In general, I love drugs when I'm hurting. Head drugs are something else entirely. But if it'll help the climb back to triple digits, great. And in the years since I was last on head drugs, there have been some good side-effect reducing developments, so I noted a couple of drug names and went on a pharmacy crawl.
The first stop pulled out the MIMS--the guidebook of all medicines available in Thailand--and showed me that no such drugs are available in Thailand.
"Are there other drugs?" elicited the stiff-armed, "No, no, no have."
Same thing at stop two: "No, no have."
"Where?"
A wave down the street.
I wrote out the drug name and brand--negatory.
Finally, one pharmacist slid open a bank of shelving and waved me to a side door. "See doctor."
The room was about three meters square, dark green, and packed. It took two steps on a narrow walkway from the door to reach a stackable consulting chair in front of a wooden office desk piled forehead high around a view passageway. Beside the chair, behind the chair, along the wall next to the desk ran shelving piled with books, loose papers, and binders. Behind the desk a curtain walled off an examination chair--cracked vinyl more brown than green except where it'd been bleached white, stirrups, and a layer of brown accumulation on the iron frame, save for where the restraining straps had polished it bright chrome. In front of the chair, a tray covered with a threadbare and graying cotton cloth on which sat neat lines of medical implements. On the wall opposing the chair were other instruments, supplies, and a device--a sterilizer?--that looked like some sort of diving bell.
A bare bulb lit the examining portion, and a gooseneck lamp lit the view slot between stacks on the desk. Were it bright out, I would've been completely blind.
He didn't understand what I was asking, so I wrote the drug and brand on a slip of paper that passed through the slot. He scribbled something on the paper, reached behind him to flip a spring-loaded switch, and made one of the most welcome gestures I've ever seen: a disinterested wave out of his lair.
If I was a fan of horror movies, it would be easy to find the parallel, I'm sure. But I don't watch horror movies. As is, my imagination is good enough to give me terrifying sorts of cold-sweat nightmares. It does not need any help, encouragement, or suggestions from outside. So I can't draw a good analogy, really. I'm tempted to mention Hitchcock, and the implied terror of an ill-lit obstetrics room behind a hidden door, but the thing is, in Hitchcock's day, the equipment I saw would still have been pretty new, and how scary is a stirrup with a restraining band compared to one caked with grimy age except for where cracked leather restraining straps had polished to mirror-level gloss?
I'll confess: every time I pee off of something--a cliff, a rock, a wall, a tree limb, a building, a window, a stool, the lower in hight but greater in terror precipice of a pit toilet--or onto something--a rock, a wall, a tree, a building, a window, any sort of target, the long lost days of urinal cakes--I love being a guy. But that love comes nowhere near to the relief I felt that I will never have a necessity to walking into a place such as that and request whatever services happen therein.
My "prescription" was passed around until a large bottle of drugs was produced by the lady who first opened the hidden door. I didn't immediately recognize the name or the drig, so said, "twenty." Usually, this would mean 20 TB, but the lady poured the jug onto a tray and counted out twenty pills. The remainder went back into the pill jug, and the twenty were poured into a little plastic baggie. I waved for the big bottle and copied down the drug name, just in case. "80 Baht" she said. I was happy enough to be out that I paid without comment.
Gotta love the internet: the drug prescribed is an anti-spasmodic helpful when evacuating the digestive system.
Of course he had to prescribe something: he's a doctor, and if he doesn't have the prescription, he looks bad.
Okay, take two: let's go looking for Prozac, and hope fluoxetine or one of the other earlier SSRIs is available in the land of smiles.
A couple days passed and I went straight from school to the same pharmacy crawl: upstairs in the mall, downstairs in the mall, the one outside the mall, the one across the street, the three others on the same block as the one to which I will not return.
"Prozac?" I'd ask. "Prozac? Fluoxetine? Have paper?" And I'd write the same.
"No, no, no have."
"What you need for?"
"Anxiety."
"What? Anxiety?"
"Yes, to help with weight gain."
"Weight gain? Get fat?"
"Yes."
"You need eat eggs."
"Every morning and evening I have three eggs with Betagen [probiotic lactobacillus beverage]."
"Every day you have six eggs?"
"Yes."
"Is too much. Cholesterol. You know? You need drink milk with two eggs."
"Regular milk with just two eggs? Okay."
"You eat in the day?"
"I eat a lot."
"You need two thousand calories. Two thousand."
"I eat at least five."
"Excuse. You come back here." A wave to an electronic scale.
Without doffing my backpack, shoes, anything else, I stepped onto the scale. 46.7.
"You look good. You not need drugs. You need exercise. You go swimming. Swimming every day. Twenty minutes. Okay?"
Okay.
The last shot was a place built in the crack between two buildings. I've never stopped because if I walked in I wouldn't be able to turn around with my backpack on, and because the owner is an ancient Sino-Thai whose grasp of and interest in English is utterly absent.
"Prozac? Fluoxetine?" The writing mime. There's construction just down the road, so I have to shout.
A lightbulb goes on. She writes, "Floksitine"
"Yes!"
"Plo-sEC" she says.
"Yes, Prozac," I reply. But no.
My American pronunciation means nothing. It's "Plosek" with all the stress on "EK." Twenty tablets, ten Baht. And the package read, "Fluoksetine."
Anything else and you can go take a hike, farang.
Welcome to Thailand
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