Essay written for Filling Station Magazine
I do not understand why I cannot simply have a prescription for OxyContin for the rest of my life. Why the hell not?
Millions of North Americans are taking their prescribed antidepressants every day, even those who barely suffer from depression, and just picked up on the fashionable trend of always being pleasant and compliant. I do suffer from a crippling depression that no antidepressant can touch, and I have found the solution in the form of a pill, just like everyone else.
My pill just happens to be an illegal narcotic.
But it’s effects are much the same. It makes me happy, motivated, sure of myself, ambitious. In all truth and fact, it is far more effective at relieving me of my depression than any antidepressant. Prozac, Effexor, Lithium, Seroquel - I’ve tried them all, but the simple truth is that without Oxy Contin, I don’t even want to live. With OCs, not only do I want to live, but I want to live well, and I have the energy and the confidence to do so. If this drug has all these positive attributes, and actually does tenfold what every antidepressant on the market claims to do, and makes me everything that I want to be, why won’t they give me my prescription? Don’t they want me to be happy?
I know there’s the slight side effects to consider - being so physically dependent on a drug that I become deathly ill if I do not have it; the dissolution of my teeth and bones as my body is robbed of it’s calcium; all those pesky weekly trips to the cardiologist to check my EKG because I now have an irregular heartbeat; being in the high risk group for heart attacks at the ripe old age of twenty-four; friends and family praying for my death so that we can all be relieved of the burden that is me.
If the alternative is lying on a floor, unable to move and suffocating on my own sadness, I would say that this is a small price to pay.
At least with OxyContin I would die happy. After all, if any of what I write is true, then I do not believe I am actually living at all.
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