The Xanax Debate: A Quadrupalogue (a poem)

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Issue XII » The Xanax Debate: A Quadrupalogue

The Xanax Debate A Quadrupalogue by Olga Livshin The Brain: Mind, when did I stop being your sister? When did I become the mule you threw bag after bag of work at? Sand, clay, cement spluttering, hurled at wherever I tried to tend to a garden of stop. We worked when the world had its short rib stew, petted its cats before the dumb, lovely TV show, and sugar-powder snow fell. When we needed sleep, when we really did need to fall prostrate and sleep, instead you and I dragged ourselves on brisk walks under the bulging sky, or worked right after giving birth. That’s when we first zigzagged down the world-of-medicine stairs. Yes, our culture demands exertion; but not so fast. Remember how you basked in work, Ms. Cogof-the-Month at Self-Sacrifice Corporation, Perfect Mother Who Just Can’t Get it Together? You loved ravishing me. Now I’m frayed. Don’t get dressed, Mind. Don’t eat, Mind. Take that pill! All dials scream fear, fear! We are fellow travelers. Hear me, hear. The Mind: (Swallows a Xanax. Waits ten minutes.) That’s better. But how it tortures me, this shame that I give voice to. Brain,

let’s not kid ourselves. You threw me out at your whimsy, Your Crazy Majesty. I was once a rational animal, mother of all my work. When you said, “I am real, too!”, how you loved crushing me into you, like America’s favorite medication smashed now into my mouth! Medical nomenclature calls us an organ – and just that: a smallish, mortal and twisty sort of cinnamon bun, black raisins of illness baked into our folds. GAD—that’s my name thanks to you: Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Should I be glad? Bodies are real, your wisdom declares. I’m not myself until Xanax doles me out and then that suddenly ends. And Xanax needs to take me again, and again. That’s my only feasible, cyclical return to me. No: not to the healthy woman I used to be. To our easy-to-memorize, our dearly beloved formula: 8-Chloro-1-can’t-live-without-itmethyl-abhor-depen-dency-4H-phenylit’s-intimacy-that-I-didn’t-know-benzodiazepine. The Xanax R&D Team If we may: we are biochemists. Which is why we meet you here. Poor Brain, how hard it is – we know this better than anyone. Please accept our response – these meds – as-is: you’re not in a madhouse, at least! Some facts for you, Mind, too, so that they might balance the heavy medical authority that upsets you. We have no idea how Xanax works, and only vague notions about why you’re sick to begin with. Hormones, the environment, what you dreamed of, drank this morning, what your boss said at 3 p.m. No cure, but treatment, and we still try— Pfizer Corporation: Now, Drs., if you don’t mind, step aside. We’ll speak directly to our customer. Ms. Mind! (It’s illegal for us to speak to your damaged organ, we’re advised that diseases are biology. Also, you’re paying.) Let’s face it: Xanax is the bestavailable, premiere anti-anxiety medication. Unrealistic worries vanish after oral administration. Join our fifty million clients per year, plus illegals, and growing under our leadership. What else

can you do? Why do you people add this cause for worry to your already-enormous list? You’re one powerful army. Ms. Mind, soldier on!