While saving my body, I might have been destroying my mind. : 38 Bottles of Pills on the Wall

An element of growing older is the increased amount of medication it takes to keep on growing older.

I mention this because I became aware the other day that I had 38 containers of prescription drugs lined up on two shelves of my medicine cabinet. I could open a small pharmacy.

You need Robaxisal? I’ve got it. Acetaminophen? Coming up. Your Metronidazole will be ready in a minute, Mr. Jones. Is your Doxycycline for here or to go?

I’m not sure why I counted them. Perhaps it was the trauma of suddenly realizing I was middle-aged. It is a shock that accompanies looking in the mirror in the morning after a party. “Good God,” your very soul cries out, “is that me?” I thought it was my father floating back from the dead.

I used to think that 50 was the end. When you reached 50, you automatically dropped into a pit. They covered you with Social Security forms and planted pearlies everlasting on your grave.

Surprisingly, I am still alive long after 50, kept in my present state of animation by an occasional surgery (I mean procedure) and a series of prescription drugs that look down from their places on the shelves.

Some of them are quite old and probably should be thrown away. But since it is my nature to endlessly prepare for the worst, I hesitate. Suppose, after I dump a drug, I am stricken with the malady it was intended to cure? True, I’m not sure exactly what most of them were for, but I could probably find out and take one just in case.

*

Interest in the number of my prescriptions caused me to rummage through a drawer where we keep the slips that accompany them. It was an effort to decide which containers might safely be disposed of. I not only found the slips, I also discovered the side effects I have been subjecting myself to. While saving my body, I might have been destroying my mind.

Every drug I take or have taken warns of side effects from dry mouth to nosebleeds. I am to watch for blurred vision, difficulty breathing, muscle pain, sore throat, dizziness, drowsiness, headaches, diarrhea, fever, rapid heartbeat, flushing, sore breasts, swollen feet, nasal congestion, stomach pain, a ringing in the ears and gastroesophageal reflux.

I can watch for those things pretty well and have probably suffered them all at one time or another, which is why I have 38 bottles of pills. Some are no doubt intended to counter the side effects that the others create. I can understand that.

But the one side effect that leaped out at me was the one that dealt with “mental confusion” or “mental changes” that might accompany the ingestion of certain prescription drugs. The possibility had never occurred to me. That’s probably due to the pills. Without them, it no doubt would have occurred to me.

“You’ve been drinking martinis most of your adult life,” my wife said. “If they haven’t rotted your mind, I doubt that a prostate pill will. Your mind and your gland are in different places.”

*

But still, little things have been occurring. I don’t mean I’ve suddenly taken to worshiping Deepak Chopra or Richard Gere. Nothing that radical.

It’s just that we have tropical fish which it is my job to feed. Lately I’ve been forgetting to do that. That worried me, so I hung a banana on the knob of the front door.

This is an old trick taught to me by a memory expert, whose name has slipped my rotting mind. The banana’s unlikely presence was supposed to jar my memory. But I forgot why it was there and ignored it. After 40 years in newspapering, nothing surprises me, least of all a banana at the door. It turned black and rotted.

Then one day I remembered. “The fish!” I suddenly shouted. I could see them also turning black and rotten, floating upside down, their little bellies bloated. But my wife had quietly taken over their care and feeding. I owe her. So do the fish.

I asked a pharmacist if pills could be stealing my sanity as well as my memory. His name is Ben. Or maybe Fred. Other people’s names don’t matter as much when you’re old. He laughed and said not to worry unless I woke up in bed with a biker’s girlfriend, with the biker coming in the door.

Whether or not I was there due to mental confusion based on blood pressure pills wouldn’t matter.

Stand-up comedy wasn’t what I needed. I telephoned a pharmacologist at USC. He said mental confusion from prescription drugs occurred in only about one in 500 cases. “They may constipate you,” he said, “but they won’t drive you crazy.” Then he laughed, just like Ben. Or Fred.

I ended up throwing away all but three containers of pills that my doctor insists I continue using. He said, “Let me know if you take to drooling or walking around with your fly unzippered. I’ll re-prescribe.” Great.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times