Issued...To Death
Editors Note: : Just a word about your….issues. We are sick to death of them. Your inner-child-anxiety-attacks-sagging-self esteem-bipolar crap is giving us issues all our own.
TheWeeklyChuckle Sometimes we simply long for the good old days when issues were restricted to which second cousin to marry or how Billie Jo jumped off the Tallahassee bridge. At least in the South. Honestly, don’t you people get it? We think everyone with…issues should spend a full filled month is the Congo. That’s right the Congo. We chose the Congo because we are pretty sure that it still qualifies as a third world country despite all those natives during around with video cell phones and wireless pocket top computers.
If you have….issues we guarantee you that they will instantly disappear the second you land yourself in a mud hut somewhere deep in the Congo. Bipolar? Forget the slew of meds your private health provider shoves down your willing throat (with that hefty kickback to the drug companies). You will be too busy, fighting off giant bugs, trying to figure out what that sustained guttural growl is and scavenging for food.
Nothing like a third world country to cure you of anxiety attacks too. One of TLL.net staffers was recently bemoaning her mother’s ‘condition. Her mother, she said, has never worked a day in her life; married young; had five well adjusted children (herself among them); four of five were college educated with masters degrees and beyond; her mother was still married to her father, a man, who in his 70s, still had his hair, teeth and mental faculties intact…On top of this, she had all the money she needed, freedom to travel, shop, even finally finish that college education she had clearly been too lazy to complete all these years… What, our staffer demanded to know, just was her mother’s problem? She suffered from severe anxiety attacks and had to be heavily medicated. The staffer was incensed. “What the hell does she have to be anxious about? She has everything.”
That, we decided, is precisely the problem plaguing the vast majority of modern folks suffering from mental maladies de jour. They have too much of everything complex and not enough of everything simple. For example, take away the husband, the money, the shiny over achieving adult kids and give that TLL.net staffer’s mom a stick, a ramshackle mud hut and a couple of nasty cape buffalo in the vicinity and we absolutely guarantee you that this woman will be TOO BUSY to even miss her Zoloft or whatever meds they are force feeding her. That’s right, her schedule will be positively chock full of exciting, vibrant activities that will make her just glow with anticipation of each and every day. We can just see it now:
“Doc, I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m completely a wreak, I can’t eat, can’t sleep, I obsess over the tiniest detail, freak out in public, am terrified of being at home…what can you do for me?”
Writing on a prescription pad: “Not to worry son, I have just the perfect prescription for you, guaranteed to work instantly.”
Snatching the piece of paper out of the doctor’s hand: “What is it? Prozac? Zoloft? Viagra?”
Shaking his medically inclined head: “No, dear boy, it’s the name of a travel book you need to buy. It’s called: Surviving the Congo in ten easy lessons.”
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