The Arithmetic of Treatment

Hey guys, if you're ill and your doctor suggests some pills to fix what ails you, trust that they know what they're talking about. The same goes for mental illness. If you let my poem influence decisions you make about your health then I will hunt you down and punch you.

Lithium: One teenager plus thirty miligrams sent earthward daily equals me forgetting what an orgasm feels like. My girlfriends appreciated this, up to a point, with sore jaws and thighs bruised on a heart turned to salt, frustration welled to streaks streaming mascara down her cheeks, I don't know what's wrong with me, unable to feel sorry for her, or any real connection, like I'm suffocating in an insulation cocoon, a thick pink blanket of pharmacology to keep me protected from the world, muting all sensation save the monthly prick of blood tests, “It's important to monitor your sodium levels, or your kidneys could die” the nurses tell me, like one pill a day could do to me what three meals of poverty couldn't, like out of all the negative influences in my life, the one to finally pull the trigger would come in an orange plastic tube monitored by doctors, and this is what's supposed to save me? This equation is unbalanced.

Prozac: The resulting quotient of 20mg feels like plant life in the arctic, like photosynthesis at the bottom of the ocean, like revelation the moment before you wake up and your subconscious is scoured clean by an alarm clock thirty minutes late into your first shift, prozac feels like nothing, no, worse, like a profound loss, like the moment of quiet after the song but before the applause while you're still left hanging on an emotional high but you drop into a gray void of nothing, an endless flat where there used to be sinusoidal life, but that's the problem that got you here in the first place so now you and everything that made you breathe are divisors, this equation is unbalanced, factored apart by the heart-rending tension that sent you to the hospital, split by the thin black line at the bottom of a prescription pad.

Wellbutrin: Will fuck you up. Like Lewis Carroll on Algebra, the world will spin, you will get dizzy on the stairs and fall far too often for it to be accidental, getting out of a chair will become a task worthy of celebration, the world will go flat, like turning a page in a comic book your perception will warp until you are trapped in a world of cardboard cut-outs, or your head spins off and balloons into the ceiling fan, or melts into the hard plastic chair, you will feel bees crawl underneath your skin, you will forget to breathe on occasion, or become obscenely aware of the wet bulk of your tongue in your mouth, swelling, the doctors will explain that depersonalization and derealization are common side-effects of the medication, all the while you are feeling the flesh on your back crawl into the shape of wings while you feel each individual hair follicle twitch on your head, there are other pills that will fix it are others that will fix it, you will realize that they, too, would make the equation unbalanced.

There is help available to those who seek it.