Under normal circumstances I have this kind of Algonquin round-table in my head; a collection of voices that chatter on like a permanent narrative device in my skull. I don’t remember a time before them. They’re the joke-writers, the non sequitur builders, the background researchers, and ceaseless critics. They are me, but they are also not-me. I am outnumbered by them, and they all want the mic. But I’m used to them, even when they are decidedly not on my side. They simply are, and I’ve come to terms with that. I don’t know what I am without them.
Since I’ve been taking the Chantix and the Klonopin they are almost completely silent. That absence of narration is a big reason why I couldn’t recognize what was happening while in the middle of it. That round table is the first to scream out “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, YOU COLOSSAL IDIOT?” when libation, emotion, or just sheer dumb-headedness has grabbed the wheel. Quite a handy crew, that bunch. I’ll be happy to have them back. Their collective silence should have clued me in that something was amiss, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from Cinderella’s 1988 power-ballad, it’d be that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.
It’s fair to say that I am out of sorts. With the dosage adjustments of Chantix and (spacing out the Klonopin for effect), I can feel when their conflicting effects kick in independently, and there exists a brief window before they intertwine and ensconce my skull with the world’s least appealing family quilt, but in that moment I can experience each in isolation. The Chantix fires up my monstrous engine of anxiety and panic. Everything is just this side of Hulk-rage, and I find myself flummoxed over things that have been second nature to me for decades. I obsess over things I’d otherwise disregard like a candy wrapper. I can’t let go of a single thought. My monomania betrays me and all my processing power is lost to minutiae, leaving nothing to manage even the most basic task. I lost a fight to a goddamn bottle opener the other morning. It’s embarrassing to say the least. But humiliating would be far more apt.
The Klonopin…well, if Eeyore was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, he’d be slathered in Klonopin livery. It’s as if someone compressed everything Elliott Smith, Sylvia Plath, Morrissey, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez ever put to page and distilled it into a pebble that rolls down the mountain of my mind like a 600 ton avalanche of sadness. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve suffered no shortage of loss in my life. I’ve walked beside Death itself both as a companion and an all-too-near-victim. Grief has been a near-constant companion for the last year. Every loss, every goodbye is dredged up into an insufferable Oscars “In Memoriam” montage alongside every regret and mistake my brain can find.
In their overpowered state they stalked me from the shadows. I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t name them. I couldn’t defend myself against them.
But now—here on the tail end of this—I’m aware of what new madness has been wrought by what can only be described as the almost comically stupid over-prescription I was given. A lowered dosage has thrown a tarp over these mysterious things and given them a shape. They have been spotted, and cannot be unseen. I can feel them skitter at the edges of my vision. I can hear them buzzing like junebugs against the screendoor during a still Summer night. I still cannot catch them. I can only await their exit. But now I know what they are.
From this new vantage point, I’m both horrified and fascinated by how these two chemical intruders have formed something akin to a massive pendulum with each apex a wholly distinct experience. At each swing’s farthest point I can examine that side with dispassion, and place my behavior within its context. It lessens the shame and sorrow over my under-the-influence actions by not a whit, but the distance lets me understand them. I can see the fresh impact craters on my psyche in context with the ones that were already there.
Were it that I could pin them to one side or another, but physics demands the mass rush back to me. I can feel it coming. There’s a rush of air as it comes close. And then it hits me. And I just kind of…go away for a while.
I am a phantom of rage, panic, malaise and melancholy trapped in my life’s cruelest moments. I freeze in panic. And then the one voice still capable of reaching the microphone comes in like a disappointed director having to yet again guide their least capable troupe member. This is the voice that’s the hardest to explain even though its purpose is the most straightforward. It has many ways to say it, but it provides exactly one kind of direction. It has only this to say—”You should be dead.” And upon this, it is very insistent.
I do not remember a time in my life when this was not being whispered in my ear in one form or another. It has ceased to shock me. It is as baked-in to my sense of self as my love of The Beatles, of cooking, of comic-books, or the fact that French toast is objectively better than pancakes. At worst, it’s an annoyance. That voice has no sense of timing. It will bubble up in even the most mundane of occasions. It’s a kind of internal conversation tic that is treated like one of those pleasantries we gloss over every day. “How ya doing, buddy? You should be dead. How about those Royals, huh?” I’ve long come to terms with the knowledge that it isn’t going away. At this point, it isn’t good or bad. It simply is.
But here in the wind of the pendulum swing, it stands alone and has full control of the mic. There’s no counter-argument. The tic takes on new weight. It becomes almost seductive. It’s taken off its glasses and shaken out its hair. Its infernal logic becomes harder to puncture. And while we’re on it—How many klonopin do I have left? How many Xanax? How many hydrocodone? What do I have—a handle? Two handles of whiskey?
Then the pendulum swings past me, and in that window before one side or another takes over, I can examine my response to thoughts given real estate I’d long considered salted ground. The dissection of them allows me to set them aside.
Of the two, the Klonopin is far and away the most dangerous. Chantix’s anger and panic are barking dogs drowning out all but their own voices. They care for nothing more than their own edification. But Klonopin comes at you from a different angle. Its honeyed melancholy sidles up close. It whispers. It sings to you in a voice low and soothing. It demands nothing—it simply calls up every mental scrape, wound, or scar you’ve ever traced your finger across. It asks “How?” knowing that the answer will surely bring forth the pain the scar won’t let you forget. And before you know it you’re under the surface of a sea of despair of your making. Gasping for breath. Desperate for a hand to reach in and pull you back to dry land.
In my case it’s not a hand that reaches out. It is a voice. One of the round-tablers who, with less pharmacology to dampen it, manages a familiar “Jesus, could you be more melodramatic?” And with that, the dam is breached. The chorus returns en masse and in force, anxious to catch me up on opinions I hadn’t been able to hear. I have to admit—I missed them. I missed me.
And now I’m left with another equation entirely. One where a multi-billion dollar a year industry, with the right dosage and combinations, might actually be capable of returning my brain to a single-occupancy dwelling. There’s a real possibility that somewhere out there is a concoction that permanently silences these voices. No more arguments with myself at three in the morning that only I can hear. No more verbal tics and subvocalized phrases that emerge from my mouth both unbidden and unexplained. No more “you should be dead.”
But, if’n I’m being honest, I’m worried that I would be. The noisy world I know would go quiet. The pendulum might be gone, but so would I. I wouldn’t be me. Would I be funny? Would I still solve problems sideways? What traits I rely on would be erased from the stat sheet?
What would I do with all that silence?
