Drug Facts
Active ingredient (in each tablet)
Venlafaxine XR
Purpose
Antidepressant
Uses: Prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, panic attacks and social anxiety disorder.
Warnings:
Ask a doctor before use if you have
*suicidal ideation *history of bipolar disorder
Ask a doctor or pharmacist before use if you are currently self-medicating with cannabis, cotton candy Juul vape, large quantities of melted cheese, and warm Mike’s Hard Lemonade from your closet.
When using this product you may experience
*unusual sweating *occasional vomiting *trouble sleeping, but not more than before *inability to cum *feelings of vertigo if you miss your dose time by even an hour *inability to eat paired with paradoxical weight gain
If pregnant or breast feeding this pill is the least of your concerns.
Keep out of reach of children. Unless you are a child, then trust your parents and doctors that this won’t harm you. Ignore the electric jolt that runs through you randomly. Tell your doctor that you can’t have an orgasm, though, because that’s the only thing you enjoy anymore. In case of overdose, leave a note. Don’t lock the door so they know you want help.
Directions:
Adults and children 12 years and over:
Take 1 tablet every morning with food to avoid stomach upset.
Children 6 years to under 12 years:
This hasn’t been researched but your parents are desperate.
Children under 6 years:
Ask a doctor. If you’re this young when they decide you’re crazy, you’ll take twenty or thirty different medications by the time you reach adulthood. None of them will work.
Other information:
The first will make you numb, but you’ll be thin so everyone will tell you how good you look and that should equate happiness, or at least not wanting to die.
The second one worked for your mom when she had postpartum depression. You drank it in her breast milk for your first year of life so it should feel like an old friend in your veins. You will feel again, able to cry, but then the crying won’t stop, and you’ll begin cutting yourself with a razor.
The third will make you jittery, but hopefully help you focus in school. They will add a fourth, to ease the anxiety caused by the other. You will add weed, to relieve the want to cut. Weed is the only joy bringer.
The fifth will be a shrug of acceptance. I guess it’s working, you’ll say, but really it’s just like the last. When you want weed all day every day, your mother will ask them, is there something like weed?
The sixth will be added to the fifth with a warning: Don’t look at the warning labels. Don’t read about the side effects. This one will take the edge off until you can ask for a miracle.
Hillary Adams writes personal essays in various forms. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sierra Nevada University where she also worked as managing editor for the Sierra Nevada Review. She’s written two essay collections, Tinderness and Care Instructions from which essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Entropy and This is Not a Punk Rock Anthology, It’s a New Wave Anthology (Bone and Ink Press). She can be found on Twitter @hillaryadamsa and her website HillaryAdams.com
Photo by Kelly