Mr-Tambourine-Man
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2009
- Messages
- 131
Painting a Life in Valium Blue:
A Fictional Mosaic of Pill-Popping America
By John Scott Holman
Charlotte…
1970
Charlotte Rosen fully believed she was a perfect woman. So naturally, she was not very well liked. Oddly enough this pleased her very much.
At 40 years-old she was not exactly a beautiful woman, though some would say her features were quite enviable. She was above average in height and possessed a thin but sturdy frame, broad shoulders and cool blue eyes, still and powerful. The hard, angular quality of her cheeks and chin were softened by her sunny auburn hair, always worn back and unraveling loosely through the fingers of her hairclip.
Charlotte dressed impeccably, without so much as a loose thread to challenge her flawlessness. Women’s suits, naturally by the most prestigious of affordable designers, were her uniform of choice, even though she had no career of her own. While the suits intended to suggest nothing less than the strictest professionalism – Charlotte would not permit laziness in dress or performance - she somehow managed to wear them as casually as if they might have been a pair of linen pajamas. In some way this best explained her personal philosophy: the Charlotte Rosen take on life.
Currently her life consisted of a dull pain in her left buttock perpetrated by a most uncomfortable lounge chair (whoever fastened the cushion must have appreciated irony) in a sparsely crowded, ash gray lobby, where she was waiting… and waiting to see her General Physician for an annual checkup. She stared mindlessly at her fingers, lacquered in dark maple, a smart match for her elegant camel toned suit jacket and matching skirt. Then she stared at a fly circling the room, landing finally on a completely undisturbed infant’s head whose bored mother casually flicked it away.
Though she rarely read the mindless waiting room magazines, she finally consented to picking one up, a gardening monthly whose title she neglected to notice. The articles were dull as canned food labels but some of the pictures were pleasing to the eye. She especially liked the black and white advertisements. There was something she found wholesome and dignified about black and white photography. She considered briefly whether she would be more inclined to believe the marketing claims of an ad printed in black and white.
Still, Charlotte wasn’t about to take up gardening and was just closing the magazine when an advertisement caught her eye. It was a two-page pharmaceutical spread headed “35, Single and psychoneurotic,” describing a woman who was anxious, depressed and unwed, nearly ready to give up on life and marriage. But before she finally threw in the towel she received her saving grace, when her doctor prescribed her a daily regimen of Valium.
My God, Charlotte thought, these days this little pill is a bigger star than Robert Redford!
Curious to finally see what all the fuss was about she delved into the fine print on the advertisement’s adjoining page. Apparently, Valium eased both psychotic tension and common nerves, as well as the irritability associated with Pre-Menstrual Syndrome and Menopausal Depression. On top of that, it also relieved pain caused by muscle contractions. Yeah, and it can even make you walk on water.
It was 1970 and the very word Valium had so seeped into the collective social conscious that its exposure as a drug was eclipsed only by such household words as Tylenol and Aspirin. But until just then Charlotte herself was relatively unfamiliar with it. She knew that it was socially acceptable, even though the effects could be mildly intoxicating, like the Amytal her mother had taken for years to get to sleep. More curious to Charlotte was how surprisingly fashionable the drug had become. It was the quintessence of suburban chic. Dropping the little blue and yellow pills had always seemed to Charlotte to be a kind of status symbol. Once a woman could only look forward to styling her hair, but now, thanks to the ever-expanding wonders of the 20th century, she could self-style her very own brain chemistry with no more effort that it took to swallow a pill or two.
Yes, these pills were a status symbol- a symbol that Charlotte did not possess… at least not yet.
Then and there charlotte decided she would not be leaving the doctor’s office without a prescription for America’s favorite new pill. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted the Valium so badly; just that she had suddenly been overcome by a childlike desire to have, more importantly to have something had by so many others. It was simple lust, like a desire for a designer perfume, that compulsion forged long ago in the roaring formation of American consumerism.
Her name was called and she followed the nurse, her stomach aflutter with anticipation.
“You’ll be in room nine,” said the nurse. “The doctor will be here in a moment. There’s reading material if you’d like something while you wait.”
Great, maybe I can learn how to properly grow tomatoes or trim wisteria.
Her physician entered the room after yet another agonizingly long wait. For such an expensive hospital they were certainly lacking in timely service- and those chairs! Oh, the sacrifices one must make to be an elitist.
Her doctor was a rather unfortunate looking man. He gave the overall impression of a hardboiled egg. He was as balled as Yul Brynner with cadaverously white skin stretched away from his face and meeting in folds at the back of his skull. The freakishly tight skin caused his eyes to bulge alarmingly, so that his retinas seemed in very real danger of sticking to the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. But he was kind and actually seemed to listen during his appointments.
After the typical formalities of annual checkups (Why are these even necessary?) Charlotte delicately guided the subject towards Valium. What happened next astonished her. Without so much as inquiring about her symptoms the doctor hastily retrieved his prescription pad, and with a gruff yet childlike laugh, put pen to paper and rapidly scribbled out the golden ticket providing her access to the pharmaceutical in-crowd.
She thanked the doctor with a flirtatious smile and a pat on the arm. It was the least she could do for the pill-pushing old hobgoblin.
He called after her as she strolled down the hall.
“Make an appointment to see me in a few months and let me know how the diazepam is working…”
Diazepam? Her heart sank. “I thought I was given Valium?”
The doctor laughed that same child-man heckle. “You were. Diazepam is just the chemical name.”
Oh, thank God, she thought as she smoothed out her skirt. The last thing I want is some knock-off sugar pill. When Charlotte Rosen says Dior purse she doesn’t want her lipstick riding around in some Japanese imposter handbag.
Relieved, she gave the doctor an extra long smile, this time momentarily letting the tip of her tongue part her teeth teasingly. The doctor blushed. Though unswervingly faithful to her husband, she saw most men as hapless creatures in the game of sex, and found no harm in casually stirring up excitation, within reason of course. Charlotte had never been accused of any indiscretion in her life and were anyone, woman or man, to tarnish her reputation, she would give no thought to tarnishing their skull or vertebrae, in the most ladylike fashion possible of course.
She stopped briefly to make an appointment with the receptionist, before strutting victorious out the lounge doors and into the blinding sunlight. It stung her eyes but Charlotte was prepared, retrieving a favorite pair of tortoise shell sunglasses from her purse and resting them snuggly on the bridge of her upturned nose.
Never unprepared. Never improperly dressed. Never at a loss for words.
She gripped the prescription in her hand. Never unable to get what she wanted.
Charlotte Rosen: perfect.
***
Now, better to go to the pharmacy first or the dry-cleaner for Bill’s suit? Decisions… Decisions…
She settled on a compromise, dropping the prescription by the pharmacy first, then swinging back to the other side of town to pick up the dry-cleaning. It seemed the pharmacy had recently been filling scripts at a rate of a single pill per quarter-hour, so it made sense to pick up her husband’s dry-cleaning then go back for the medicine.
The suit wasn’t ready yet, even though Charlotte was ten minutes late. She was more than a little irritated and would have complained but the woman behind the counter was a meek looking oriental girl who couldn’t have been over sixteen and probably wouldn’t have understood her anyway. Besides, the inconvenience served to remind her of her induction into the no-worries lifestyle of the modern, medicated woman. From now on such irritation could easily be remedied simply by retrieving a pill bottle from her handbag. It was that simple, right?
Fifteen minutes later the oriental girl shuffled into a room marked “Employee’s Only,” and returned momentarily with Bill’s suit. Charlotte paid the bill quickly. Dinner would have to be ready by the time Bill arrived home at six, and though TV dinners were all the rage, Charlotte never relented to such culinary tackiness. Tonight she would serve lamb chops and buttered asparagus with baked bread.
There was no wait at the pharmacy and Charlotte was soon out the door with her prescription and a bounce in her step. She picked her two children up from school and made her way home in the light late-afternoon traffic.
She cooked dinner quickly but carefully, one ear cocked towards the children at play in the adjoining living room. The table was set at ten to six and though Bill was five minutes late it was still more than hot enough to enjoy.
After dinner came dishes and clean-up, then an hour of television with the children, who were then hurried off to bed so she and Bill could watch the evening news. The news was all political, social and especially racial unrest – “signs of the end-times,” as her mother so often said.
After switching off the television she and Bill retired to bed. She watched Bill undress and admired his attractive physique, still fit and sturdy for a man of 50. He looked, oddly enough, like the quintessential television reporter, and his thick brown mustache could have been borrowed from the CBS wardrobe room.
She then slipped into her silk nightgown, savoring the sensual feel of the soft fabric sliding against her skin. It was then that she remembered the Valium and walked to the nightstand to fetch the bottle from her purse. She scanned the label: Take two tablets by mouth twice daily. Figuring she could use a good night’s sleep she opened the bottle and shook loose a small yellow tablet. She stared at it for a moment, admiring its design, simple yet bold, a prominent V cut out of the center. It truly was a fashionable little pill.
“What’s that?” Bill asked from bed, peering over a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front. Bill read voraciously. Charlotte rarely had the patience.
“My medicine,” Charlotte said curtly.
“You don’t take medicine?”
“Of course I do. Everyone takes medicine.”
“What’s it for?
Charlotte brushed passed him and into the bathroom filling a glass of water.
“Nothing…” she said. “Just my nerves, that’s all.”
“Tranquilizers?” Bill asked, his voice indicating mild alarm.
“Just Valium,” Charlotte said, mildly exasperated.
Charlotte swallowed the tablet defiantly and returned to the bedroom.
“But Charlotte, is that a good idea? Those things are addicting and you know all those movie stars and musicians keep dying from them.”
“Come now, it’s only Valium. It’s safe and is not addicting at all. Barbiturates are what everyone overdoses on and even you took Seconal when we were engaged. Remember, when you were stressed about passing the BAR?”
“That was years ago and I didn’t know the dangers.”
“Well, Valium is different.”
“Whatever you say dear.”
Bill rarely won an argument and, after fourteen years of marriage, he knew when it was best to give up. He returned to his reading as Charlotte slipped into bed and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the pill to take effect.
After twenty minutes she was about to dismiss Valium as overhyped, when she slipped out of bed to go to the bathroom and noticed a feeling of lightness all through her body, a clumsy, floating sensation, not unlike the effects of alcohol, yet clearheaded and somehow… cleaner. She looked at Bill, now snoring lightly beneath a bedside lamp, and had to stifle a fit of giggles… enlightened giggles. She felt as if she were seeing her husband, so helpless in his sleep, for the very first time. In fact, everything seemed new - no, that wasn’t it. Everything was the still the same, but her perspective was somehow radically different. It was as if a dirty lens had been cleaned and she saw things clearly for the first time. Sure enough, a weight was lifted off her shoulders… a weight she never knew was there.
She stood there aimlessly for a full ten minutes before forgetting her bladder and sinking back into bed. Sinking was just the right word. She felt as if she were being swallowed up in the exquisite softness of the blankets, the sheets…
She drifted off to sleep and slept dreamlessly throughout the night.
She awoke the next morning to the throbbing pain of a full bladder and the refreshed feeling of a good night’s sleep.
***
For several weeks Charlotte took the pills exclusively at night, sometimes one, sometimes two. She was always asleep by the time they’d really taken effect. Oftentimes, however, she’d remove the bottle from her purse in public places - the checkout line at the grocer’s or one of Bill’s crowded corporate dinner functions – only to sigh in relief, carefully replacing it and going about her business. In fact, she never took the Valium for daytime anxiety until well into her third month’s prescription.
Bill had been returning home later and later, often nearly spoiling dinner. His tardiness was excusable at first but after two weeks… Charlotte wondered if her cooking was not as irresistible as it should be. In a small way this suspicion disrupted her entire world.
Determined to lure Bill home at an earlier hour, she chose a night when his workload “should be routine enough,” to frenziedly prepare an irresistible supper of roast beef, tenderized to perfection over many hours, mashed potatoes with sour cream and chives, a steamed vegetable medley, fluffy, golden rolls and, as the climax, an angel food cake drizzled in strawberries.
The table was set at 6:15. At 6:30 Bill had neither arrived home nor called to excuse himself. At 6:45 Charlotte wrestled the bottle of Valium out of her purse and took two with a glass of white wine. 7:00 found her pacing irritably across the linoleum, her shoes thrown in the corner, her hair let down, wringing her hands, her eyes darting back and forth to the bottle of Valium now sitting readily on the counter. At 7:15 she gulped down two more, the most she had ever taken and twice her recommended daily dose.
Bill finally slunk through the front door at 7:30, just as Charlotte was transferring the now cold banquet into Tupperware dishes to be eaten later. As she gazed at his sheepish face her body tensed and she prepared to lash out at him in anger and disappointment. But before she could open her mouth her body was overcome by a stupefying wave of tranquility.
“I’m so sorry about dinner,” Bill said with his tail between his legs and his eye cast downward.
Charlotte knew she was supposed to be angry. She knew all the words she was supposed to say, was perfectly capable of articulating her hurt and resentment… but suddenly none of it mattered. Bill could have said he was leaving her and her most volatile response would have been an apathetic shrug.
She was stoned. Yes, she was relaxed and carefree as when she took the pills at bedtime but infinitely more so. A warm blanket of serenity had wrapped around her and she felt utterly weightless, as if her feet were floating just above the ground.
Bill finally looked up. “Charlotte…” he began, confused. “Do you forgive me?’
“What’s to forgive?” she said nonchalantly, her words slurring slightly. “Finish putting up the food so we can have it tomorrow. Or eat some. I don’t give a damn.”
With that she drifted out of the kitchen and into the living room. She honestly was not angry with Bill, or at least she didn’t feel angry. She was just disinterested. What he did with his evening was entirely his business. She was going to curl up in her favorite recliner and watch the embers fading like elderly stars in the pit of the fireplace.
She knew it was inadvisable to mix alcohol with pills but she had only drank two glasses of wine and a feeling this heavenly was certainly worth the occasional risk. Of course that wasn’t true. Intellectually, she knew this behavior was irresponsible, but there was something about Valium that quieted the intellect. This was one of the effects she most enjoyed. Her rationality was not erased the way it tended to be when she’d had a bit too much to drink or during that unforgettably embarrassing night when she’d shared a joint at a housewarming party and spent all night complaining that her feet and hands had somehow outgrown the rest of her body. No, she was free to reason but she felt nothing binding her to listen to reason.
She knew the rat-race continued all around her, but by some miracle she’d found a way of vacationing from its demands, the endless rules of society, of politics, sex, domesticity, appearance, schedules, nightly meals… They existed as much as ever, but for now they could wait. The effects of the pills grew in intensity, the room becoming soft and out of focus, the shadows from the fireplace spectral and dreamlike. Her head swayed and dipped, too heavy for her neck to carry. Then it was her eyelids, drooping lazily then popping open, only to slip down to meet each other again. She tried to rub the sleepy out of them but the drug’s hypnotic effects were too strong, and she managed only to rub loose a false eyelash that dangled from her face like a half-crushed insect.
Were she to see herself objectively in that moment, chic was the last word she would apply to her Valium induced trance. For once, Charlotte Rosen did not look perfect but more like an unkempt, frizzy-haired doll retrieved from a long stay at the bottom of a toy box.
But that was suddenly entirely irrelevant, because Charlotte felt perfect. When she came down, the Valium (in smaller doses of course) had found its niche in Charlotte’s life, as an invisible part of her wardrobe, like lipstick or hairspray, serving as another key element among all the other subtle yet vital details of her appearance and personality. Even her relationship with Bill, hardly troubling to begin with, would improve with the evening of her emotions.
How much more empowered could a woman become?
***
A week later Charlotte was rummaging through a cluttered bureau in her office. She was looking for something… something… there! From a tangle of legal papers she pulled a leather-bound diary given to her by Bill for her 37th birthday. She’d never so much as cracked it open. Now, however, she felt compelled to keep a daily record of her life so that she could look back and remember just how wonderful things had been. They were wonderful, weren’t they?
She popped a Valium then delicately spread open the diary and prepared to lay her handsome sterling-silver ink pen to the first fresh page. She had thought the words would come pouring out but instead she found herself staring idly down at the blank sheet. She told herself not to think too hard; just to let the words come. She dated the page then went on:
Well, Charlotte, it’s taken you a few years but you’re finally about to do some journaling. Who would have ever thought I’d be 40 years-old? Not that I’m complaining. I still get looks; from men on the bus; in the park; while picking up cigarettes … Oh, wait, I quit smoking! Hurray, for me! I mean it was sexy and all in my twenties but at 40! Yuck! I admit, I still steal a puff every now and then.
Bill is still in better shape than me, the beast! But he’s useless without me – nobody else could possibly take care of him like I do. And he’s so passive! For a lawyer he never argues about a damn thing.
Semi-consciously, she fetched another Valium and swallowed it down with her iced tea.
The children are well. James reads as much as his daddy and is such an attention-seeker, while Willard is still as introverted as ever. But they are such beautiful boys, with their blonde hair and blue eyes they look just like their mother.
Ooh, I’m going shopping for that lavender cardigan today and I should get them some matching bell-bottoms! I wonder if they’re allowed at school?
Charlotte realized she was prattling on aimlessly. Surely her life was more interesting than all that? She closed the diary after deciding introspection was for the neurotic. She looked apprehensively at the bottle of Valium. She’d recently been taking more than directed – a lot more. They didn’t get her high now (unless she washed them down with wine, which she frequently did) but they did seem to take the edge off a great deal. The only trouble was she couldn’t recall ever actually needing them before she had started taking them and now... well now she really needed them. Why had she ever asked for the prescription to begin with? She’d never been edgy or high-strung in her life – not until the “Valium alarm clock” came along.
The “Valium alarm clock,” as charlotte colloquially referred to it, was a series of symptoms, unpleasant signals that her body was in need of its next tablet. The 5mg she took each morning was supposed to last her through the day and into early evening. The tablet calmed her but she knew its peaceful glow would only last so long (tick… tick… tick…) and then would come the ringing demand for another pill.
It wasn’t as if missing a pill suddenly made her Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm. She was no raving junky, sweating, trembling, ready to give up anything for a fix. No, it was far more subtle than that. She simply couldn’t carry on without the Valium. When each pill’s tranquility had run its course, she found herself at a complete psychological standstill. She could not put on her makeup, or pay the bills or fix supper… she could not do anything. She was like a wind-up doll petering out and sitting motionless until the key in her back was tightly rewound with the help of that little yellow pill.
The “Valium alarm clock” had been so merciful at first, sometimes ticking away for a whole day on just one pill. Now she took three or four, sometimes five. Eventually the inevitable happened; her prescription ran out early. She was frantic. She had to have another prescription filled. But her refill date was 16 days away. What if the doctor decided she was misusing them and cut her off? How could she go on? Though it had only been four months, life without pills was but a vague memory.
Swallowing her last three pills for courage, she called the doctor’s office and spoke to one of the nurses. Careful not to mention a refill, she stated as innocently as possible that her dosage was no longer controlling her symptoms and she felt it might need to be raised. The nurse put her on hold for five minutes then returned to inquire, “Mrs. Rosen, which pharmacy do you use?” Charlotte’s heart leapt with joy and relief spread through her body, slackening the sickening tension that had been growing tighter as her bottle became emptier.
Later that afternoon she picked up a one month’s supply of 90 beautiful blue 10mg Valium, enough for 30mgs a day! She could not believe her good fortune. The blues were even prettier than the yellows, as blue as a tiny bird’s egg or a clear spring sky. And she would doubtless beat the “Valium alarm clock” forever with ten full mgs for morning, noon and night. She was breathless with a wonderful feeling of security, like a despondent widow and mother suddenly informed she is heir to the fortune of an unknown aunt. It never crossed her mind that this exuberance was an extremely excessive reaction to the acquisition of a simple prescription medication.
Her only problem as she saw it was a lack of pills. Now that was solved. No more problems, right?
She celebrated by taking three irresistible tablets at once and walking through the market, feeling transcendence and bliss that may have been the pills, or the sun on her face, or a perfectly harmonized duet between the two.
Aden…
1994
Dr. Oswald Cunicus… Jesus! The name could have belonged to a character played by Bela Lugosi in his washed-up later years in B-grade productions. In reality, Aden’s psychiatrist of four years had all the personality of a number two pencil. What’s worse, in four years of regular consultations, Dr. Cunicus had only managed to make Aden feel more unstable and anxious than ever. But then it couldn’t have been easy for a silvery haired man who started his practice in the age of such antiquated neurological remedies as Dexamyl and Miltown.
The nineties would come to be known as “the age of the brain,” or something like that. The field of psychiatry was exploding in all directions and antidepressants were a financial goldmine, especially now that everyone seemed depressed. But which came first, chicken or egg? Mass cultural anhedonia or Prozac?
By the time Aden noticed that something was terribly wrong, that he couldn’t remember what it was to feel or even if he’d ever known, the Paxil was already a deeply ingrained, four year habit. But was it really helping… and more importantly was it really so harmless?
Antidepressants were a sensation, hitting the market at a time when Aden’s generation seemed torn between rage and apathy, anarchy and hopeless passivity.
Nihilistic despair was suddenly an unexpectedly fashionable attitude and after drifting through four years of high school with virtually no identity, Aden utilized college to channel his inner rage and hone his intellect… when he wasn’t holed in his dorm room, too depressed and disinterested to venture out into the world.
He spent the majority of his first semester smoking pot and reading Nietzsche, then returned home for winter break to rifle through his parents’ medicine cabinet, eating handfuls of Percocet and Ativan before playing Nintendo for hours on end in a near catatonic state. Second term found him revived, full of the piss and vinegar with which he’d arrived on the college scene. He organized groups affectionately referred to as “anti-social clubs,” in which students gathered to discuss music and literature, poetry and artwork, all connected by a shared spirit of antagonism and envelope-pushing. He also distributed an untitled, bimonthly editorial, most notorious for publishing anonymous submissions by students offering detailed accounts of their sexual fantasies involving all-too-real teachers and faculty members.
But summer brought a familiar feeling of hopelessness and Aden suffered his first nervous breakdown. That’s when the visits to Dr. Cunicus began, along with the daily regimen of medication. First there was 20mgs of Prozac each morning with an additional .5mgs of Xanax to be taken as needed. Then the Xanax was replaced with a daily dose of Klonopin. After six months both the Prozac and Klonopin were dropped in favor Paxil, starting at 10mgs and steadily moving up to 30.
Aden had been on Paxil for just over four years now. He had not gone back to college, taken a recreational drug, or entertained a rebellious idea in all four of those years. This pleased his parents, who felt it better he stay home and work at his father’s hardware store, keeping away from “bad influences” and staying properly medicated. Noticing their son had all but forgotten such wayward interests as The Sex Pistols and the Marquis de Sade, they heralded Dr. Cunicus a regular miracle worker and Paxil a pharmaceutical panacea.
“So how are you feeling? Is your mood stable? Are you enjoying your work environment?” The Doctor’s inflection never wavered as he moved from one question to the next.
“Fine, I guess,” Aden replied, staring at the stitches unraveling in the toes of his sneakers, the rubber separating in a curious grin when he wiggled his toes.
A Fictional Mosaic of Pill-Popping America
By John Scott Holman
Charlotte…
1970
Charlotte Rosen fully believed she was a perfect woman. So naturally, she was not very well liked. Oddly enough this pleased her very much.
At 40 years-old she was not exactly a beautiful woman, though some would say her features were quite enviable. She was above average in height and possessed a thin but sturdy frame, broad shoulders and cool blue eyes, still and powerful. The hard, angular quality of her cheeks and chin were softened by her sunny auburn hair, always worn back and unraveling loosely through the fingers of her hairclip.
Charlotte dressed impeccably, without so much as a loose thread to challenge her flawlessness. Women’s suits, naturally by the most prestigious of affordable designers, were her uniform of choice, even though she had no career of her own. While the suits intended to suggest nothing less than the strictest professionalism – Charlotte would not permit laziness in dress or performance - she somehow managed to wear them as casually as if they might have been a pair of linen pajamas. In some way this best explained her personal philosophy: the Charlotte Rosen take on life.
Currently her life consisted of a dull pain in her left buttock perpetrated by a most uncomfortable lounge chair (whoever fastened the cushion must have appreciated irony) in a sparsely crowded, ash gray lobby, where she was waiting… and waiting to see her General Physician for an annual checkup. She stared mindlessly at her fingers, lacquered in dark maple, a smart match for her elegant camel toned suit jacket and matching skirt. Then she stared at a fly circling the room, landing finally on a completely undisturbed infant’s head whose bored mother casually flicked it away.
Though she rarely read the mindless waiting room magazines, she finally consented to picking one up, a gardening monthly whose title she neglected to notice. The articles were dull as canned food labels but some of the pictures were pleasing to the eye. She especially liked the black and white advertisements. There was something she found wholesome and dignified about black and white photography. She considered briefly whether she would be more inclined to believe the marketing claims of an ad printed in black and white.
Still, Charlotte wasn’t about to take up gardening and was just closing the magazine when an advertisement caught her eye. It was a two-page pharmaceutical spread headed “35, Single and psychoneurotic,” describing a woman who was anxious, depressed and unwed, nearly ready to give up on life and marriage. But before she finally threw in the towel she received her saving grace, when her doctor prescribed her a daily regimen of Valium.
My God, Charlotte thought, these days this little pill is a bigger star than Robert Redford!
Curious to finally see what all the fuss was about she delved into the fine print on the advertisement’s adjoining page. Apparently, Valium eased both psychotic tension and common nerves, as well as the irritability associated with Pre-Menstrual Syndrome and Menopausal Depression. On top of that, it also relieved pain caused by muscle contractions. Yeah, and it can even make you walk on water.
It was 1970 and the very word Valium had so seeped into the collective social conscious that its exposure as a drug was eclipsed only by such household words as Tylenol and Aspirin. But until just then Charlotte herself was relatively unfamiliar with it. She knew that it was socially acceptable, even though the effects could be mildly intoxicating, like the Amytal her mother had taken for years to get to sleep. More curious to Charlotte was how surprisingly fashionable the drug had become. It was the quintessence of suburban chic. Dropping the little blue and yellow pills had always seemed to Charlotte to be a kind of status symbol. Once a woman could only look forward to styling her hair, but now, thanks to the ever-expanding wonders of the 20th century, she could self-style her very own brain chemistry with no more effort that it took to swallow a pill or two.
Yes, these pills were a status symbol- a symbol that Charlotte did not possess… at least not yet.
Then and there charlotte decided she would not be leaving the doctor’s office without a prescription for America’s favorite new pill. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted the Valium so badly; just that she had suddenly been overcome by a childlike desire to have, more importantly to have something had by so many others. It was simple lust, like a desire for a designer perfume, that compulsion forged long ago in the roaring formation of American consumerism.
Her name was called and she followed the nurse, her stomach aflutter with anticipation.
“You’ll be in room nine,” said the nurse. “The doctor will be here in a moment. There’s reading material if you’d like something while you wait.”
Great, maybe I can learn how to properly grow tomatoes or trim wisteria.
Her physician entered the room after yet another agonizingly long wait. For such an expensive hospital they were certainly lacking in timely service- and those chairs! Oh, the sacrifices one must make to be an elitist.
Her doctor was a rather unfortunate looking man. He gave the overall impression of a hardboiled egg. He was as balled as Yul Brynner with cadaverously white skin stretched away from his face and meeting in folds at the back of his skull. The freakishly tight skin caused his eyes to bulge alarmingly, so that his retinas seemed in very real danger of sticking to the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. But he was kind and actually seemed to listen during his appointments.
After the typical formalities of annual checkups (Why are these even necessary?) Charlotte delicately guided the subject towards Valium. What happened next astonished her. Without so much as inquiring about her symptoms the doctor hastily retrieved his prescription pad, and with a gruff yet childlike laugh, put pen to paper and rapidly scribbled out the golden ticket providing her access to the pharmaceutical in-crowd.
She thanked the doctor with a flirtatious smile and a pat on the arm. It was the least she could do for the pill-pushing old hobgoblin.
He called after her as she strolled down the hall.
“Make an appointment to see me in a few months and let me know how the diazepam is working…”
Diazepam? Her heart sank. “I thought I was given Valium?”
The doctor laughed that same child-man heckle. “You were. Diazepam is just the chemical name.”
Oh, thank God, she thought as she smoothed out her skirt. The last thing I want is some knock-off sugar pill. When Charlotte Rosen says Dior purse she doesn’t want her lipstick riding around in some Japanese imposter handbag.
Relieved, she gave the doctor an extra long smile, this time momentarily letting the tip of her tongue part her teeth teasingly. The doctor blushed. Though unswervingly faithful to her husband, she saw most men as hapless creatures in the game of sex, and found no harm in casually stirring up excitation, within reason of course. Charlotte had never been accused of any indiscretion in her life and were anyone, woman or man, to tarnish her reputation, she would give no thought to tarnishing their skull or vertebrae, in the most ladylike fashion possible of course.
She stopped briefly to make an appointment with the receptionist, before strutting victorious out the lounge doors and into the blinding sunlight. It stung her eyes but Charlotte was prepared, retrieving a favorite pair of tortoise shell sunglasses from her purse and resting them snuggly on the bridge of her upturned nose.
Never unprepared. Never improperly dressed. Never at a loss for words.
She gripped the prescription in her hand. Never unable to get what she wanted.
Charlotte Rosen: perfect.
***
Now, better to go to the pharmacy first or the dry-cleaner for Bill’s suit? Decisions… Decisions…
She settled on a compromise, dropping the prescription by the pharmacy first, then swinging back to the other side of town to pick up the dry-cleaning. It seemed the pharmacy had recently been filling scripts at a rate of a single pill per quarter-hour, so it made sense to pick up her husband’s dry-cleaning then go back for the medicine.
The suit wasn’t ready yet, even though Charlotte was ten minutes late. She was more than a little irritated and would have complained but the woman behind the counter was a meek looking oriental girl who couldn’t have been over sixteen and probably wouldn’t have understood her anyway. Besides, the inconvenience served to remind her of her induction into the no-worries lifestyle of the modern, medicated woman. From now on such irritation could easily be remedied simply by retrieving a pill bottle from her handbag. It was that simple, right?
Fifteen minutes later the oriental girl shuffled into a room marked “Employee’s Only,” and returned momentarily with Bill’s suit. Charlotte paid the bill quickly. Dinner would have to be ready by the time Bill arrived home at six, and though TV dinners were all the rage, Charlotte never relented to such culinary tackiness. Tonight she would serve lamb chops and buttered asparagus with baked bread.
There was no wait at the pharmacy and Charlotte was soon out the door with her prescription and a bounce in her step. She picked her two children up from school and made her way home in the light late-afternoon traffic.
She cooked dinner quickly but carefully, one ear cocked towards the children at play in the adjoining living room. The table was set at ten to six and though Bill was five minutes late it was still more than hot enough to enjoy.
After dinner came dishes and clean-up, then an hour of television with the children, who were then hurried off to bed so she and Bill could watch the evening news. The news was all political, social and especially racial unrest – “signs of the end-times,” as her mother so often said.
After switching off the television she and Bill retired to bed. She watched Bill undress and admired his attractive physique, still fit and sturdy for a man of 50. He looked, oddly enough, like the quintessential television reporter, and his thick brown mustache could have been borrowed from the CBS wardrobe room.
She then slipped into her silk nightgown, savoring the sensual feel of the soft fabric sliding against her skin. It was then that she remembered the Valium and walked to the nightstand to fetch the bottle from her purse. She scanned the label: Take two tablets by mouth twice daily. Figuring she could use a good night’s sleep she opened the bottle and shook loose a small yellow tablet. She stared at it for a moment, admiring its design, simple yet bold, a prominent V cut out of the center. It truly was a fashionable little pill.
“What’s that?” Bill asked from bed, peering over a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front. Bill read voraciously. Charlotte rarely had the patience.
“My medicine,” Charlotte said curtly.
“You don’t take medicine?”
“Of course I do. Everyone takes medicine.”
“What’s it for?
Charlotte brushed passed him and into the bathroom filling a glass of water.
“Nothing…” she said. “Just my nerves, that’s all.”
“Tranquilizers?” Bill asked, his voice indicating mild alarm.
“Just Valium,” Charlotte said, mildly exasperated.
Charlotte swallowed the tablet defiantly and returned to the bedroom.
“But Charlotte, is that a good idea? Those things are addicting and you know all those movie stars and musicians keep dying from them.”
“Come now, it’s only Valium. It’s safe and is not addicting at all. Barbiturates are what everyone overdoses on and even you took Seconal when we were engaged. Remember, when you were stressed about passing the BAR?”
“That was years ago and I didn’t know the dangers.”
“Well, Valium is different.”
“Whatever you say dear.”
Bill rarely won an argument and, after fourteen years of marriage, he knew when it was best to give up. He returned to his reading as Charlotte slipped into bed and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the pill to take effect.
After twenty minutes she was about to dismiss Valium as overhyped, when she slipped out of bed to go to the bathroom and noticed a feeling of lightness all through her body, a clumsy, floating sensation, not unlike the effects of alcohol, yet clearheaded and somehow… cleaner. She looked at Bill, now snoring lightly beneath a bedside lamp, and had to stifle a fit of giggles… enlightened giggles. She felt as if she were seeing her husband, so helpless in his sleep, for the very first time. In fact, everything seemed new - no, that wasn’t it. Everything was the still the same, but her perspective was somehow radically different. It was as if a dirty lens had been cleaned and she saw things clearly for the first time. Sure enough, a weight was lifted off her shoulders… a weight she never knew was there.
She stood there aimlessly for a full ten minutes before forgetting her bladder and sinking back into bed. Sinking was just the right word. She felt as if she were being swallowed up in the exquisite softness of the blankets, the sheets…
She drifted off to sleep and slept dreamlessly throughout the night.
She awoke the next morning to the throbbing pain of a full bladder and the refreshed feeling of a good night’s sleep.
***
For several weeks Charlotte took the pills exclusively at night, sometimes one, sometimes two. She was always asleep by the time they’d really taken effect. Oftentimes, however, she’d remove the bottle from her purse in public places - the checkout line at the grocer’s or one of Bill’s crowded corporate dinner functions – only to sigh in relief, carefully replacing it and going about her business. In fact, she never took the Valium for daytime anxiety until well into her third month’s prescription.
Bill had been returning home later and later, often nearly spoiling dinner. His tardiness was excusable at first but after two weeks… Charlotte wondered if her cooking was not as irresistible as it should be. In a small way this suspicion disrupted her entire world.
Determined to lure Bill home at an earlier hour, she chose a night when his workload “should be routine enough,” to frenziedly prepare an irresistible supper of roast beef, tenderized to perfection over many hours, mashed potatoes with sour cream and chives, a steamed vegetable medley, fluffy, golden rolls and, as the climax, an angel food cake drizzled in strawberries.
The table was set at 6:15. At 6:30 Bill had neither arrived home nor called to excuse himself. At 6:45 Charlotte wrestled the bottle of Valium out of her purse and took two with a glass of white wine. 7:00 found her pacing irritably across the linoleum, her shoes thrown in the corner, her hair let down, wringing her hands, her eyes darting back and forth to the bottle of Valium now sitting readily on the counter. At 7:15 she gulped down two more, the most she had ever taken and twice her recommended daily dose.
Bill finally slunk through the front door at 7:30, just as Charlotte was transferring the now cold banquet into Tupperware dishes to be eaten later. As she gazed at his sheepish face her body tensed and she prepared to lash out at him in anger and disappointment. But before she could open her mouth her body was overcome by a stupefying wave of tranquility.
“I’m so sorry about dinner,” Bill said with his tail between his legs and his eye cast downward.
Charlotte knew she was supposed to be angry. She knew all the words she was supposed to say, was perfectly capable of articulating her hurt and resentment… but suddenly none of it mattered. Bill could have said he was leaving her and her most volatile response would have been an apathetic shrug.
She was stoned. Yes, she was relaxed and carefree as when she took the pills at bedtime but infinitely more so. A warm blanket of serenity had wrapped around her and she felt utterly weightless, as if her feet were floating just above the ground.
Bill finally looked up. “Charlotte…” he began, confused. “Do you forgive me?’
“What’s to forgive?” she said nonchalantly, her words slurring slightly. “Finish putting up the food so we can have it tomorrow. Or eat some. I don’t give a damn.”
With that she drifted out of the kitchen and into the living room. She honestly was not angry with Bill, or at least she didn’t feel angry. She was just disinterested. What he did with his evening was entirely his business. She was going to curl up in her favorite recliner and watch the embers fading like elderly stars in the pit of the fireplace.
She knew it was inadvisable to mix alcohol with pills but she had only drank two glasses of wine and a feeling this heavenly was certainly worth the occasional risk. Of course that wasn’t true. Intellectually, she knew this behavior was irresponsible, but there was something about Valium that quieted the intellect. This was one of the effects she most enjoyed. Her rationality was not erased the way it tended to be when she’d had a bit too much to drink or during that unforgettably embarrassing night when she’d shared a joint at a housewarming party and spent all night complaining that her feet and hands had somehow outgrown the rest of her body. No, she was free to reason but she felt nothing binding her to listen to reason.
She knew the rat-race continued all around her, but by some miracle she’d found a way of vacationing from its demands, the endless rules of society, of politics, sex, domesticity, appearance, schedules, nightly meals… They existed as much as ever, but for now they could wait. The effects of the pills grew in intensity, the room becoming soft and out of focus, the shadows from the fireplace spectral and dreamlike. Her head swayed and dipped, too heavy for her neck to carry. Then it was her eyelids, drooping lazily then popping open, only to slip down to meet each other again. She tried to rub the sleepy out of them but the drug’s hypnotic effects were too strong, and she managed only to rub loose a false eyelash that dangled from her face like a half-crushed insect.
Were she to see herself objectively in that moment, chic was the last word she would apply to her Valium induced trance. For once, Charlotte Rosen did not look perfect but more like an unkempt, frizzy-haired doll retrieved from a long stay at the bottom of a toy box.
But that was suddenly entirely irrelevant, because Charlotte felt perfect. When she came down, the Valium (in smaller doses of course) had found its niche in Charlotte’s life, as an invisible part of her wardrobe, like lipstick or hairspray, serving as another key element among all the other subtle yet vital details of her appearance and personality. Even her relationship with Bill, hardly troubling to begin with, would improve with the evening of her emotions.
How much more empowered could a woman become?
***
A week later Charlotte was rummaging through a cluttered bureau in her office. She was looking for something… something… there! From a tangle of legal papers she pulled a leather-bound diary given to her by Bill for her 37th birthday. She’d never so much as cracked it open. Now, however, she felt compelled to keep a daily record of her life so that she could look back and remember just how wonderful things had been. They were wonderful, weren’t they?
She popped a Valium then delicately spread open the diary and prepared to lay her handsome sterling-silver ink pen to the first fresh page. She had thought the words would come pouring out but instead she found herself staring idly down at the blank sheet. She told herself not to think too hard; just to let the words come. She dated the page then went on:
Well, Charlotte, it’s taken you a few years but you’re finally about to do some journaling. Who would have ever thought I’d be 40 years-old? Not that I’m complaining. I still get looks; from men on the bus; in the park; while picking up cigarettes … Oh, wait, I quit smoking! Hurray, for me! I mean it was sexy and all in my twenties but at 40! Yuck! I admit, I still steal a puff every now and then.
Bill is still in better shape than me, the beast! But he’s useless without me – nobody else could possibly take care of him like I do. And he’s so passive! For a lawyer he never argues about a damn thing.
Semi-consciously, she fetched another Valium and swallowed it down with her iced tea.
The children are well. James reads as much as his daddy and is such an attention-seeker, while Willard is still as introverted as ever. But they are such beautiful boys, with their blonde hair and blue eyes they look just like their mother.
Ooh, I’m going shopping for that lavender cardigan today and I should get them some matching bell-bottoms! I wonder if they’re allowed at school?
Charlotte realized she was prattling on aimlessly. Surely her life was more interesting than all that? She closed the diary after deciding introspection was for the neurotic. She looked apprehensively at the bottle of Valium. She’d recently been taking more than directed – a lot more. They didn’t get her high now (unless she washed them down with wine, which she frequently did) but they did seem to take the edge off a great deal. The only trouble was she couldn’t recall ever actually needing them before she had started taking them and now... well now she really needed them. Why had she ever asked for the prescription to begin with? She’d never been edgy or high-strung in her life – not until the “Valium alarm clock” came along.
The “Valium alarm clock,” as charlotte colloquially referred to it, was a series of symptoms, unpleasant signals that her body was in need of its next tablet. The 5mg she took each morning was supposed to last her through the day and into early evening. The tablet calmed her but she knew its peaceful glow would only last so long (tick… tick… tick…) and then would come the ringing demand for another pill.
It wasn’t as if missing a pill suddenly made her Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm. She was no raving junky, sweating, trembling, ready to give up anything for a fix. No, it was far more subtle than that. She simply couldn’t carry on without the Valium. When each pill’s tranquility had run its course, she found herself at a complete psychological standstill. She could not put on her makeup, or pay the bills or fix supper… she could not do anything. She was like a wind-up doll petering out and sitting motionless until the key in her back was tightly rewound with the help of that little yellow pill.
The “Valium alarm clock” had been so merciful at first, sometimes ticking away for a whole day on just one pill. Now she took three or four, sometimes five. Eventually the inevitable happened; her prescription ran out early. She was frantic. She had to have another prescription filled. But her refill date was 16 days away. What if the doctor decided she was misusing them and cut her off? How could she go on? Though it had only been four months, life without pills was but a vague memory.
Swallowing her last three pills for courage, she called the doctor’s office and spoke to one of the nurses. Careful not to mention a refill, she stated as innocently as possible that her dosage was no longer controlling her symptoms and she felt it might need to be raised. The nurse put her on hold for five minutes then returned to inquire, “Mrs. Rosen, which pharmacy do you use?” Charlotte’s heart leapt with joy and relief spread through her body, slackening the sickening tension that had been growing tighter as her bottle became emptier.
Later that afternoon she picked up a one month’s supply of 90 beautiful blue 10mg Valium, enough for 30mgs a day! She could not believe her good fortune. The blues were even prettier than the yellows, as blue as a tiny bird’s egg or a clear spring sky. And she would doubtless beat the “Valium alarm clock” forever with ten full mgs for morning, noon and night. She was breathless with a wonderful feeling of security, like a despondent widow and mother suddenly informed she is heir to the fortune of an unknown aunt. It never crossed her mind that this exuberance was an extremely excessive reaction to the acquisition of a simple prescription medication.
Her only problem as she saw it was a lack of pills. Now that was solved. No more problems, right?
She celebrated by taking three irresistible tablets at once and walking through the market, feeling transcendence and bliss that may have been the pills, or the sun on her face, or a perfectly harmonized duet between the two.
Aden…
1994
Dr. Oswald Cunicus… Jesus! The name could have belonged to a character played by Bela Lugosi in his washed-up later years in B-grade productions. In reality, Aden’s psychiatrist of four years had all the personality of a number two pencil. What’s worse, in four years of regular consultations, Dr. Cunicus had only managed to make Aden feel more unstable and anxious than ever. But then it couldn’t have been easy for a silvery haired man who started his practice in the age of such antiquated neurological remedies as Dexamyl and Miltown.
The nineties would come to be known as “the age of the brain,” or something like that. The field of psychiatry was exploding in all directions and antidepressants were a financial goldmine, especially now that everyone seemed depressed. But which came first, chicken or egg? Mass cultural anhedonia or Prozac?
By the time Aden noticed that something was terribly wrong, that he couldn’t remember what it was to feel or even if he’d ever known, the Paxil was already a deeply ingrained, four year habit. But was it really helping… and more importantly was it really so harmless?
Antidepressants were a sensation, hitting the market at a time when Aden’s generation seemed torn between rage and apathy, anarchy and hopeless passivity.
Nihilistic despair was suddenly an unexpectedly fashionable attitude and after drifting through four years of high school with virtually no identity, Aden utilized college to channel his inner rage and hone his intellect… when he wasn’t holed in his dorm room, too depressed and disinterested to venture out into the world.
He spent the majority of his first semester smoking pot and reading Nietzsche, then returned home for winter break to rifle through his parents’ medicine cabinet, eating handfuls of Percocet and Ativan before playing Nintendo for hours on end in a near catatonic state. Second term found him revived, full of the piss and vinegar with which he’d arrived on the college scene. He organized groups affectionately referred to as “anti-social clubs,” in which students gathered to discuss music and literature, poetry and artwork, all connected by a shared spirit of antagonism and envelope-pushing. He also distributed an untitled, bimonthly editorial, most notorious for publishing anonymous submissions by students offering detailed accounts of their sexual fantasies involving all-too-real teachers and faculty members.
But summer brought a familiar feeling of hopelessness and Aden suffered his first nervous breakdown. That’s when the visits to Dr. Cunicus began, along with the daily regimen of medication. First there was 20mgs of Prozac each morning with an additional .5mgs of Xanax to be taken as needed. Then the Xanax was replaced with a daily dose of Klonopin. After six months both the Prozac and Klonopin were dropped in favor Paxil, starting at 10mgs and steadily moving up to 30.
Aden had been on Paxil for just over four years now. He had not gone back to college, taken a recreational drug, or entertained a rebellious idea in all four of those years. This pleased his parents, who felt it better he stay home and work at his father’s hardware store, keeping away from “bad influences” and staying properly medicated. Noticing their son had all but forgotten such wayward interests as The Sex Pistols and the Marquis de Sade, they heralded Dr. Cunicus a regular miracle worker and Paxil a pharmaceutical panacea.
“So how are you feeling? Is your mood stable? Are you enjoying your work environment?” The Doctor’s inflection never wavered as he moved from one question to the next.
“Fine, I guess,” Aden replied, staring at the stitches unraveling in the toes of his sneakers, the rubber separating in a curious grin when he wiggled his toes.
