2 weeks Ago By Tom Nicholson
“Let’s toast,” says the hostess, raising her third, which is to say at least fourth, glass of wine as the rest of us follow suit. “’The drugs DO work!’”“Cheers!” we chorus, and it is heartfelt.We are not, as you might have assumed if you looked round at the middle-aged, female gathering (you can call it a coven meeting, we don’t mind), hymning the beauties of HRT.
That generally takes place within the first glass, because HRT is the sine qua non of existence and you always pour out your first libation to your god.if(window.adverts) { window.
adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }No, this is a hailing of all the other drugs we are taking. The unofficial ones.
Not illegal in themselves, exactly, though no one was wholly clear on this point, especially as the subject had only emerged at third-glass point. The drugs that help us through the bad days – the days when the pile of problems seems too much to handle and yet absolutely must be handled; the days when your anxiety threatens to choke you but mustn’t because you have work, plus that pile of problems, to deal with; the days when you would like a raft of strong drinks but can’t because your aged body can’t throw off the effects of booze like it used to and who can afford to spend two days in bed nursing a hangover when a lack of time is already one of the things driving you to drink?The good thing about being this age, at least, is that the aches, pains, operations, back injuries, chronic conditions we have experienced along the way have led to a quiet accumulation of unfinished blister packs and bottles of medications that can be quietly and usefully repurposed.That night I learned that, apart from proper prescriptions for antidepressants and the much-valued but increasingly rare same for diazepam (AKA the 50s housewives’ favourite Valium), a post-operative husband’s Tramadol that he refused to take, a sister’s unfinished propranolol, a brother’s Lorazepam (“I didn’t realise they’d be right for the job until I saw Posey Parker popping them on White Lotus!” says his delighted sister) and assorted aged parents’ pregabalin and gabapentin were all being taken – occasionally and with a full Googling of side effects and contraindications undertaken beforehand – to lift people over humps that would otherwise have defeated them.
Needless to say, this sort of thing is very much not encouraged by medics for very good reason, and distributing or sharing prescription drugs is, it turns out, illegal.if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }Some friends swear by edibles; snacks like gummies or brownies infused with cannabis which are, obviously, also illegal. Not whole edibles at a time – just a nibble here and there, not to get high, just to.
.. take the edge off.
While admiring my friends’ ingenuity, I have to ask: are the midlifes all right? I don’t think this long list of pharmaceuticals can really say anything good about us, can it? #color-context-related-article-3613856 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square LUCY MANGAN I'm scared my son is speaking a language I can't understand - with emojisRead MoreI suppose that in finding alternatives to booze that still allow us to function you could argue that we are prioritising, not shirking, our responsibilities (and maybe saving a few livers along the way). But it speaks, surely, to a greater underlying problem. Namely that ordinary life, even for a group of relatively privileged women, is too much to get through without chemically-induced help.
There are all the obvious burdens, of course. Work, often increasingly precarious as bosses become younger and start wondering why this ancient artefact is still hanging round their modern workplace. Divorce, frequently.
Money, always. The constant worrying about children, especially as they reach their teens. The caring for aged parents at the same time.
The enduringly unequal division of labour with any undivorced husband at home, and the chances of reforming the system long since fled.And then there are the more subtle ones. Worrying about children may be the standard burden of all good parents since the first mewling, helpless bundle of complicated joy was born, but were we ever so powerless to protect them? I would rather know my enemies were sabre-tooth tigers than the internet.
Give me flesh and fangs to deal with any day instead of a diffused enemy that can reach into my child’s mind and transform it into something unrecognisably awful, however vigilant I am.And worrying about the world you – and they – live in is normal, but were we ever so powerless to shape it? Recycle as diligently as you like, you are not going to stop the planet burning. No one – looking round at various governments and inert international bodies – is.
We are doomed like we’ve never been doomed before. My ability to pretend that life has beauty or meaning wears very thin under the constant grinding awareness that it’s all going to end within a few generations anyway. I keep trying to catch religion, but I appear to be immune, so those comforts – however illusory – will ever elude me.
Perhaps the unifying factor to all of this is that we are essentially not in control of our own lives. Not in the way that was promised, not in the way that the adults we grew up with were (and they didn’t just seem to be because we were children – talk to any of them and they will confirm that life didn’t sprawl and its tentacles didn’t thrash with such violence as they do now. It was, generally speaking, a manageable proposition).
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }We may not fear our sons being sent off to war, but only because the next war will be one of globally assured destruction. A reasonable certainty that you will all die suddenly and together, however, is a less settling thought than you might hope.In such circumstances, a carefully calibrated ingestion of controlled substances seems like a reasonable option to me.
Once this hangover clears, on Thursday or Friday, I may look at my medicine cabinet, my search engine and my choices anew..
