Thought Picnic: An implausibility of junkies

Losing the mind

One is left quite befuddled by it all, the desire for some to lose their minds as if it confers a sense of fulfilled excitement and a strange sense of happiness.

They revel amongst friends, that is a good thing but the drink is quaffed in quantities that would drown fish in their habitats and a person who left home, fully aware, fully conscious and fully coherent suddenly begins to demonstrate the height of stupefaction.

This morning I watched with incredulity and embarrassment for both myself and the slightly less inebriated friends who could not get their friend to do anything reasonable.

He had drugged up on something that he began making animal sounds apart from the weird unmentionable things that accompanied his actions.

Not mindful of it

Of the four that were with him, three departed but one was left behind, running out of patience with exasperation to the point that he would have deserted his friend.

Then I wondered, why they did not arrest the situation before it got out of hand, or maybe they were caught unawares but that would be a backstory many would not know until he comes to and flatly denies he was playing up.

Yet, an obvious risk was pending as the establishment was ready to call either an ambulance or the police, both presenting a humbling of the hubris of wastage on recreational substances.

Medically, he might find accord, the health personnel aware of what to do, but the police would record an infringement of sorts, which depending on what he does when his head is sitting right on shoulders could presage serious regret.

Getting to the mind

The threat of the latter seemed to get through the barrier of the drug-addled state he was in and reason seeped through as he found his voice to forestall the looming tragedy of excess.

Whilst I did not see the end of the saga, it occurred to me that a new animal grouping was possible as an implausibility of junkies or an embarrassment of friends. Though the usual application is an implausibility of gnus and an embarrassment of pandas.

If there are ways to manage an implausibility of an embarrassment, it would take more than whispering into the ears of people to consider their options and their choices.

Mind-bending yesterday, mind-mending tomorrow

The doctor prescribed

In the early Seventies when we lived in Rayfield, Jos, my mother took me to see our doctor having had a bout of cold and cough that was getting a bit worrisome.

The doctor, an eccentric bon-vivant bow-tie wearing middle-aged virile predator with the penchant for sowing his wild oats in wayward or naïve secondary school girls prescribed Actifed.

I could see the horror laced with revulsion on my mother's face when she said pig medicine? It so happened, Actifed was under-going trials in pigs in the late 1960s when my parents were in the UK, she wore her mind as a picture on that day.

I eventually had my pig medicine which worked a treat, and it was a lot better than Liquifruta which was liquid alright but definitely not fruity, it had the most revolting taste, I almost remonstrated with my mother when I discovered that my sister's dislike of the rotten drug made her cry the roof down, any baby would if as much as a whiff passed their noses.

The psychedelic doctor prescribes

Beyond that, it was interesting to read in last week's Time magazine under the byline "Taking a trip for your mental health"; that hitherto mind-bending social drugs are gaining acceptance as medical mind-mending treatments.

Ecstasy (MDMA 3,4-methylene dioxymethamphetamine) is being tested in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety - one wonders for the Iraqi war veterans; magic mushrooms (psilocybin) is helping obsessive-compulsive patients and Special K (Ketamine) is helping ones with major depression - what would now be used to put the cat to sleep?

If pigs could fly, their medicine might just make you want to jump too.