Penny for your thoughts

It was one of those days when nothing much worked. My thoughts were scrambled, going on and off like a faulty light bulb. I couldn’t seem to focus or make the simplest choice about whether to eat Weetabix for breakfast or have toast, with butter or marmalade, or maybe both. The cruel irony was…but I got caught in a cul de sac of axons, dendrites and a forest of thoughts about whether irony, could be irony, without being cruel, and all of that thinking took time that I didn’t have and couldn’t pay for. It was a scam and I knew it. I didn’t know who I was hooked up to, or who was stealing my thoughts.

A simple procedure they called it. No need for surgery. Standard practice couldn’t get a better deal anywhere else. But nobody could explain why my teeth kept grinding together and or why my tongue lolled about like a drunken sailor on leave. I tried to focus my thoughts, marshal them, parade them up and down in front of my eyes, but they swerved away from me lost in the tendrils of whether a different kind of psychological training was needed to talk to people, which I found quite frightening, or the training needed to listen to people, which I didn’t.

There was a difference in electrical charge between such complex thought and simple pictorial ideas that someone was siphoning off and using. I didn’t know who it was, but I’d find out, if I could only remember.

Anditron, the new wonder drug, a 30 day trial, marketed like all other wonder drugs as a magic bullet, a cognitive cure all for unhappiness. Symptom free. ‘Pop a pill and feel the glow;’ the advertising was manufactured before the pill. They didn’t use guinea pigs of course because the neurochemistry was all wrong and guinea pigs didn’t complain, in a whiny voice, about being fat and bald and not having a girlfriend and even if they did that they couldn’t get it up and the world would be a better place if they were dead, as I knew, perfectly well, some people did.

Anditron, the new wonder drug, a free 90-day trial. The laboratory was shut off like an aquarium with the assistants outside looking through the sealed windows at us. They were breathing through air masks, which I thought was slightly sinister and asked myself why they weren’t allowed to breathe the same normal air as us. I’d have asked the guy next to me, but he didn’t look at me, didn’t look at anybody, just looked as if he was going to rush the door and besides I didn’t like talking to people, that was part of my problem.

Anditron, the new wonder drug, a free 120-day trial. ‘We’re locked in,’ said a woman shaking the door, as evidence. She seemed a bit distressed, overemotional; maybe that was why she was there. Or maybe it was the piped music, a medley of some bands greatest hits, but I couldn’t remember what they were called. After a few hours we submitted to their subtle alchemy and our legs turned to lead. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said through the speakers. My greatest fear by that time was that they were simply turning the record over.

Anditron, the new wonder drug, a free 12-month trial. Cautions: plasma levels and thyroid function must be monitored regularly; maintain adequate sodium and fluid intake. Avoid in renal impairment, cardiac disease and conditions with sodium imbalance such as Addison’s disease. Caution in pregnancy; breast feeding, elderly patients (reduce dose), diuretic treatment, myasthenia gravis; interactions: Appendix 1.

We were warned about the placebo effect. But that was the most frightening thing of all. I couldn’t trust myself, wasn’t sure if I wanted to pee, or it was just the drug telling me to pee, then telling me it was only kidding it was a placebo and hiding its subtle workings from me. There was no need for such brutality, placing thoughts in my head. I’d have been quite happy, if that is the right word, to be told that I was depressed and let out to go home.

Anditron, the new wonder drug, a free 24-month trial. Side effects: gastro-intestinal disturbances, fine tremor, polyuria and polydispsia; also weight gain and oedema (may respond to does reduction); blurred vision; anorexia; vomiting; diarrhoea; muscle weakness, increasing CNS disturbances; mild drowsiness and sluggishness increasing to giddiness with ataxia, coarse tremor, lack of coordination, dysarthria; hyperflexia and hyperextension of limbs; convulsions; toxic psychoses; syncope; oliguria; circulatory failure; death.

I would have been quite happy to go home a different person, or even the same slightly crumpled person. But I’d no home to go to. I’d been away too long and failed to be the kind of person that pays rent. I tried The Council, but they suggested The Social Work Department. I tried the Social Work Department, but they suggested phoning their Helpline, which referred me to The Council. The Council referred me to their Housing Department who referred me to the Homeless Unit who referred me to the Social Work Department for an assessment, which could take up to 12 months.

Anditron: Warning: do not operate machinery.