William Myrl; Letters to No One (64)

Dear No One,

They are giving me Effexor now, mild side effects include a general feeling of wonkiness whenever I yawn. It doesn't matter to me what brand of pill I take, I'm just glad they're free. Psychotropics are the only kind of medication they don't make you pay for. There is a copay for everything else, life threatening to merely inconveniencing conditions, chronic or acute. Lobbying comes to the rescue once again, otherwise I would be liable for all my mental health bills and forever accruing an unbridgeable debt, or else not recieving treatment. American prisons are well behind other first world countries in their humanitarian efforts, but they're quite good historically, I mean, compared to Alcatraz or the Bastille.

Some people are still getting welbutrin, and the market is going wild. One stamp per hundred milligrams was once the going rate. Now, a two hundred milli pill can demand a five stamp tag. Madness. The sad fact is that prisoners can and will abuse any kind of medication you give them. The new stuff, Effexor, is just as abusable, for a different high. The moral question becomes whether preventing that abuse is worth refusing to treat those people who can be helped by the drugs being targeted. There are plenty of antidepressants on the market, but how many are there that can't be snorted or chewed for a briefly altered state? I'm not a junkie, so I don't see the appeal in snorting welbutrin or chewing up a tablet that makes me want to vomit, but there are quite a lot of people who feel differently.

Been working on my submissions for PEN prison writing, tidied up the drama scene today. I hope my other submission are more to their tastes this year, and I wish it wasn't going to be eight months before I hear whether I get another prize. Trying to be strategic about these things, my fantasy novels haven't really taken off (Mythopoeia and the Riven Shield, Dragon's Summer), so I'm containing myself to being a prison guy talking about prison stuff for a while. 

I've signed up for another penpal site. The first one, prisonpenpals.com, won me nothing but advertisements from other businesses looking to bilk me. The new site, writesaprisoner.com, has a reasonable search function, and the guy who introduced me to it has gotten a few good hits. "Struck", is the term my people (the incarcerated) apply to those who the ads work for. As in "he struck, X number of interesting people are now corresponding with him." I make things boring.
Don't be jealous, No One, I'm perfectly happy with our relationship, I just want to also write someone who writes back.


Yours,

William Myrl

Letters to No One