Better Living Through Chemistry

I remember the phrase from our hippie days: “Better living through chemistry.” Dupont meant their slogan to make people feel good about the huge chemical company’s role in society, but our generation adopted it to celebrate our experiments with mind-altering marijuana, peyote, hash, LSD, banana peels.

To us aging hippies it means something quite different now.

Every Wednesday morning, in my robe and slippers, I sit at my dressing table for the weekly filling of my pill organizer. Mine is small and blue and has snap-down lids labelled S-M-T-W-T-F-S. In each compartment I place a pill to keep my thyroid level up (I’m tired and befuddled without it), a small dose of anxiety reducer (to tell my demons to shut up), an extremely expensive generic that keeps my bones strong and is said to keep breast cancer at bay (a somewhat mystical effect like warding off elephants when you live in Indiana), and a luminous orb substituting for the sunshine that I need to manufacture a vitamin that lets my body absorb calcium.

My pill organizer needs are modest compared to David’s. His is enormous and has compartments for mornings and afternoons each day of the week, and there’s a supplemental organizer upstairs for medicaments taken at night. In these go pills to keep his cholesterol down, his heart beating normally, his potassium level stable, his thyroid level up, his blood thin, his bones strong, his blood pressure low, provide essential vitamins, and counteract the depression arising from having to take all these pills every day. For him, it must feel more like “living through chemistry.”

We used to wonder from whom we could score some Mary Jane to get high. Now the Marsh Supermarket pharmacist is our pusher, offering to autofill our every medication need.

“The times, they are a-changin’,” crooned Bob Dylan, the poet of our generation. That’s never been more true than now.