FeynStructure on Nostr: Recently saw an old aquaintance of mine who was in town and staying at our place. We ...

Recently saw an old aquaintance of mine who was in town and staying at our place. We used to be friends, but that would be too strong a word now. Nothing happened, we just grew apart as our different values took our lives in different directions. My wife seems to get along better with her now than me.

She was pretty open about her drug use, and she left her bag on the bathroom counter, wide open. I didn't snoop, but standing there washing my hands, I couldn't help seeing the five or six transparent orange prescription pill containers in there.

From what she told us, it must be some combination of anti-depressants, sleeping pills, and probably some secondary pills to counteract the side effects of the primary pills.

A couple of the familiar little containers, about the size of an old film cannister for those who remember them; the kind I'm used to from the handful of times I've been recovering from surgery or taking antibiotics.

Some bigger containers as well, what could accurately be described as jars, containing literal hundreds of pills. These are not temporary measures just to get through a rough patch. This is her life now, what she ingests daily just to remain normal, or so she believes.

You walk around the world meeting seemingly well put-together people, with no idea what kind of complicated chemical scaffolding some of them rely on just to keep from collapsing.