Books Are My Painkillers.

There have been fabulous advances in the field of chemistry in the past two hundred years or so, and those advances have gone a long way toward solving a lot of medical problems that would, once upon a time, have gone ignored and untreated, and had sufferers ostricised or institutionalised. Chemistry, when combined with medical/psychological consultation, is highly beneficial. Yay chemistry. But what about those of us who self-medicate? I've been a migraine sufferer since my late teens and was, as was the wont of doctors in the late eighties and early nineties, often prescribed that mother of all pain pollaxers, Panadeine Forte. Not extolling the virtue of the stuff but chug down two of those codeine-powered mini-surfboards and an hour or so later I was floating like a silk scarf on a warm breeze. Once I came back down the following day, I found that I missed that feeling. No, that's not quite right; I NEEDED it. So, whenever the orders and obligations and worries and humiliations of my day joined together in a chorus of anxiety and self hatred that refused to let me sleep - or whenever I just needed to get high again - I'd go doctor shopping and voila! Thank you for choosing Purple Haze Airlines.

But then my son said somthing that hit me like a bag of frozen spuds to the face. It was about an hour and a half after I'd taken my nightly 'Happy Pills,' (yes, I'm THAT big of a cliche), and my son came in to the room. I started showering him with compliments and telling him much I loved him, (picture that friend of yours who puts their arm around complete strangers when they're pissed and says 'This, this is the guy!'). My son gave me a luke-warm 'Er, thanks.' I didn't worry too much about it, assuming it was normal for a son to be embarrassed by his Mum and that I was doing my job right.

'Sorry, honey, I'm just feeling a little merry at the moment.'

'That's fine, Mum, I'm used to it.'

That frozen bag of spuds metaphorically shattered my jaw. Watching his mother get nicely toasted every evening before bed is not something I ever intended upon or even imagined my son becoming accustomed to, and nor should it have been. I was his moral compass, and somewhere along the long I'd made myself content with just pointing south.

FUCK THAT.

So, I started taking showers before bed, listening to new-agey sleep music, you name it. None of it worked. Every time my eyelids started drooping I'd remember some lie I'd told that I needed to back up, or my rent arrears balance would flash in my mind, and it would be three thirty before I got even an hour's shut-eye. Then, after over a decade of being forced into jobs for which I was not only unsuited but mentally unprepared, I lost all faith in my agency and found myself a position with a wonderful and extremely patient employer. Happy as I now was, my anxiety wasn't quelled by the fact that I was now able to pay bills and buy food; I was still having trouble sleeping. Then, on my first pay day, I decided to indulge a different addiction.

Books. Those rectangular things full of stories that I'd always enjoyed until I decided to switch off my mind.

I went to the bookstore down the street from my call centre and bought three novels, and kept regularly adding to my 'stash' every fortnight thereafter. I read while travelling to and from work every day, and I read for an hour before I go to bed at night and you know what? I sleep the sleep of the dead. Reading is supposed to be an addiction, in every sense of the word. It is supposed to give you pleasure, to enlighten you, to fire your synapses and to lull you to sleep. Books are my painkillers, and I am not ashamed.