Jonesing for the Joneses' Pill By Sheilah Zimpel Another friend is off to La La Land, popping happy pills to placate her. And I'm jealous. Do whatever makes you happy -— just let me do some, too. I'm the only forty-something I know who has not been doctor-ordered to take antidepressants. No man other than my husband has said to me, "Gee, you seem down. Here's a little something to pick you up. Life's hard, babe, bottoms up." I hear this all the time, but I've never said, "Oh, I know why I'm bitchy today, I forgot my pill." If I'm bitchy, it's just because I'm a bitch. The latest fugitive from reality is my friend Yawn, who has two toddlers under age four. She needs drugs, I'll give her that. She got them prescribed for six months or so, "until the kids grow up a bit," her doc said. I've seen her kids. I'm thinking she'll be on them indefinitely, at least till the older of the brat pack moves back home after a nasty divorce when he's 35. Then there's Yan, a self-admitted mental case, who's had serious clinical episodes of near suicidal depression all her life. If anyone needs meds, it's her. Unfortunately, the truly needy are too sick to help themselves, so she's often found toying with her prescribed dose, tapering on and off according to the lunar cycle or cartoon schedule. I never mention anti-Ds as recreational drugs when I'm in her presence. She'd slap me. My friend Yin went on anti-Ds for perimenopause-induced depression. It helped her mood but not her daily bleeding, which she didn't mind. "So long as I don't kill the kids, I'll happily bleed to death slowly," she said. But her doc cut her off, so she's trying hormones now to stop the blood bath. And the bitch is back. Particularly bothersome to me are the neighbors, my compatriot suburban stay-at-homers who've lost their good humors to little people in diapers. These are the professional family-values Moms who invite you to their church, or Pampered Chef parties, or Mary Kay soirees. (Must we stay at home for everything -— like we're too lobotomized to shop in public?) The bulk of these are medicated, by choice, on happy pills. They just said yes to synthetic uppers instead of the natural downer of daily tantrums, their own and their children's. Add drugs and --voila!-- they're instantly happy, happier than me. That's what pisses me off. I understand there are people for whom drugs are absolutely necessary: for example, if you move to the Bible Belt, or to a town without a coffeehouse, or you can't get your toddler into preschool. I'm not unsympathetic; this has happened to me, too. The only anti-D I've tried is Zyban, a mild form of Wellbutrin, to quit smoking. I woke at 3 a.m. that first drug-induced morning with manic mind, read the 10-page small print patient leaflet in a nanosecond until I got to "psychotic episodes reported." Then I lit up. Drug-free, I'm a painfully human being, trying to chant myself into a mind-altered state per Dr. Christiane Northrup's mantra. "I love myself unconditionally as I am right now," I say twice daily to the mirror. But my tongue gets stuck in my cheek, thinking how the unconditioned applies only to my frizzy hair. (When I first wrote the affirmation on a post-it note, I forgot the "un" part of unconditionally. I was scum of the earth that week.) And why does everyone on anti-Ds have straight hair? Is it a much-desired fashionable side effect? Or did it drive the fashion? Another reason I want some. My drunken hair has been under the influence since I was a teen, and the humidity in the Carolinas keeps it zapped. So I'm thinking maybe those happy pills will give me relaxed hair, smooth to the roots. I bet it's one of those underground fixes no one's told me about because I'm not in the drug clique, a.k.a. the secret hair club for women. I've got to stop announcing that I'm not on anything. The shiny, happy pill-poppers think I'm a narc, or worse, in recovery. Since I have no drugs to modulate my socially obnoxious behavior, I say stupid things that only the unmedicated say, like, "Damn, I'm the only one I know who's not on happy pills. What's up with that?" And they think I'm being condescending, or a self-righteous pig, when all I'm doing is trying to score some. Then they change the subject to hair-flattening serums or ceramic flat irons or ionic hair dryers, which is way above me and it shows. Sometimes I'm asked, "How do you do it?" "I find playing with my three-year-old relaxing," I reply, wait a second, then laugh. The truth is I used to drink a lot, but now I nap. And I don't reproduce anymore. The only pill I was on for years was The Pill, which used to mean birth control, and it wasn't the ha-ha social lubricant of Prozac, Wellbutrin, or Zoloft. But, similar to the happy pill, it prevented Life from happening to you. I took the Pill for so long that I got dark-spotted melasma on my upper lip, what's ironically called the "mask of pregnancy." That's what I got for pill-popping -- a dark lip, and they get permanent facelifts. But wait until the anti-D generation reaches their threshold at 40 and nosedives to perimenopause. Then they're on my playground. They'll be trying natural progesterone cream, evening primrose oil, multivitamins, acupuncture, adrenal gland extract, soy phytoestrogens, and estriol. The take one-a-day-until-your-eggs-stop plan. When they collide with the hot-flashing, low-libido, dry-vagina, heavy bleeding, acne-ridden, insomniac, memory-lost, panic-attacked, breast-sagging, facial hair-sprouting, night-sweating, skin-itching, weight-gaining change of life, their prescription pills won't touch it. It's called Life, and the drug companies just can't solve it. Then I'll say, "Here, kids, try this," to false unicorn root or dandelion tea. No, it won't make you happy, but it'll keep you kicking. So we won't have to put rocks in our pockets and walk on water, or into it. Sheilah Zimpel is a writer and a stay-at-homer in Lake Norman, North Carolina. She enjoys treading water.