Book of Daze: Skip Your Medication Day
Every year, like clockwork, our culture manufactures a new holiday to celebrate the triumph of impulse over reason. Thus we arrive at Skip Your Medication Day–a bold experiment in natural selection disguised as self-care. It is the one day when the nation’s pill organizers may rest, their tidy compartments unsnapped, their contents left to contemplate their existential purpose.
This day invites participants to put their faith not in Pfizer or Eli Lilly but in the healing powers of positive thinking, caffeine, and denial. Who needs SSRIs when you can stare into the sun and hum a mantra? Why bother with beta blockers when rage yoga offers a more cinematic release? The pharmaceutical industry may tremble, but only briefly–until tomorrow’s refill.
The day’s observance is simple. Skip your antidepressants, your statins, your blood pressure medication, your metformin, your Adderall, your thyroid replacement, your sleep aid. Skip everything that steadies your ship, and see how she handles the open seas. The brave–or foolish–may even double down by substituting herbal supplements of dubious origin: valerian root for Ambien, fish oil for Lipitor, essential oils for anything requiring a prescription. What could possibly go wrong?
Skip Your Medication Day is not without its casualties. Office managers may find themselves soothing tearful accountants. Baristas may face trembling hands at the register. Domestic pets will wonder why their humans are suddenly sobbing into the refrigerator light. Yet amid the chaos, there is liberation. One learns the true measure of one’s baseline without chemical assistance–a humbling insight that often leads to renewed appreciation for Big Pharma by nightfall.
By evening, pharmacies will see a rush not unlike Black Friday, as the newly enlightened stampede to resume normal dosing. Social media will be flooded with inspirational posts about gratitude, serotonin, and the power of pharmaceuticals. The following morning, pill organizers will once again be filled with purpose, and the world will spin safely on its medicated axis–until next year’s holiday encourages everyone to skip breakfast instead.
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