Saturday, August 16, 2008

Time and again


When Justin was visiting me, he bent down at one point, in the brilliant Oklahoma sunshine, and came up from the bottom of my car with a tiny yellow pill. "What's this?" he said.

"I don't know," I said.

"Let's look it up!" he said, with the vim only someone with an iPhone can display, and he signaled to the Internet Gods. Who failed him as only the rickety Cingular network can, and we forgot about it until we looked at his iPhone later and discovered that what he had plucked from the bottom of my passenger seat was a single serving of Ativan.

Since I don't take anti-anxiety medication, and neither does he, we guessed it had come from one of my ride-sharers. No wonder everyone seemed so calm; they were probably doped to the gills. The Ativan is sitting on my dashboard now, as a reminder that everyone needs a little help sometimes, and just because someone needs medication, doesn't make them dangerous or crazy or worthless. Not that I needed a reminder. Or maybe I'm keeping it in case I need it someday. :)

This for some reason reminded me of trinitite.

Trinitite is a manmade rock; green glass, fused by Oppenheimer's nuclear testing in the New Mexico deserts at the so-called 'Trinity Site.' It's not always green. Sometimes it's red, coloring from copper wires from the bomb itself or gauges on the tower; sometimes it's black, because of high iron content from the tower itself. It's all superheated in the core of an atomic explosion and re-crystallized.

I am fascinated by this stuff. For one thing, I am positive this is what Neil Gaiman was talking about when he wrote of an ancient desert, full of pieces of green glass left over from when a city destroyed itself. That is what would be left if we blew ourselves up: the fused remnants of what used to be civilization.

Gives you pause.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oddly, it is possible that the Ativan is mine. My brother is deathly afraid of flying, and takes it to get by. He gave me a single pill at The Amazing Meeting, just before I met you, to help with sleep on my flight home. I never took it, and who knows where it has gone now. But I DID have a pill, and I WAS in your car, so this seems a likely explanation.

It is nice to think that I may have brought some (potential) calm into your life, even if it is only pharmacological. : )

Anonymous said...

My name is Brian Lane and i would like to show you my personal experience with Ativan.

I am 30 years old .I started taking this drug about 10 years ago to help with some pretty bad anxiety and depression I was having at the time. I started taking a 1mg dose twice a day 1 in morning and 1 before bed. I tapered myself down to .5mg twice a day and then finally was able to get off it for about 3 months this year. I just started taking it in .5mg doses again due to the anxiety and depression resurfacing after 10 years. I dont know if its coming back because I got off the medicine or just that I am having a relapse but I have to honestly tell you that those years in between when I was taking it were the best years of my life. Just be VERY careful not to take this in larger doses.

Side Effects :
sleepiness, addiction It really helped me for what I was taking it for but it was very difficult to stop.

I hope this information will be useful to others,
Brian Lane


Ativan Side Effects