Tag: meditation

Pill pals

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’m an anxious person, shaky and fretful, and when anxiety gets the best of me, I pop a pill. I hold out as long as I can before grabbing the amber prescription bottle, but when the physical jitters and mental goblins won’t blow off, then it’s time for Clonazepam. Swallow, wait, ahh.

Sort of. But the meds — those sedatives, so tiny and pink they’re almost cute — can blunt the edge, like sanding a jagged thumbnail on an emery board. Magic? Hardly. Mellow? Kinda. 

I’ve blabbed about this, my fun, adorable neuroses, on these pages before. But it’s been a long time and things evolve. 

No. No they do not. 

I’m exactly in the same place I was in 2020, or, for that matter, 2010. I remain a quaking Jell-O mold, gulping pharmaceuticals to stanch dramatized grief. Get a therapist! you scream. Exactly a dozen therapists later, starting at age 13, I’ve sworn off them. They’ve been as helpful as talking to my dear Aunt Gladys, who’s deaf in one ear and has narcolepsy.

Meditation has been my most recent move. Like many novices, my frantic, hamster-wheel mind — Did I pay that bill? Should I call her? Do I have a brain tumor? — has so far derailed any quality concentration, but I’m working on it. Anything to snuff my mind’s overactive orgy of tripe and trivia.

The tiniest shard of unresolved thought can keep me up all night. So angst often translates to sheet-tearing insomnia. I will toss, turn, cuss up a storm. I finally convinced my doctor to prescribe me Xanax expressly for insomnia, as it is worrisomely habit-forming. (A previous doctor scoffed, “That stuff is crack.”) 

My sleep success rate with Xanax so far is about seventy percent, which I consider worthy of confetti and party horns. Yet when it doesn’t work, look out. My pillow becomes a cloud of fluttering feathers. I chew it. 

I take other meds for mental “stability” (insert: laugh track), but the anxiety tabs yield the most direct effect. The other ones are like background Muzak, a calm, ubiquitous hum. In thirty minutes or less, my low-dosage Clonazepam is like a mental muffle, quieting the chaos. (I’ve also tried cannabis gummies, but they just make me woolly and irrationally hungry. A whole box of Kraft Mac & Cheese, at midnight — not a good look.)

As I travel a lot, I’m blessed my anxiety is rarely a stowaway; it was never issued a passport. I’m sure that’s because I’m relieved of quotidian complaints and overblown worries, transported to a scrubbed reality. I’ve written: “In my travels, my angst all but evaporates. I am unshackled, life’s daily detritus dispersed by an existential leaf blower.” 

I don’t need the pills in, say, Paris, though I bring them along for backup in case life kicks in and I start pacing and perspiring through the hallowed halls of Musée d’Orsay. 

Who needs all this? It must stop. It’s not so easy, of course. I’m resigned to being wired this way, though nostrums like meditation and mindfulness and all that cognitive crap pave avenues of mild hope.

Meantime I have the sweet companionship of Clonazepam, itty pink pills that chirp, “It’s okay, pal. I’m here to soothe the dread and iron out life’s pesky wrinkles.”

I’ve heard it all before. Almost daily. I don’t believe a word of it.

Thinking on my feet

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Almost everyday I take a brisk, modest-sized walk through the hyper-suburban neighborhood, an asphalt idyll of buckled sidewalks, buzzed lawns, old two-story houses, big porches, and the sporadic American flag and Black Lives Matter sign. People walk dogs. New moms push strollers. Birds chirp and squirrels scamper. 

God, is it tedious. And it’s all in my head. 

The luxuriant boredom I experience on my walks is tenacious and tiresome. My brain won’t shut down, churning as it does with bland thoughts and uprooted memories that flitter like confetti. Everyone says they walk to clear their head. I don’t know what they’re talking about. 

Ah, but there are remedies, I am told. And yet this mind is too distracted by mental detritus to concentrate on the airy, erudite gabbery of a podcast. And the sound of music isn’t powerful enough to muffle the noise echoing in my head. A precious cure eludes the mighty AirPods. 

Extract yourself from the leafy suburbs, I nudge myself. There’s more stimuli in the city — shops, traffic, people, the vast, raucous urban tapestry — or in nature — trees, paths, brooks, snakes, deer poop. Or find a walking pal with whom to chat. 

Yes. Sure. Maybe.

There’s the easily amused and the easily bored. Guess what I am. Sometimes I even glaze over while playing drums to records I love. I’ll zone out, stare at the wall, go through the syncopated motions, finish a tune without quite knowing it. This is rare, but it happens. It’s sort of like sleep walking, with sticks.

I just took a walk and it was fine. I didn’t bore myself silly. Kissed by the breeze, warmed by a soft sun, I actually put my mind to something: this blog. Amid the riot of thought shards, I was able to organize a through line, if only intermittently. The chaos in the cranium still throbbed, but I plucked some ideas from the storm. Nothing major, as you can see, but still.   

It’s like rubbing your head while patting your belly: two disparate tasks at once. Walking and talking is easy. So is wandering and wondering. Muzzling the mind is something else entirely. That’s called meditation, which is not easy. I’ve tried many times. I’m terrible at it. 

My addled brain whirs like a broken fan. On it goes as I walk, each step taking me further into the storm, and that much more away from peace. I welcome the simplest of detours, one where I can quiet the cacophony and harness a madly reeling mind. A cake walk, maybe?