Chasing the dream in a bottle of pills can be a slippery slope
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WELCOME to the “quick-fix” society, the one in which men must be unstoppable in the bedroom and women thin, irresistible and preferably youthful wherever they are and whatever they are doing.
There is an awful symmetry to the way drugs have started to blight our relationships as so many of us strive for an unattainable perfection.
It was all so tempting at first.
Be honest, it’s not often that fat, dowdy, old bags and impotent, balding, middle-aged men get a chance to experience a second adolescence. But these days, it doesn’t matter how old and ailing you are, you can buy any number of quick fixes on the internet.
You may be 90 and have a dicky heart, but a pack of Viagra will be with you by return of post, if that is what you want.
And sadly, it does seem to be what a lot of people want. Don’t worry about the after-effects. There are pills for those, too.
There are pills to take you up; pills to bring you back down; pills to stop you eating, smoking, drinking and ageing; pills to make you more sociable, and pills to improve your memory.
On and on it goes.
Viagra and the feel-good pills are just cosmetic surgery for the brain. Feel ugly? Have a facelift. Feel depressed? Take a happy pill.
Soon we will be so confused about who we are and how we got here that life won’t be worth living, because it will all be controlled by some drug or other. Anyone remember the 60s song In the Year 2525, by Zager and Evans?
Also, just because a pill works for you doesn’t mean it will help those close to you.
Viagra, the blue pill shaped like a diamond, may have energised thousands of men, but it has destabilised as many women who may otherwise have been happy to allow their libido to decline naturally.
When Viagra was introduced, it was hoped that its influence on middle-aged men’s waning libido would help to save marriages.
But many older couples found it had the opposite effect – leading to divorce, with women arguing that their husbands became too demanding after taking the little blue pill.
In America, thousands of people have cited the drug as a reason for splitting up. It is especially common among older couples.
Of course, internationally, the news was greeted with predictable sniggers, yet there is nothing funny about couples in their 60s and 70s being made miserable by a wonder drug.
All because we are never satisfied with the way we are.
He is worried about his performance and takes Viagra. She is going through the menopause and takes HRT. She prefers not to have hot flushes, but doesn’t mind increasing her risk of developing breast cancer and heart disease.
She probably also thinks she is overweight. She may be taking a miracle drug for that as well. She wants to lose three stones by next week.
Hubby becomes too demanding in the bedroom, gets fed up with her headaches and looks elsewhere.
She is ill: racing heart, feeling faint through lack of food. When she’s not obsessing about food, she’s reading scare stories about HRT.
For every man who suffers from impotence, there is a woman who hates herself because she is not a size 12.
Whatever happened to making the best of what you have?
The trouble is we can’t always cope with these zoomed-up versions of ourselves.
In America, there is an ongoing row over the medical use of cannabis. There are more medical cannabis clinics in the US than there are public schools. Even although medical marijuana is legal in 14 states – more than 25% of the country – it is still illegal under Federal law.
In the case of people who are suffering, you can understand why some of them might want to use marijuana. It can reduce nausea when it is a side-effect of Aids and cancer treatments. It can help people with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and spinal injuries.
Yet so many people in this country want it only to enhance their mood; for no real reason.
Such people want to live life balancing on some precarious edge, in a permanent state of excitement. They want their lives to contain a large element of risk.
In fact, this risk they crave is inside their heads.
All they do is cut up an occasional slice of dope. That is the extent of their challenge in life – sad, yet typical of this drug-craving society.
How I wish such people would open their eyes and have a look around them. Anyone who needs to get out of their face, no matter what they want to take, is heading straight for trouble.
In Scotland, we have enough on our plates with our own drug of choice – drink. Booze has always occupied a dubious space in Scottish culture.
We need to find out why young people feel the need to drink so much and so frequently. Is there a lack of alternatives? Is it a disaffection with life? If so, why?
Could young Scots be drinking too much because they are emulating our behaviour? They have grown up with it and no one has tried to stop them.
They won’t let you take a lousy pair of tweezers on to a plane these days, but you can stick your nose into a trough of drink for as long as you like.
Every young person wants to push against the boundaries set for them by their parents and by society. It’s part of growing up.
The trouble is we all know young people are making themselves ill with alcohol, but still we stagger around the problem, happily swallowing our pills and forgetting.
I would like to try and grow old naturally, gracefully even.
(Too late, I hear you say.)
In life, there is nothing wrong with the odd disgraceful interlude, but I would rather be remembered as me than as some drugged-up old has-been who was ever in search of eternal youth.
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