Kentucky KNOWS WHAT IT'S DOING.

[snarp]

I went in for my psychiatric appointment today and confirmed that, yeah, I'm still pretty useless at most things other than writing fanfic, playing Dwarf Fortress, and operating the rice maker.

She said, "Okay, don't freak out at me about this, but I'd like you to try Ativan. On a really low dose, okay?"

I'm paranoid about taking pills, is why she said it this way. It makes me nervous! "Yeah, well, the point of the Ativan is to make you less nervous -" That idea makes me nervous. "One milligram, and you can cut it in half if you want."

So I said I would try the Ativan, and then we came to the always-relaxing subject of the Kentucky state legislature. "So, you'll need to sign this waiver and get a drug test."

Why am I getting a drug test.

"Well, I mean, obviously it's not because you're doing drugs."

(I'm still trying to decide whether I should be concerned by this remark. Do people just look at me and go, "Yes, that's definitely a person who has never done any illegal drugs"? Is it the button-down shirts and sweater vests, you think? The extensive knowledge of Dwarf Fortress?)

"It's this stupid new law. You have to take one if you're being prescribed Ativan, or Oxycodone, or a whole bunch of other routine things. I'm sending all these little old ladies who take Valium once in a while in to give urine samples! So don't worry, like half the state's getting drug tests right now, no one's going to look at you funny."

What's especially great about this is that they have to stop prescribing stuff to people whose tests come back positive for, say, pot, which is used by a lot of cancer patients who might also need fucking Oxycodone? So, that's amazing.

Also, aren't anti-anxiety drugs like Ativan supposed to be useful to people in treatment for addiction? Why the fuck would we want to make life harder for addicts who are actively participating in treatment, if the goal here is actually to fix our state's drug problem?

Yeah, obviously that's not what we're trying to accomplish here, the goal's to kick sick people in the face until they fall over dead, as always.

Fuck my loathsome state, basically.

Comments

[enemyofperfect]

Taking pills to be less nervous is completely nervous-making. I've gone through all kinds of creative and wonderful logic on this point, with my favorite being the period in which I was mostly okay with it, but only if the pills weren't designed for reducing nervousness in people. I mean, that was what I wanted them to do? But I didn't want them to have been invented for that purpose. That was just going too far.

However, and more to the point, that sounds like a really messed up law.