain each of them, or talk about how they made me realise how a lot of my own psyche would work, and I guess I’d love to grow them too to complete the mad pharmaco-biologist finally in touch with all that was lost and grieved part of my deeper self.

Plus, you know I’m disabled. Of course, I’m disabled and mad (as in the kind of “mad” from mad pride). That isn’t going anywhere, both because no one’s helping, and because it’s simply something that will always be there. Both disabled and mad because they don’t fully overlap, especially as the reason I put “schizophrenia” in quotation marks is because I acknowledge the psychiatry survivor story that I have, but wouldn’t actually interpret my experience with that framework; if anything, it’s more of a spiritual thing to me (which in turn, informs my relationship with drugs).

Really, the final point I’m introducing here is that I have preexisting conditions that already defined me, so I might as well define myself further. In that way, it’s true still, “I do drugs” and “I’m interested in the topic”, but it goes beyond that, way beyond that, to the point that it barely is true when you put it like that. Rather, I embrace them and I love them like I love myself.

July 2nd. 2:27PM - 7:46 PM

[nylved]

Tweaking on Main by Danielle Carr

The drug meant to cure the attention crisis is making it worse.

Decision theorist Herbert Simon coined the term “attention economy” in 1971 to describe an emerging problem of the computer age: information (limitless, inorganic, machinic) consumes attention (biological, scarce). “There is only so much lettuce to go around,” he explained, “and it will have to be allocated somehow among the rabbits.” By the time the term surged in public use, around the Twitter debut year of 2006, we rabbits were beginning to feel seriously out of whack. Like so many strange nouns before it (gender, the nation), the public only started to take notice of the “attention economy” when it seemed to be in crisis.

For Simon, the problem of attention was simple mathematics: infinite need meets scarce resource. As such, attention scarcity might be unfortunate, but it was not pathological, certainly not in a medical sense. Yet by 1980, the American Psychiatric Association had coined the ADHD diagnosis to explain why children were failing to get hooked on phonics. The problem was not, in fact, that the kids were “hyperkinetic” (aka that they couldn’t sit still), but that they suffered from a neurological incapacity to pay attention. By the time ADHD reached quinceañera age, an entire generation of well-insured children had been diagnosed—via tests as rigorous as losing a round of a Chutes & Ladders knockoff called “Stop, Relax and Think”—and put on Adderall, to blockbuster profits.

When people say “disaster capitalism,” they are referring to the dynamic by which capital creates crises for which it then sells solutions. In some cases, the logic hews so closely to its ligaments that it cries out for dissection. By now everyone save for the most orange-pilled #mentalhealthwarriors finds the late-90s child addy prescription boom shady at best. Yet even for those who consider themselves critics of the psychiatric establishment, the idea remains that the crisis of the attention economy was medicalized. In other words, first came the attention crisis, then came the diagnosis that described it as a medical problem, and last came the Adderall boom that was supposed to fix it. By these lights, if Adderall isn’t fixing the attention crisis, it’s because we are trying to cure a non-medical problem (e.g. the natural exuberance of children, or the infrastructural fact of smartphones) with a drug. This analysis fails to grasp the full extent of the problem. It’s not just that we are drugging something that can’t be solved with drugs. It’s that the particular drugs we are using to do so—amphetamines—are making the attention crisis worse.

At this point, no one seriously disagrees with the idea that, as the Internet has become inescapable, the so-called ADHD crisis has escalated. Nowhere has this been clearer than in the latest round of attention panics emanating like a toxic plume from the pandemic. It’s hard to say when, exactly, but sometime in the last four years, something insidious snapped into place. It was the feeling of watching the last remaining escape routes—out of the endless scroll, away from the screen—get sealed off. What used to be a piece of paper is now a QR code. You can’t turn off your phone to work because you need it for dual factor authentication. And so on and so on. What else is there to do in endless Zoom meetings other than be on your phone, anyway?

Reading an early depiction of the Internet, in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1980), what’s remarkable about the depiction of “cyberspace” is how immersive people expected it to be. It was a place you could go, distinct from “meatspace.” If only. The reality is that now, you are always half on your phone. This means that you can only ever half think, a fact that felt more obscene when you could remember, more clearly, how the other way felt.

This, then, is the architecture of the current attention crisis, which telepsychiatry start-ups like Done propose we solve with more Adderall, and critics propose we solve by rolfing, or something. There is a growing consensus that the attention crisis is, at bottom, caused by the Internet, which has in turn caused the rise of Adderall usage and prescriptions. But what if this story has things the wrong way around? Working backward from the neurochemical effects of the drug, it begins to seem plausible that, in fact, Adderall’s prevalence was the sine qua non of the Internetified attention economy and its perpetual crises.

Let’s begin here: the most online one can be is online on Adderall. Is there anything better? Where does the time go? There is always another tab to open, another reel to watch. In retrospect, it’s hard to think of a single bastion of millennial culture—which is to say, smartphone-cusp Internet culture—whose essential features are not deducible from the premise that everyone involved was gacked to high heaven on Adderall.

It’s not just that the technical architecture of the modern Internet was created by people on stimulants, although that’s also true. (There’s hardly a part of the country more Adderall-sodden than Silicon Valley. A recent study by the University of Michigan documented the prevalence of amphetamine use among programmers and coders.) It’s that Adderall was the living currency of being online, the elevated heart rate that set the culture’s BPM. Can one envision, for instance, a form as essentially millennial as the listicle without the army of twenty-something media writers intently foraging across the Internet, tweaking out of their minds? “Because Adderall is the drug most responsible for getting Gawker editors working at 7:30 AM,” the ill-fated site announced in 2006, “we recommend it without hesitation. Lord knows our loyalty is lifelong.”

By then, language itself was beginning to take on the qualities of a tweaker project. In 2000, literary critic James Wood dubbed an emerging genre of novel “hysterical realism.” It was meant to describe what he saw as a new type of fiction that resorted to paroxysms of erratic and baroque detail in order to veil the lack at its core—the lack being attention at the human scale. “An endless web is all they need for meaning,” wrote Wood, although he might as well have said these novels were, in contemporaneous slang, ‘so random.’ David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King led the way, with its Obetrol-riddled protagonist. At least half of the novel The Book of Numbers was written on “a variety of psychostimulants both legal and illegal,” Joshua Cohen confessed. ​​“I have been reading everything and not sleeping,” says a character on Adderall in 10:04, a novel Ben Lerner wrote after a post-college stint in which he convinced a Californian think tank they could “win” the “culture war” by paying him handsomely to make thousands upon thousands of interlinked Wikipedia pages. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Everything is Illuminated? Tell me you’re tweaking without telling me you’re tweaking.

The further you went downstream from literature toward the blogs, the more the linguistic euphoria thinned out into a pure content production grind. “Performance enhancers are necessary to the level of production the blog economy requires,” one industry veteran explained. “In a given week I may be called upon to produce, on short notice and in fair copy, essays, features, blog posts, Facebook posts, tweets, interviews, how to pieces, listicles, confessionals, city guides, recipes, memoirs, and whatever else will pay enough to cover my scrapple tab.” This flotsam was the phenomenological grist of being online, a loop running in a perpetual present. The Adderall that kept the 2010s VICE blogger churning out content was the same Adderall that made us open the article in yet another tab.

And this is the point: first came Adderall, then came the Internet. We didn’t get on Adderall because the Internet was too good. The Internet was good in the particular way that it was good because we were on Adderall.

There’s a biological reason for this. Adderall is a dopaminergic drug, meaning that it works by increasing the neurochemical signal that makes you want to keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing. Specifically, dopamine signals whether an activity is better or worse than expected: for example, if you get two gumballs from the machine when you expected to only get one, the physiology of the resulting jackpot thrill is caused by increased dopamine signaling. Any drug that floods the brain with dopamine will render the user hyper-vulnerable to getting stuck in repetitive behavioral loops, especially when the reward is unpredictable (the technical term is “variable reward.”) This is why gumball machines aren’t addictive and slot machines are. Amphetamines work by turning whatever you’re doing into a slot machine. If the Internet is the giant casino in which we are all now imprisoned, then dopaminergic drugs hook us deeper into its reward structures—like the ones that have you checking your notifications “one more time,” or opening a browser tab to Twitter through muscle memory that seems hardwired past your best intentions.

The connection between amphetamines and digital behavioral loops is perhaps best illuminated by what psychiatrist Gosta Rylander first described as “punding” in 1970. “The patient becomes obsessed with an activity that, while harmless on its own terms, comes to consume their life,” he wrote. “They become irritable whenever someone distracts them from their preferred behavioral loop.” Current clinical literature describes punding as “non-goal oriented, repetitive activity such as manipulation of technical equipment, handling, examining or sorting through objects, grooming, or hoarding.” These activities offer a soothing flow state reinforced by periodic reward, balancing undemanding stimulation with endless repeatability. “Repetitive Reward Seeking Behavior” syndromes of this kind tend to be observed in people who are taking drugs that flood their central nervous system with dopamine, and are most frequently observed in Parkinson’s patients being treated with dopamine replacement therapy, and amphetamine users.

Punding is an uncanny description of the doom-scrolling that became so alarmingly ubiquitous in the post-pandemic universe of screens. In the words of one young student, “The teacher would be speaking and I’d go blank. I would mute my teacher and go on TikTok and stay there for hours. That’s what sustained my attention.” He and many others are now being treated for ADHD in the steepest short-term rise in attention deficit diagnoses since the disorder was introduced. The excesses of the Covid telepsychiatry boom, the wanton abandon with which teleshrinks doled out amphetamine prescriptions—this is how we got an Adderall shortage.

The trouble with taking Adderall for your Instagram addiction is that, neurochemically, amphetamines hook you deeper into the endless scroll. You can’t fix the Internet attention economy crisis with Adderall, because the Internet was made by people on Adderall, for people on Adderall. The more Adderall you take, the better the whole thing gets (by “better” I mean “worse”). This is the upshot: the very medical fix currently touted as the cure for the attention crisis is, in fact, exacerbating it.

[corvidcall]

do you know anything about the national adderall shortage? my doc wanted to wait til it was calmed down before giving me a prescription but I don't really know how to check that stuff

i know a little bit!!! Theres a big post on r/ADHD about it, and you can check the FDA database to see if there is an official shortage of amy drug. of course, that doesnt necessarily mean your local pharmacy will have it, or will have a medication your insurance will cover. The problem I was having was that all the pharmacies near me were out of the generic stuff, and my insurance wouldnt cover anything else. I clould have fought them on it (and my psychiatrist was ready to) but without my meds, I didnt have the executive function to actually follow through on that. (Also, my prescription is really high (40mg a day babey) so some pharmacies i talked to werent willing to fill it even when they did have enough pills, because it would entirely clear them out)

(also without my adderall it was almost impossible for me to push through and do things i was anxious about, so i had to make my mom call pharmacies for me to see if they had any adderall lol. they did not)

i ended up finally getting my medication through a mail order pharmacy, which is definitely more expensive than getting it at my regular pharmacy (getting my prescription filled at the grocery store was about $25 for 30 days, and through Caremark its $100 for 90 days) so thats not going to be an accessible option for everyone, but it worked for me

Looking at the FDA database I linked above, they list all the manufacturers and when they're expected to have amphetamines back in stock. The latest date on there is by August 2023. i mean, time will tell if that's an accurate estimate, but it looks like thats when we're expecting things to calm down

hope this helps!!!

[signalterminated]

III knows this dream. 

He's sitting hunched between the shadows and neon flashing of a hotel sign, body wound tighter than the cheap bed springs he's sitting on. The red analog glares at him, mercilessly displaying the time. 

2:43 AM

He's always been like this, for as long as he can remember: a constant flux between almost-normalcy and erratic batshit insomnia, his body running off of amphetamines and mania, mind sputtering like the last few drops of fuel in the tank.

This time, though, something else is keeping him awake. He came so far to see her and made so many promises but she didn't believe a single one of them – and why would she? He'd broken them several times before.

(I'm clean I swear I wanna be your man)

He pulls out the little bedside bible and rips out a few pages, folding and unfolding, rearranging them into an effigy. A symbol. He places it on the bed and kneels on the carpet, clasping his hands in prayer.

God, he thinkwhispergrowls, all I want is for her to pick up. Can you give me that much? 

He promises that the last time truly was the last time. No more chasing after the head rush that slips further out of reach each time he snorts another line. He’ll settle down this time, keep a tune and a job for more than 6 months, be an honest man. Dependable. Reliable. All that crap. 

(He's a cautionary tale of every promise made that you can't keep, and if God does exist then he'll know it, too.)

Maybe that's why all he's met with is silence. It's certainly why she never picks up the damned phone. 

III chews his lip and knocks the effigy off of the covers. In that moment of despair he's right back to craving his old vices: the mercy of a bottle to knock him into dreamless slumber, a pill on the tongue to fizzle away his restless consciousness and placate its choppy waters. 

With a sigh he pushes himself to his feet. Fine. Finefinefine – if she won't call, if he can't sleep, then fuck it. Fuck all of it, he'll leave. He'll crawl back to his dingy flat alone and swallow all his promises, chase them down with the packet of benzos he tucked underneath his mattress for a rainy day. 

Lucky for him, London has a lot of rain. 

When he yanks the hotel door open, prepared to stride out and enjoy one last stupendous act of self destruction, he’s met with a void.

The floor is gone. So are the ceilings, and the walls, and everything else that could delineate solid ground from empty space. Nothingness hangs above and below. 

But III knows this dream. He doesn't scream. He doesn't reel from the darkness yawning open before him, waiting for him to plunge into its bottomless gullet.

“God dammit.”

He yells out in rage and his yell is swallowed into the Nothing. It reminds him of being enclosed in a soundproofed studio, listening to a vocalist whose name slips his tongue roaring his lungs out into the mic. All that energy goes directly into the recording. No room for wasted noise. 

He knows this dream; he could scream and scream and it won't make a difference. All the people that would have cared are gone. It's just him and his bad choices caught in a limbo, perched on the edge. Trapped and waiting for a call that'll never come. 

So he stands there, leaning out over the threshold and huffing in anger that has nowhere to go. The Nothing wants him to jump and for once he decides to wait – it's always a 50/50 that it'll wake him up or leave him falling forever. He'd rather stay here on this ruddy carpet, pacing and caged. At least it’s solid ground. He'll wake up eventually. 

Right? 

He's about to pull himself back when a breeze blows through the Nothing and catches him by surprise. His nails dig into the doorframe as the rest of him lurches forward then back, seesawing over the edge. Then it happens in reverse. And reverse again.

Okay, that's new.

Something sharp and white glints below, peeking out from the abyss: a circle of bony protrusions too massive to estimate. His head spins as they unfold into concentric rings that rise and fall with every breath, even and calm.

Fangs. He's looking at fangs. A supersized lamprey’s maw comprised of shadows and teeth.

He wants to close the door but the door is gone now, too. He hovers on his patch of carpet that levitates in the void, a speck waiting to be sucked down into abyssal jaws. 

But they don't. They don't snap upward and crush him, or force him off the tiny scrap of reality he still clings to like a sailor to shipwreck debris. They simply breathe that same unchanged pace with all the patience of a predator that knows it’ll get fed either way. 

III is a lot of things but patient isn't one of them, so he shouts directly into that horrifying, toothy void,

“What the hell do you want!?”

And he's shocked to hear his echo rise back up to meet him. It's distorted, pieces carved away by whatever nonsensical properties govern this fever dream.

The hell do you want

Hell do you

Do

Youyouyou

You.

Oh. Oh, shit. 

He tries to take a step back and gasps out as he nearly tumbles backwards into Nothing, scrabbling to hold onto the doorframe. His heart is pounding harder than a kick drum, knocking against his sternum with every throb. 

And then he's laughing. It echoes back to him in a hollowed out hyena cackle. He's a half mad dog with every limb snared, no chewing his way out of this. 

“So that’s how it is, then.” His palms are coated in sweat and his fingers ache from holding on so hard that his nails bite long crescents into the wood. 

“Alright,” he says. “Okay.”

The jaws continue to breathe and offer no input. They don't need to; they know they're his only option. 

“Fuck it.”

He launches himself from his tiny island before he can think too hard about the bottomless gullet waiting below. 

III’s jolted by the impact of his body meeting the floor. He's a crash-landed pilot, flailing in the blanket tangled around his limbs like a mangled parachute, sweat further adding to his suffocation. 

By the time he rips the blanket off of himself and crawls back into bed, his heart is at a wild gallop and his gut is somersaulting high enough to compete in the Olympics. He drags a clammy hand down his clammy face and lets out a loud, nauseated groan. 

His hand slaps around his bedside table for his phone and hastily turns it on. The bright, fluorescent light makes his eyes ache, but at least he can read the time.

5:46 AM

Great. He doesn’t need to be up for another two bloody hours. 

He tosses his phone onto the bedside table and flops his head back onto the pillow, waiting for his pulse to level back out to a tolerable baseline and for his sweat to dissipate in the stale air of his poorly ventilated flat.  

Another part of him is waiting for a halo of fangs to descend from the popcorn ceiling above and finally crush him to paste.

Minutes tick on by and no fangs descend. Of course they don’t, because that would be impossible – it was just another stupid dream from his stupid brain railing on his stupid past decisions. That’s all it ever is. 

When he runs his tongue over his teeth, he tastes saltwater. 

[i-love-an-alcoholic]

Paranoia and weed

Your co-workers talk nice and smile at you, but you know they trash talk you behind your back. The strangers walking past you on the streets look straight into you and know what you've done. They see your puffy, red eyes, dilated pupils and they judge. The cashier hates you: you can hear it in her tone of voice. Your parents call and ask you how you're doing, but they call you crazy when you try to tell them how you really feel.

It's hard to describe paranoia when you have it, because it becomes your truth. You're constantly on the edge. After the day is done you go back to your hiding place where you keep the pills, weed and powder that take those feelings away for a moment (or make them worse, whichever it is). You put yourself to sleep with substances, get a full night of poor quality sleep and wake up in a paranoid haze.

But now you don't have those drugs either and you have to face the fear, anxiety and paranoia head on with no relief. You can't sleep at night, counting hours to the alarm of doom: that's when you have to go out and put on a facade of normalcy you can barely keep up. The enemy is everywhere, it knows where you live and it's coming for you. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

I've recently watched a lot of video essays on drug and alcohol abuse, and the ones that hit the hardest were the ones about the adverse effects of weed. As I've written before I used to buy into the "weed is harmless" narrative. I believe the paranoia I experienced was largely caused by my exessive weed smoking. I've also experienced short, transient amphetamine psychosis, but it was nothing compared to the long-lasting, almost subtle and very insidious state of paranoid confusion caused by the fat-soluble psychoactive components of weed slowly leaving my body (did you know your brain is mostly fat?).

I used to be a vocal supporter of legalization, but now I'm against it. I know weed has medical applications and I do support that, and I think it should be decriminalized, but the adverse effects are very real and very scary. I don't think it is the worst drug out there, but "it's just weed" is an understatement of this last decade.

Just keep it safe, you hear?

[sarahdogoc80]

Part 3. The Perfect Victims at Perfect Times

Sometimes interesting about the Diet Pill Crisis and Pain Pill Crisis was who they targeted. In both these cases the perfect victims were women of their current times. While guys would jump in later they usually did the street version of the percriptions.

Let's start with the diet pill Crisis of the 1970's that spawned the crack and cocaine problem. As this one I wasn't able to experience personally and was only able to read about/ heard about in my hippie group from some of the older women. I'm sure everyone reading this knows post war America wasn't the best time for women. Due to the unhealthy beauty standard and a little info German doctor coming over to America brought was a recipe for disaster. They started giving the women amphetamine and later when the women couldn't handle the speeders they'd give them Valium to calm them down. I can only see this ending well. The unhealthy beauty standard along with the loose regulation around diet pills. They were becoming a problem because women realized that the speeder made them thin and able to deal with their shitty husbands. Young women and older girls were encouraged to take these pills. Because they had to look perfect otherwise their husband would cheat and not love them. Which is also great for young women and girls phycology/S. My grandma use to take a diet pill called Black Beauties. I'm sure they weren't called that because the pills were just so beautiful. But they were black with black beads in them. Thought this bubble would pop and crackdowns stared on diet pills around the early 70's. So you know what that means. Women who couldn't get them legally or just find people selling their pills. Started doing cocaine. I wonder if any government organizations had anything to do with this so they could fund their anti whatever in South America and the Middle East. Well another thing that was going on at the time was the break down of segregation. Thought alot of places even today still feel the effects of segregation even more so back then when it has only started being criminalized like ten years ago at that point. So many poor women (usually women of color) couldn't afford to buy the cocaine. But don't worry the American Government being a piller for equity though their money was just as good as the rich white women's money. It was all going to be used to try and over throw someone. They supposedly came up with a cheaper alternative. And they supposedly started having people sell that to minority communities.

My grandma came from money so once she couldn't find Black Beauties anymore she got hooked on cocaine. As did one of her sisters. Her younger sister was actually a huge coke dealer for the area. Well she and her husband got busted. And so her mommy came and bailed both them out and while my great grandma and her daughter trying to figure out how to get out of this. Her husband got drunk and crashed the car and died. So my great grandma got her daughter to see a judge she was friends with. And my great aunt played a battered house wife who was forced to help with the drug dealing. And because he was dead he couldn't defend himself or prove otherwise. She got a year of probation and left the state once that was up. My great grandma had a "habit" of paying off judges for her kids by the way. My grandpa (who would have just been her daughter's boyfriend at the time) crashed his motorcycle with a 1000 Quaaludes for my grandma while drunk. And my great grandma arranged for him to pay the judge off so he never got in trouble.

I want to state something that will be important context. So what was America like in the 70's when this started getting bad. Well the 70's were rough. There was the gas rationing that had to happen under Carter. The factories where going overseas and alot of the adult boomers were left to dry. That's probably why they tell us to try harder. Because that's probably what they were told by their parents. Because people were losing their factory jobs they couldn't support their family and so had to figure out something. People were coming back from Vietnam around this time too. And as we Americans know the Vietnam veterans weren't respected by their country or country men. And crippling PTSD was just ignored or they were given addictive substance like Valium and opiates. Martial rape was finally being recognized and women were starting to be allowed to open bank account. No fault divorces also started rolling out in states. Making it so women could leave but religious and social pressures still kept many women stuck. It was a rough time and didn't breed the most healthy mind sets. And alot of these people just couldn't stop because they weren't there mentally. I think it's started to be understood that Gen x and Older millennial had apathetic parents and this wasn't a good thing actually. These factors are why and insured the next generation of addicts would have trama the pharmaceutical industry could manipulate.

The cocaine stuff started dying down in the 90's I wanta say. While it was still big cocaine started getting cut with garbage because the government wasn't important pure stuff anymore. So my grandma as she puts it. It was more dangerous and wasn't as good as the old stuff. Another event also happened in the 90's that was very special for this coming disaster. The kids born and raised during the crack/cocaine epidemic are becoming adults and working. And a very important drug was on the horizon. "So remember kids your government sponsors the Billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. So if you got a problem they got the salutation."

Opioids weren't a new thing in the 90's like I said they've known it's addictive for years at that point. But their over percriptions stated climbing. By the turn of the century a lot of adults had been on an opioid atleast once. And it was something people would do for "fun". Well with that event that happened in 2001 came hardships. People lost their families to terrorist attacks, people's anxiety about another attack, and people's family getting sent over to fight a very unpopular war. So addiction on most substances went up.

Before I move on I need to make something clear. Before fentanyl was a main ingredient in Heroin it was usually oxy products. I've never done heroin nor do I know how it's made but like I said people just heard this stuff though the grape vines. But the reason they used oxy products was because pills like Percocet, Vikes, and codeine had too much filler for the little they would get out of it. So it wasn't worth it to try and get the opioids out of those. But oxy products were pretty much straight opioids and had a lot in them especially when they still sold the 120mg ones. Yes those were sold but taken off the market before my mom got into it because um if you don't know that's a lot of opioid. And people who were new to drugs and kids stealing their parent's drugs were ODing off one pill so they stopped producing those a while ago. So before fentanyl was in everything it was probably morphine or more likely oxy. The reason for the shift over was because in 2011 America and like no one else approved this coating to be put on oxy products. This coating would turn into this melted mochi like glob when you'd crush it and it got it wet. So now people who tried to inject, snort it, or turn it into heroin where met with it turning into melted mochi making it useless. But many countries still have what Americans refer to as the crushable ones because this coating very much causes liver cancer. And most other countries banned this coating.

So the 2008 Reccestion happened and everything went to shit. To put this into prospective people where loosing their jobs, their homes, still loosing family members to war, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina also put a hard strain on people's faith in the government, and people couldn't get government benefits because of how the Bush administration handled this stuff. With this lost in faith in the government people realized they were on their own for the most part. So to keep their heads above water people started hearing about this thing people have been doing of getting pain pills and just selling them. And making a decent amount of money. And the more and more people did this the more people talked and the more "normal" people got dragged into this. Most of the time the mothers of these families or just women in general had an easier time getting them. Plus men still had this sigma to doing it themselves. But making their wives do it was okay. So many families go into this so they could feed their kids, buy their kids school stuff, keep bills paid and it hinged on selling pain pills. But this was a network. Because in my city especially these middle class white women didn't want to have to talk to a hood drug dealer. But there were people in town who would so people would sell to them and be done with it. So when I explained this to make it clear your parents/ middle class and higher people most likely weren't dealing with the worse of the worse. They were probably selling them to a middle man from your town. And most importantly not thinking of the consequences. Another thing I need to make clear is I know a lot of people were horrified when they finally got a peak behind the opiate black market and what it was doing. So people I know for a fact were selling don't want to think they were causing this. So I've seen people who were selling talk as if they weren't selling and would never have done that. When they were. But the opioid crisis wasn't funded by just the addicts or bad people. But doctor and normal people who just didn't care, realize, or were in desperate situations and had their hands tied. I think it's important for everyone who had any part of this to be honest not to shame them though. But so people who want to blame the junkies as a scapegoat can see the honest truth of people doing this and why. Because the more people hide their part in this the more it pushes blame on the addicts and people it's easy to blame. And it causes people to have some wacky ideas about the crisis.

But what about the people who didn't understand drugs started taking these new fancy oxycodine. Well this ended up having way more devastating effects. Because like their mothers alot of women were still stuck in shitty situations. Especially during the economic hardship and mental health was still heavenly stigmatized during the Bush and early Obama administrations. So your wife being on anti depressed looked bad but them being on pain medicine you didn't care about for their lady pains was easier to digest. We had people who just wanted an escape from the world around them. And the Oxycotin company sold them a solution. "They put it in your brain that it [Drug] is the salutation for depression, weight loss, spinal contusion. So take this, better yet take two of them."

My mom started abusing them once she'd had enough of my dad's shit. And it "helped" her get though dealing with him. He was starting to become very physically abusive at the time. My mom also had to deal with my autistic brother and I think around the time he had just started saying words at 5. They thought he was going to be mute. My mom was also a couple years out of having to watch me go through three years of cancer treatments. And was working almost 12 hour shifts in a factory at night. She wasn't in a good place mental and will properly never be. She also had to grow up with her mom used cocaine so she didn't have to deal with her father. So while it's easy for my to say my mom should have just been stronger or seen thought the sales propaganda. But when you look at the humanity behind it she wasn't in a right state of mind to just stop once Doctor A. got her hooked. She did try and showed hesitation but he then lied to her saying oxycodine was less addictive because it lasted longer. Now to people who understand addictive substances probley see this excuse for what it is sales propaganda. But it was 2008 and with her personal life. She just didn't have all the info/ mental fortitude to argue. She had no surpost form her family either around this time. My grandma had been kicked out because she sided with my grandpa over some property my dad had stolen from him. My grandpa was mad his daughter was taking my dad's side and because he was also abusive told her she deserved to be beat by my dad. And her sister had her own stuff going on. This isn't my mom's fault completely. It just wasn't a good situation for my mom especially because she had to work in a factory, take care of me and my brother (because my dad didn't do child care), and had been in 5 car accident at that point most of them from her falling asleep at the wheel because of how overwhelmed she was. So for people who just want to blame people like her for falling down this pit. You probably wouldn't have done much better. While you can say you would in 2024 looking back on this with hindsight. This is missing the point completely of understanding the time period and what different families had to go through. Alot of use don't realize why Obama "Change" campaign went over so well. Bush had a bunch of stuff happen under his presidency that he didn't handle well and America started becoming jaded. It was a different social environment we can't say how much better we would have done. But doctor and the government should have minimize this by not taking payout from drug companies to push an addictive substance or put more value on physical therapy, non addictive medicine, coughnotcriminalizingweedcough, and most importantly invested in mental health.

My grandma now after being a victim of the diet pill epidemic got to watch her daughter go though the same thing with oxycodine. The only difference is my mom has liver cancer and her body is shutting down. Unlike my grandma she wasn't able to stop in time. So now my grandma has to watch as her daughter slowly dies. And the worse part she said was the doctor knew what he was doing, he had to, he could have stopped this. That this didn't need to happen. Due to my mom's abuse of drugs my grandmother refuses to go to pain management and only goes to doctors if she has to. She was screwed by doctors for a paycheck one to many times. My grandpa after seeing how pain medicine effected his daughter. He stopped taking any pain management. He was dying of cancer when she got bad. And in his last days he refused morphine because of my mom. He was slowly bleeding to death because his plantlets were non existing. Even in the face of certain death he refused pain medicine because of how much trama was associated with them. The only thing My grandpa had for his last 6 years of life was weed. It was the only thing making it so he would eat and not just lay there in pain. My grandma stopped cocaine around the time I was born because my mom said she would never know her grandkids if she didn't stop. It was enough of a wake up call for her to stop but because of my cancer diagnosis she has a relapse for a little bit. But since 2005 has only done weed and drinks a couple beers every now and then. Which is preferable but what do I know.

My mom just didn't have the will to stop due to her own undiagnosed mental disorders and the trama she was trying to burry with more pills. Now that she is getting the proper help it's too late and her kidneys are barely functioning, her liver is poisoning her, and her heart can give out at any moment. Me and my brother will probably never get any justice because she was doing stuff outside of Oxycotin. So legally and medically they can't 100 confirm that's what caused these problems. Medical lawsuits of any kind are hard to argue against especially because all the court has to do is say she was just some junkie. And then I have no case. While others where still able to bring them down and drag a lot of the corruptions through the mud. It's too little to late. They should have never paided doctors to do this.

When you look at the victims of Oxycotin please remember what they had to work with at the time. I need to state not all drug addicts are good people but that doesn't mean all of them are/were trying to hurt anyone. Its up to you to forgive the addicts in your life and you aren't entitled to. This Crisis brought out the worse in everyone and if you can't forgive an addict that is trying to get better that's fine. But don't treat them like they are lesser. Make your boundaries clear with the recovering addict in your life. Sobriety is possible no one is a lost cause. But if you are an addict please try and get the best therapy you can. Because it will be a huge help.

TLDR: both times regardless of if they ment to the pharmaceutical industry targeted women during times of stress. And with Oxycotin they paid doctor to get people hooked and used the old drug dealer strategy of "The first one is free." And to burry their corruption everyone involved threw their victims under the bus and dehumanize them. So you don't see when the pharmacusal industry does this again with the next substance. Then they will dehumanize you when you become to inconvenient for them.

[leomonae]

cool cool cool cool cool, those adhd med global supply issues have now reached my own medicine

upsides:

- estimated to be resolved by the end of the year, i still have a month left and possibly also some leftover equasym in a cupboard or a pocket or something, given how i always used to squirrel away a few pills in unlikely places for when i'd forget to refill my rx on time and couldn't summon up the motivation to go do that without said medication

- looks like immediate release versions might not be as unavailable at present?

downsides:

- i do not trust their timescale estimates or their honesty

- if immediate release is a no go, i will need to be bringing in prescriptions two weeks in advance and following up on how they're doing with getting it in so if necessary i can instead go get a different prescription, try other pharmacies, etc. all very fun tasks when you have adhd and only actually remember to pick up your standard repeat prescription half the time as it is

- i hate immediate release stimulants

- i am now probably gonna have to propose that my psychiatrist prescribe me just... straight up fucking amphetamines, rather than the much more palatable prodrug version which is significantly less prone to diversion and abuse. and i don't even want it! i'm just settling!

bonus downside, i have now already had to interact with three people today and am going to have to call the pharmacist again, and it's not even 11 am yet :(

[elefantdaydream]

PFAS

Ch 9: Dino & Drugs

Dino was a very special guy in my life, he was a year younger than me. Dino was very special to me, though he wasn’t the type of special where I wanted to shower him with hugs and kisses and where I wanted to hold hands with him under the full moon sky and dance in the pouring rain. No. Dino was the type of boy I was trying to save from himself.

Dino, similar to myself, was a child of divorce. Dino, similar to myself, had a brother who had been lost to the snow; but unlike me, his life was far more crooked, you could even say his life was broken while mine was just bent.

Like I had said before, Dino was a child of divorce, his dad lived abroad and his mother was a raging alcoholic who would disappear for weeks on end. His grandparents took care of him and his grandma was his greatest supporter. One day his only brother was found lying dead in the gutter, overdosed on heroin. His hero, much like mine, had died; but unlike me, his was a physical death. A year later, his greatest support also passed away, and another year later, his second grandpa also left. so he was now left with his deadbeat mom, a dad who didn’t care about him and a grandparent who taught him how to play the guitar.

The guitar and the music were his escape to reality, yet it wasn’t the only. He found himself in the world of drugs and alcohol and he now was more depressed than ever. So he came to me.

We sat down one day before practice and he started off slow, telling me how shit had hit the fan from one day to another. I ended up telling him about my brother's death. He was the second person I ever told.

Dino was obsessed with women and getting pretty girls, and when he had a crush on someone, all he’d do was talk about other girls to them (maybe he was trying to make them jealous). Dino was obsessed with snorting snow and putting out cigarette buds on his arms and on his back. Dino was obsessed with letting people know he hadn’t slept a wink throughout the entirety of the night. Dino was obsessed with making people feel bad for him.

At parties, it became my unsaid responsibility to keep an eye out for him, to make sure he didn’t get blackout drunk and to make sure he didn’t swallow any of the funny looking pills he kept in his pocket. If i see any on his hands, i’d take them and turn them into snow on the ground, deeming them useless (unless he wanted to get down on the floor and take a wide sniff of the powder mixed with gravel, which i’m sure he would’ve done). On a hazy Wednesday night, Dino called me at about 11:15pm, claiming he was overdosed on some amphetamine and that some of the friends he’d hung out with had convinced him to do so. I hung up on him at 2:30am. He never once said thank you or I’m sorry. He never asked how I was doing either. Ever. My sorrow for him grew so much that once, for the day of the dead, he asked me to accompany him to visit his grandma's grave. I didn’t want to go but I went. I drove us there. That day he cried on me and laid on my lap and shoulder while I drew circles on his back trying to comfort him. I was uncomfortable; He was drugged. He ended up passing out on the car ride back.

Dino developed a crush on me but I didn’t reciprocate the feelings (I was flattered needless to say). He’d tell me all the time how he liked this other girl and how once when visiting his father abroad, he’d had some steamy steamy sex with some older, life life-guard girl he’d met. I never believed a second of it. He was tall and slinky and scrawny and he quite literally had three hairs growing opposite to each other in his chin; his eyes were sunken down and his hair had never before been trimmed in his life. Dino was not a very good looking boy. If he was, maybe I would’ve considered giving him a shot.

I started growing tired of this. He wasn’t a child, he wasn’t related to me in any way, he wasn’t even my boyfriend for me to be taking such care of him. He was my friend but it felt like I was being treated as his nanny. One day I told him I was tired of hearing him complain, and told him he had to get his act together. He never talked to me about his problems again, in fact, we drifted apart.

[lurkerkitty85]

Sorry, rant coming.

If you take Adderall, Ritalin, or any other amphetamine recreationally, aka when you don’t have a medical reason to do so, FUCK YOU.

I have ADHD. I’ve had it all my life but could cope until I finished college and didn’t have a structured routine I had to follow. I have been on Adderall for over 10 years and have been able to function fairly normally. I am also pregnant, and talked to my psych dr and OB and we decided it was better for my health, and therefore my baby’s health, for me to stay on my mental health medications.

But now there is a shortage. Now, normally if one pharmacy doesn’t have your rx, even if you already gave them the prescription they can transfer that script to another pharmacy.

Not with Adderall. Because it and other amphetamines are so abused, it is a controlled substance. Which means my script cannot be transferred from one pharmacy to another. Not only that, but since I filled my last one on the 2/28, I cannot refill it till the 3/30 because god forbid I potentially have a few days where I could have 2 and still last the whole month.

So there is a shortage, I will take my last pill on 3/29, and they can’t try to refill my rx till the 30. I just got told off by the pharmacist for calling around to see who has it because they can’t do anything about it until the 30, “when hopefully it will have come in.”

I’m scared. I don’t know if I should start weeding myself off as much as I can with the week of pills I have, or just hope for the best. All I know is I don’t want to go through withdraw while pregnant.

Maybe it will be fine, but I’m so scared it might not.

[yeetmeintothevast]

I’m watching Lambert Week Day 3 (they one where he reads through Pryce and Carter) and tip number 9? “When knowledge and ability aren’t enough, rely on persistence and stimulants”? Lambert immediately says algae coffee but I’m wondering if at some point Goddard went the same route that the Air Force in the 1950s and 60s and decided to give their crews amphetamines to keep them awake for 48-hour shifts.

[wonderlandleighleigh]

(warning for drug use)

1962

“You need to get back to New York.”

Lenny snorts as he settles back in his desk chair. “What for?” he asks. “It’s not like you can have me on the show, Gordon.”

Gordon sighs heavily. “Look, I- I don’t know how to...Midge hasn’t been feeling like herself.”

He sits up quickly, gripping the phone. He hasn’t been watching the show lately. He just doesn’t want to be reminded of what he’d left behind. It was better to have a clean break after not being able to gig in New York again and Midge is better off without him anyways. “What does that mean, ‘not like herself’?”

“It means...she was feeling depressed,” Gordon says awkwardly. “And her friend Imogene suggested she go see someone about it...”

Lenny squeezes his eyes shut. “Let me guess: A doctor someone with a prescription pad.”  

“Good guess,” Gordon says. “She’s not eating much, as far as I know. Probably not sleeping, either. Everyone else thinks she’s fine, but I’m worried she’s been taking more than she should, and if anyone can sniff out a Midge problem, it’s you.”

“I shouldn’t,” Lenny tells him. “We ended things because I fucked it all up, she doesn’t want to see me.”

“I am begging you,” Gordon tells him. “Put your shit aside for a few days. I don’t wanna lose my house comic, and I really don’t wanna lose my friend.”

Lenny sighs heavily. “I’ll catch the next flight out. But you’re paying for my hotel room.”

“Fuck you, you know you’re gonna be staying with Midge.”

“I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

****

His first stop is Midge’s, and when he knocks on the door, there’s no answer. So it’s a good thing he still has the key to the utility entrance in the kitchen. 

When he steps in, the apartment is mostly dark (odd for Midge and her parents), and there’s an eeriness to the place being so quiet.

“Midge?” he calls. “You home?”

Her voice is quiet, coming from the bathroom.

“Lenny?”

He heads that way, and he finds

Well.

Midge is sitting up against the bathtub, looking dazed, wearing her nightgown, her hair curly around her pretty but too-thin face.

And there’s a pill bottle on the sink.

Lenny snatches it up, reading it quickly. “Dexamyl. Fuck, Midge, if you wanted a drug problem, I could have given you better pointers.”

She shakes her head, trying to focus on him. “The doctor said to take two when I need them, but I...I got a little confused and I think I already took them, and then I took two more...”

“So you’ve literally been knocked on your ass,” Lenny says. “Midge, you went through this with me. Why would you-”

“I was sad,” she blurts out, squeezing her eyes shut. “I went to this doctor Imogene recommended, and-”

“He gave you a barbiturate and amphetamine mix to make you feel happy,” Lenny finishes for her.

“He said they would help,” Midge tells him. “That...that lots of women take these to help them.” 

“Where are your parents?”

“Paris. Kids are with Joel this week.”

Lenny sighs softly and sits next to her, wrapping an arm around her, letting her cuddle in against him. “I’m sorry, Sweetheart, I’m here.”

“You’ll leave again,” she slurs out. “Everyone leaves. Joel. Shy’s plane. You.”

He sighs softly and holds her tighter.

*****

Eventually, he gets Midge settled in bed with some water, and she falls into a hard sleep. He sighs heavily and tidies up a little before dumping the pills into the toilet and flushing.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to Midge. Him, sure. He’s fallen off the wagon plenty in the last couple of years, though he’s two months clean now by some fucking miracle. But Midge isn’t supposed to be the one to fall for this crap.

“Dexamyl,” he says over the phone to Gordon a little while later as he puts together some soup in the kitchen. “She’s high as a fucking kite, and she doesn’t remember how the hell many she takes so she just takes more.”

“Whelp. She’s officially on paid leave from the show.”

“Yeah,” Lenny sighs.

“You wanna fill in for her?”

“Is that legal?”

“Who gives a fuck?”

*****

When he heads back to the bedroom, Midge is up and looking a little more with it, sitting with her chin on her knees, shame on her face.

“I made soup,” he offers. “You must be hungry.”

She shrugs.

“I know the pills make you lose your appetite,” he says gently. “But you have to eat something, Midge.”

He still doesn’t get an answer, and Lenny sighs as he walks over, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I talked to Gordon. He’s put you on paid leave for the next few weeks so you have some time to recover.”

“Fine,” she says quietly.

“He’s the one who asked me to fly in, by the way,” Lenny explains. “He was worried about you.”

Midge nods slowly. “I’m sorry, Lenny. This is probably the last thing you needed.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“I just started to feel so hopeless, and...and Imogene said that he had helped her. I thought it was safe.”

“It’s not your fault, Midge,” Lenny assures her. “Shit’s like candy, believe me, I know.”

“Did you get rid of them?”

“Yes, I did. Flushed.”

She nods. “Thanks.”

“I’m always here for you, Midge,” he says quietly. “You know how much I love you. Hell, I left because I love you.”

She doesn’t respond to that.

“Can I get you some soup?” he offers. “Please?”

Midge nods, swallowing. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” he breathes out, relieved. “I’ll be right back.”

She reaches out quickly, snatching at his hand. “Lenny.”

He stops, gazing down at her worried.

“I love you, too,” she says quietly, gazing up at him sadly. “You know I do.”

Lenny nods, stroking her hair gently. “I know, Sweetheart. I’ll be right back.”

She nods, loosening her grip on him, and letting him go.

[layanasstories]

First of all, I am not a doctor nor did I study any form of medication. So all you will read is made up stuff that sounds intresting...

Secondly... have fun reading!

----

Oblivion

NINE

A month has passed since our first meeting. We've been on a few dates, he's told me more about my past. We click nicely, but I don't feel a real twinkle yet. That's why I'm taking it easy. I work my five days a week, trying follow my daily routine as best I can. Only today is different.

Three weeks ago, just a week after I met with Jake, I went to see a neurologist for the first time. One who specializes in amnesia. He was shocked by my story. And furious when I showed what pills I had been given to take. I haven't touched them since Jake told me not to take them. The neurologist, Dr. Jeffrey Millward, had told me that he didn't recognized the pills at all and wanted to do research for himself what exactly is in the pills. Today I'll get the results, he had called me yesterday and indicated that he wanted to speak to me urgently. I didn't tell Jake about my visits to Dr. Millward. I know I shouldn't keep secrets. Only I didn't want to give Jake false hopes that things could be all right again, as far as my memories are concerned.

I'm waiting in the chair, facing Dr. Millward. He is still busy working on his computer. "Sorry for the wait, but I really need to get the report." he doesn't even look up. It takes another five minutes, but then I hear his printer and he jumps from his chair. When he has taken the papers from the printer, he sits down in front of me. "Okay, I've done the analysis on the pills. And I've requested your records from after the incident. MRIs, scans, photos, blood work. I'm not going to beat around the bush, I'm deeply shocked." his face is soft, as if he is going to tell me terrible news. "Layana, I'm so glad your friend told you to stop taking the pills. They're pure poison. It's a custom-made pill. It contains substances such as arbiturates, amphetamines and alprazolam, among other excipients. These substances are highly addictive, so I'm surprised you didn't have any withdrawal symptoms.

But coming back to custom-made, these pills are specifically made to suppress your memory and bring any recovery of your memory to a halt. He looks at me and asks if I can still follow him. "Yeah, I'm definitely still following it. In other words, these pills are made especially for me because they don't want my memory to come back.". "Precisely!" he answers. "But there is also good news. I've seen all your photos and the like, the damage you described was exaggerated. The damage is not that bad, and after four years it should already be healed. What I want to do is a new scan of your brain. We can do that immediately after this conversation. There's also one other thing we can do, it's experimental, but I want to give you the choice. We have a medication, which purifies unwanted substances that come from medicines and/or drugs from the body. This could just speed up the process of restoring your memory. The only known side effect is diarrhea. This can last up to three days and drinking water is the most important."

He reaches forward and puts his hand on mine, the way doctors do. "Listen, what they did to you is indescribable. And if you want, I can and will testify for you if you want to report them. But besides that, I want to do everything I can to help you get your memory back." I sigh deeply, hope is a dangerous commodity. Only this time I think hope is justified. "Fine. Let's do it all. The scan, the medication.". He squeezes my hand in recognition of my choice.

The new scan showed that the old one had been manipulated. Yes I had some damage, but certainly not as bad as it was said. And now there is no damage to see at all. My brain should be working like no other. Which made the doctor realize that the pills had been working for longer and deeper than he first expected. I was on the drip for three days, to flush all substances from my body. And I noticed that all to well, almost three days non-stop on the toilet. But I no longer had nightmares. More and more images came back to me. The doctor had warned me that I would not get everything back, just the vast majority. That was enough for me.

On day four, when my diarrhea had stopped, I was allowed to go home. I certainly don't have all my memories back yet, so the doctor advised me to look at lots of pictures, listen to stories, and most importantly, visit places, anything to trigger the memories. And that's what I intend to do.