Pharmaceutical Topography

"Let me tell you about dependency. Not the vulgar physical kind—track marks, tremors, the bodily revolt—but something more insidious. A psychological topology where every interaction is mediated through this small, mathematically perfect oval."

The pill has its own ontology. Its scored bisection is not just a pharmaceutical convenience but a goddamn epistemological event horizon. Fifteen milligrams. Twice daily. Scored precisely down the middle like some anal-retentive cartographer’s dream of psychological demarcation. “Non-addictive,” they said—bureaucratic-speak for “we haven’t yet quantified the metaphysical dependency.” Let me tell you about dependency. Not the vulgar physical kind—track marks, tremors, the bodily revolt—but something more insidious. A psychological topology where every interaction is mediated through this small, mathematically perfect oval. Anxiety as landscape. Medication as topographical map. Her words from that night still echo with a clinical precision that makes my skin crawl: “Nine years.” Just like that. As if two syllables could capture the entire phenomenological experience of chemical negotiation. Sidebar: What does it mean to be “non-addictive”?

No physical withdrawal
No chemical dependency
[REDACTED: Existential dependency]

Each night: the ritual. Two scored pills. One snap. The sound like breaking communion with your previous self. A transubstantiation more theological than pharmaceutical. Reduction means war. Not against the chemical, but against the entire sensory apparatus that has been calibrated, microgram by microgram, to this specific frequency of existence. Laundry becomes Everest. Making a phone call: advanced calculus performed while suspended over an abyss. Last attempt: eleven days of pure, unfiltered terror. Not the dramatic panic of cinema, but a granular, microscopic torture, where breathing requires conscious negotiation. Where “going outside” requires the planning and preparation of a base jump. The pill sits. Waits. Its scored line, a promise. A threat. A border. Addiction is not about chemicals. Addiction is about negotiating with reality.

Written on 25/03/2025 at SWHH

by Trevor Forest

Guest Scribe: Jamie Hook

Prompt: Write about a dark fetish object.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Trevor Gittelman is a Brooklyn-based writer, musician, and occasional overthinker. He writes stories to make sense of the mess, or at least make it sing. When he’s not improvising songs or dancing too late, he’s probably rewriting this bio in his head.

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