Witch Doctors

It didn't become a Russian roulette until later, when the witch doctors (psychiatrists) started prescribing me too much medication. In that future, where I am too anxious to leave my house lest I run into a neighbor and am forced to make small talk, I am on too much of a medication that I have been on for fifteen years. That number, folks - that's half my life.

I remember my first witch doctor. Here's the thing - these doctors don't know anything, really, about how the brain actually works, because everyone's brain pan is different. I remember reading once how the brain is like the deep ocean, in that scientists know little about it. There is so much left to be explored. But as if by decree, as if he were a judge on my particular, sixteen-year-old brain pan, he decided to clock out of work that day with the knowledge that he had prescribed me with an incredibly addictive drug. His witch ritual was complete.

How was a sixteen-year-old supposed to know that it would be incredibly addictive? Sixteen is, by legal definition, underage, youth, minor, not yet an adult who can make adult choices. I looked up to him. I looked up to him because I was taught that you look up to adults; they knew more than I did, so who was I to fault them?

But the thing is - because my brain pan would have been different than any other patient he'd ever had - he didn't know what he was doing. He was throwing out guesses. And yes, perhaps, they were "educated" guesses, but his certainty that it would "all work out" required an arrogance that only these witch doctors have.

I don't hold a lot of respect for this profession, clearly. I learned later, as a legal adult, that they are rather easy to manipulate. Just make sh*t up, and they'll prescribe what you want. And maybe then I am a part of this rather elaborate, problematic system of medicine. But remember - it is witch medicine.

These are my current thoughts, as I sit here, unable to hold a conversation with my neighbor. My brain pan is fried. I have taken so much anxiety medication in my short lifetime that I am more anxious than ever. The system failed me. They failed me.

Here's the short answer: don't answer to witches.