IT’S ALWAYS DRUG O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE

Are Street Drugs Better Than Pharmaceuticals?

Parenting has changed

I don’t trust pharmaceuticals as much as I trust street drugs. I realized that when my kid came down with a relentless cold. I didn’t like rotating between Tylenol and Ibuprofen.

“It’s too many drugs,” I told my husband.

“If we’re using it when he’s sick,” my husband said, “it’s medicine, not drugs.”

That sounded incorrect. It felt like I was peer pressuring my kid with pharmaceuticals — like I was offering him a cigarette or some heroin in the form of aspirin.

Taking my son to the doctor reinforced my theory that Western medicine was drug dealing. The doctor offered to prescribe me drugs for something my son didn’t have.

She said, “It doesn’t look like a nasal infection but would you like something for a nasal infection?”

I was perplexed. She reminded me of a mom I met at elementary pickup who offered me pot. She said, “You don’t need it, but it helps.”

I followed up with the drug dealing doc.

“You said it doesn’t look like an infection but would I like something for an infection?”

She nodded, nonplussed. I looked around for candid cameras. I felt like I was a part of a bust.

That night, I called up a doctor friend and asked her about the interaction.

“Why,” I asked her, “would the doctor give me medicine for something my son didn’t have?”

She didn’t need time to think about an answer. She blurted out, “Some people aren’t happy with a doctor’s visit unless they leave with scripts.”

That sounded nuts to me. It reminded me of the expression ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.’ It also reminded me of the various cures people conducted for COVID — bleach, horse dewormers, denial.

I was clearly dealing with the drug dealing faction of the mob dressed in scrubs writing scripts. Get’m hooked as a kid and you got a customer for life. It also reminded me of old-school grandma medicine which offered whiskey for every sickness that ailed a kid.

Medical school, schemdical school. More like give the people what they want.

Having a sick kid at home is exhausting. I am susceptible to faux cures. This has been three long years of health purgatory and now my son is home sick.

Not homesick. I wish he were at camp, homesick, but no such luck. He’s in my living room, whining and deconstructing every aspect of my flawed personality.

Have you ever tried to turn your inner critic into a human being and set it loose in your living room? That’s what it’s like having a pre-teen sick at home watching your every move.

We’re awaiting his COVID, strep, and flu tests but for now, his primary symptom is awareness of how much his mother sucks. There’s no test for that.

I was complaining about my kid-home-sick predicament on a Zoom call.

One Zoomer said, “Remember when alcohol was a cure for everything? Baby's gums, colds, sore throats, fevers? Too bad you can’t give him that.”

Another Zoomer said, “I come from a long line of women moonshiners and that’s what we used on the kids — peach moonshine.” When most people say they came from moonshiners, you’d say bullshit. Not this woman. If someone put her in a lineup and asked what her ancestors did, I’d say moonshiners.

Another Zoomer said, “My mom got me to take my medicine by saying it was green wine.”

I thought about Doctor Zuess’s most famous book Green Eggs and Wine. It‘s been a comeback bestseller from 2020–2022 — probably because the modern-day mom’s mantra is ‘it’s wine o’clock somewhere.’

I don’t trust pharmaceuticals, I finally told my Zoomers. I only trust real drugs.

What do you consider real drugs? a Zoomer asked.

You know, like pot, I said.

Oh, the Zoomer said, street drugs.

Wow, I thought. Did I trust street drugs more than Benedryl? Was I more likely to give my kid moonshine over Tylenol? Did I trust marijuana more than antibiotics? Moonshine had the advantage of putting the kid to sleep so he stopped judging me. Until he wakes up.

The flu, strep, COVID, and annoying mother tests came back. My kid doesn’t have anything. His doctor wrote me a prescription I can pick up at Walgreens in an hour.

Wouldn’t you rather by laughing? Follow Amy Sea and MuddyUm

Thanks to BOF and Betsy Denson for editing.

Thanks to Susan Brearley, Holly J. See, Gary Chapin, Toni Crowe, and Andrew Rodwin for inspiration for this story.