WHERE'S MY PAREGORIC

Alcohol and Opium, YYuummm

Ah,sweet elixir of opium!  Where have you gone?  Why can I no longer go to Cowan's Drug store, corner of Bridge and South Main and get two ounces' worth of your sweet comfort?  I still remember the great taste and the smooth disappearance of the physical pain when you and I got together in those early years.  How sad that we have drifted apart.  It seems like the pharmaceutical industrial complex has overtaken the world and completely crushed our sweet relationship.  How many nights have Morpheus and I striven to commune in peaceful slumber only to be wracked by the fiery, volcanic fire of gout pain in so many joints of my being.  More pain in more joints than I could ever have imagined.  Why, just the other day I was dreaming of you again, reaching out, but in vain.  I had one slim and faint glimmer of hope when it was suggested by a doctor that I indulge in a dab or two of your very distant offshoot, codeine.  What a sad counterfeit!  But I figured that I would give it a try in the off chance that the taste of it could re-awaken vivid memories of our long forgone relationship.  Believe me, Elixir of my heart, that I jumped through all the 21st century hoops to bring this weak resemblance of you into my life.  I can't remember all the times I licked my lips in nostalgic and sensual motions of longing for the stimulus of the sensory memory of your presence.  I presented myself to the apothecary with rapidly beating heart, sweaty palms, quivering lips and dry mouth, barely able to mutter my desires for the prize.  She, yes, it was a she.  How odd, a "she" apothecary.  At the moment it mattered not.  I had my eye and my heart on the prize, not the girl, no, not the girl.  And all of this emotion for a mere shadow of what I remembered you to be.  All of this for a manufactured concoction of God's gift to humanity!  I still can't understand why I was so terribly crushed when I was informed that the prescription would not be ready to be claimed for at least an hour.  An hour?!?  %^$@#T!  I could get you, the creation of God in five minutes from Mr. Cowan.  Why do I have to wait one hour for an impostor?  Of course, I had to wait, and wait.  If an hour ever seemed like a year, this was it.  I keep wondering how I ever made it through the interminable Christmas eves waiting for my parents to come home from attending the Midnight Mass.  So, I left the site, went out of doors and took a stroll around the block.  Good thing it was a balmy Southern California January day.
When my stroll was finished, I boldly pierced the armor of the thick glass doors to get into the ante room to see if my name had come up on the announcement board.  Oh, Lord, there it was.  Finally my deepest desires were going to be requited.  Finally I would be able to enjoy the paroxysms of a heart beating out of control at the touch of the the prize so long absent from its being.  I quickly fell into line behind some five or six other humans.  I was so excited that I did not even think of playing the mental game of trying to guess why these mere mortals were waiting in line in a pharmacy.  You know the game, "Hmmm, I wonder if she has cancer?" etc...  No, not today, I am too pre-occupied with fulfilling my sensual needs as they have too long been neglected.  Now the line is so short that I am next.  
"NEXT!" 
I have to restrain myself from running to the service station.  I get there, smile at the clerk, present my I.D. and wait for her to return (not the same "her"), barely able to control my bodily functions (keeping my balance, among others, you know?)  She comes back, opens the bag to have me verify and ascertain the correctness of the product.

What I see ruins my life.  Is this what life is in the 21st century?  >>>>>>>>>