Robust Plumage

I've been picking some fights on various blogs, usually left wing and feminist blogs, writing with a nom de plume and playing Devil's Advocate. I consider myself to be a Socialist-Feminist, which means I never shut the fuck up about class. There's a site I want to talk about, but I have to explain why I'm belligerent. Well, that's hyperbole. But I'm annoyed, and what has me in such a state is, naturally, drugs.

My girlfriend just told me that she won two tickets to see Jethro Tull at the Bank of America Pavilion. I'm invited, and have accepted. There is a small but genuine possibility that, as Jethro Tull sails onto the stage, I will start uncontrollably laughing my ass off. Sincerely, I don't know why this is, or why I know this, but there it is.

Anyway, back to the drug situation. I haven't taken a narcotic anything in three weeks or so, and am doing fine. Earlier today I spoke to the people at the addiction services clinic, and they told me that, had I been accepted into the program I would have been "weaned off" of benzodiazepines. For me, that means taking less lorazepam (Ativan) over time, and eventually having to give it up entirely. Had I known that "drug abstinence" was required, I never would have applied to the program.

This infuriates me because lorazepam works, and what it works for is crippling social anxiety and what feels like paranoia. Even if I'm addicted to it, why would I give up one of the most effective medications I take out of some desire to adhere to a principle, the principle of zero tolerance for any addictive drugs. Today I heard a nurse tell me that the program would endeavor to get me off of these drugs, and that I would have to find an "alternative." Man, did that piss me off. Because it doesn't matter if I find an alternative or not, the decision is already made that I'm to be taken off. I'm showing no signs of any problem with lorazepam. The script is never filled early, I take it at the correct dosage, and I don't feel that I have a problem.

Regardless of that, they propose to take an efficacious medication away from me, for my own good. A drug that a chief psychiatrist on staff at another clinic feels I need as much as I do. So basically I told them to cram it. My battle is with narcotics.