Page 63 - 04_May-2025

It was perfect. If properly interpret-
ed, I could now curl into a fetal ball on
a whim with the knowledge that dou-
ble-blind trials and scientific rigour had
both confirmed that nothing is actually
hazardous to my health.
I looked at my pharmacist, feeling
vaguely sad for a person who endured
years of grueling advanced chem studies,
earning her one or more degrees in
what’s considered one of the most tech-
nically challenging fields of medicine, so
she could work a cash register at Costco.
“Listen,” she says. “Don’t worry about all
that. It’s the worrying that causes it.”
She handed me a little brown bag,
“But I want the Trade Name.”
“Nope. Discontinued.”
“Discontinued?” I protested. “For what?”
“Side effects.”
“Side effects! But I need my side effects!
It’s part of the bargain. You can’t just
offer something and then take half away.”
I leaned forward over the register, could
feel my pupils dilate and burn under the
megawatt fluorescence. “Listen to me!
I need my Trade Name mood stabilizer!
Do you understand? You can’t mess
around with this stuff. I’m a tax-paying
North American in a free-market society
with constitutional rights to branding!
Now tell me, what happened to my
If properly interpreted, I could now curl into a
fetal ball on a whim with the knowledge that
double-blind trials and scientific rigour had
both confirmed that nothing is actually
hazardous to my health.
stapled shut for privacy, containing my
Seroquel, by Celexa, my jumbo-sized
refill of lorazepam. Though my psychiatrist
promised otherwise, Risperidone had
done nothing for me. The tricyclics made
me ill. Divalproex pills were the size of
IKEA pegs and about as fun to swallow,
and lithium made my tongue taste like
metal. Prozac I refused to sample on the
grounds that its name derived from the
word prozaic, as in listless, boring, lacking in
imagination. I concluded the drug was
either very poorly named or filled a niche
in a market I’d already cornered.
“What’s this one?” I said, pulling
an unidentified bottle from the bag,
mangling the name out loud. “Noxa…
flopa…spitalaloxicin? Exacin? What is
this stuff? I never take —”
“Noxaflopaspitalexocin,” she says.
“It’s your mood stabilizer. I had to make
what’s called a ‘therapeutic substitution.’
Basically, the same stuff, does roughly
the same thing, just doesn’t have the
trade name.”
Trade Name?”
“Already told you. Side effects.”
“Death is a side effect of Clozapine.
It’s still on the market. What kind of side
effect are we talking about here? What’s
worse than death?”
And I’m not ashamed to say, at that
moment, what I wanted most was to hear
her say, “Nothing is,” because nothing is
would close the circle of our day in a way
that was haunting and seamless and poetic.
Or even better, I’d like to tell you that upon
hearing those words, I was struck with
sonorous realization, cast my pills into
the trash with the burst of sky-shattering
laughter and set out on a new vector of life.
But as she handed me my receipt and
turned away without a word, I knew
nothing more would happen. There was
nothing more to get. And for a moment,
just a moment, it seemed nothing just
might be okay. ED.
Tyler Enfield is the author of Like Rum-Drunk Angels,
winner of the Robert Kroetch City of Edmonton Prize,
and Madder Carmine.
It’s
about
you.
Call to book:
780.244.4566
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