Happy Pills

This is the last post from my forties, as I hit the half-century mark on Sunday. I'm not too bereft at turning fifty. I imagine the most common complaints about hitting that age are the unavoidable confrontation with mortality (as statistics would argue that more than half your life is over) and the rueful look back and its inevitable disappointment. How many can say they are at fifty where they thought they'd be when they were twenty? I certainly can't.

But I've been dealing with this for a few years now. Yes, the numbers say I'm closer to death than birth, but I don't feel old and I'm in pretty good health, and I don't have an overly keen fear of death. As for being disappointed with how my life turned out, that's pretty much been a constant for me since I can remember. I've always been the type, even when young, that has wanted a "do-over."

The one thing new about going into my fifties is that in the last few months I have been feeling an overwhelming sense of anxiety. Not so bad that I can't get out of bed, but enough that I sought out a psychiatrist for the first time in my life (thank you, health insurance!) I saw a no-nonsense Indian woman (almost all the doctors around me are Indian or Chinese) and she heard my story and prescribed an anti-anxiety medication and an antidepressant.

This is the age we live in: got a problem? Take a pill. Whether it's too frequent urination or restless leg syndrome, there's a pill for it (except for the big ones, like cancer or Alzheimer's). There are many mood-altering drugs, and each doctor has their favorites (as evidenced in the film Love and Other Drugs), and I got Klonapin and Celexa (they all seem to be named something out of science fiction, with the letters q, v, z, or x prominently featured). The Klonapin kicks in right away, and I will admit it helps some. I got a speeding ticket while on it and remained perfectly calm.

The Celexa takes four-to-six weeks to get into my system, and it's been about four weeks now. I await to see what it will do to me--will it make me a new person? When my father started his medication years ago his personality took a sharp turn for the cuddly--he called all of us kids to tell us he loved us and joined his local church (and he's a long-time atheist). Maybe my interest in Unitarianism is a result of these drugs.

I am also seeing a therapist (psychiatrists don't do therapy anymore, they just prescribe drugs). I saw a therapist about twenty years ago and it helped some, so I willingly went to an earnest young woman who is going to try to help me with my self-esteem issues, which are deeply rooted in my childhood.

A lot of this stuff is hereditary. While visiting my father I found out he's still on pills (Xanax and Zoloft). My grandmother, his mother, was a world-class worrier who was an expert in passive-aggressive behavior. There's a distinct strain of a kind of sense of humor on that side of the family that I can trace back to her father, my great-grandfather. My father has it, my great aunt had it, my sister has it, and one of my cousins has it. It's an almost Jewish sense of humor, in that one realizes that nothing is going to right, so we might as well make fun of it. It's the "eh, what are you going to do?" sense of humor.

I saw an article recently that said that the pursuit of happiness can make you unhappy. That is, if you equate happiness to material gain or accomplishment. The key to happiness, the article said, was to find comfort in helping others and in family. I do try to help others as much as possible, though I'm not big on volunteering. My idea of being a good guy is to wave in cars ahead of me. But I am appreciating my family more and more. We've always been close, if distant it terms of geography. We don't talk or get together much, but we appreciate each other when we do. A few weeks ago we threw a surprise 70th birthday for my dad and we all had a great time. The next day I visited my maternal grandmother, now living in a nursing home and having forgotten almost everything, and saw my aunt and a cousin and that made me feel good.

For my birthday weekend I'm headed to Pennsylvania to visit my mother and brother. He's got three adorable little kids. I remember a couple of Christmases ago, when I was feeling worthless and miserable, and stood one of his daughters on my lap. She was about one and a half, and having the time of her life. I thought, how can life be so bad when there's little children like this to hold?