Three Kinds of Medicine: A Monologue

The best kind of medicine is the kind that actually cures you. This kind of medicine is extremely rare and very expensive. It is also only available to some people, so if they offer you this kind of medicine - take it. Show up early, wait in line and dance for it. Take it no matter how big the needle is, how long the recouperation or how noticible the scars when it is over.

Take it even if it means you have to sit, chained to a pump for days and days, watching it drip slowly into your veins. Even if the concoction is so venemous it melts everything inside you that isn't tied down. Take it even if it means you have to lay on the tiles of the bathroom floor for months, listening to the sound of the world going on outside, or for a gentle knock at the door.

Take it even if it leaves you nothing but the ability to be grateful for the simplest of things....a cup of warm broth...a saltine cracker...a kind word. Take it because it will make you grateful for these things. And you will be amazed at how good they really are. More filling than steak, sweeter than ice cream, softer than velvet.

The worst kind of medicine is the kind that will only treat your symptoms. This kind of medicine lulls you into a false sense of security and gives you a bunch of new symptoms. New symptoms that require more medicine. This kind of medicine gets offered to everyone. They pass it out like candy at Halloween. We bottle feed it to our babies and spoon feed it to our elders. This kind of medicine is packaged in brightly colored boxes and hand delivered to doorsteps for 19.95 plus shipping and handling.

Guards pass this kind of medicine through iron bars, teachers write it on blackboards, and ministers speak it over shiny gold pulpits just before they pass around the collection plate. Desperate people peddle it on street corners, or shout it from soapboxes or fire it through the barrel of a gun and powerful people put it in textbooks, broadcast it on airwaves or meet behind closed doors and write it into law. And the people who own everything...they just drop it like bombs and spray it from overhead like pesticide. They blanket the fields and mountains with it, or dump it into the oceans and rivers. 

But nobody ever escapes this kind of medicine.

The last kind of medicine is the kind they will offer you when all the other kinds of medicine have finally made you so sick that no one can fool you into believing that any medicine will make you well again. This kind of medicine serves only one purpose. This kind of medicine helps you forget. It erodes the memory of all other medicines and their side-effects. It obscures any remaining images of your former self and clouds any reflection of your decay. It erases the lines between you and the cosmos.

So when they offer you this kind of medicine...and they will surely offer you this kind of medicine - REFUSE IT! Hand it back to them and say you've had a long-standing appointment with your pain. Tell them you invited suffering over for dinner and a vicious game of Scrabble. Tell them that you and Death have made plans to flip through the pages of your address book and call old friends...or look through the Rand McNally Atlas together and weep over the beautiful places you always wanted, but somehow never got the chance to visit. Welcome the agony....it will set you free.