Drugs

I am on drugs. Legal ones, prescribed by a psychiatrist. The one I'm taking is called Lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug.
In the late 1960s, when I was eleven years old and spending summers in Westport, Massachusetts, we stayed in what had been a farmhouse and rode horses that lived in a barn on the property. A man named Frank Gilbuena was a telephone lineman who also worked as a farrier in his spare time and was often there, shoeing the horses. He was small, wiry, and tough. He wore denim and a cowboy hat. 
Frank never drank.
"If a man's got to drink to live with his environment, there must be something wrong with his environment," he'd say. "Drinking won't change that. He's got to change it."
I did the things most teenagers of that era did when it came to drinking. I never tried hard drugs, but I smoked marijuana now and then. I drank. A friend and I would get an empty jar and take half an inch from each of the many and varied bottles of alcohol my parents had, sneak off and drink it. I drank gallons of 3.2 beer in the late 1970s at my Ohio college's parties. After college, out in the world, I thought it was manly to drink Scotch, so I did and I even grew to like the taste. I never learned about wine but I drank it. I never used hard drugs.

I'm glad I'm human but when I see the raw bliss of animals sometimes I'd trade places with joy.

At no time in the 1980s or after did I try cocaine, which was so prevalent at the time it was said that hundreds of pounds clung to U.S. bills in circulation. 
At my core, I always agreed with Frank and others like him. Don't use crutches if you can avoid them. Play out the hand you've been dealt, no cheating. Adversity will give you strength. A life lived with honor and some pain is better than one of numbed deceit.
But now? Bring on the (legal) drugs.
And why not? The Lorazepam has kept feelings of panic at bay. I'm sleeping through the night and eating again, and I've only been taking it for four days. If I take nothing and let fear course through my veins, will that make me a better person? Will it make my death more meaningful to me or to anyone else? Lorazepam can be addictive, but when the odds say I've got around a year, does that matter, if I'm not stealing and lying or hurting others in any way to get it?
Without something to help I'd be more inclined to drag my friends and family more deeply into my woes. (I know me; I am shallow and weak and even though I know sharing my pain does nothing to lessen it, I'd be bound to share it anyway.) You could say that this drug will help others in addition to me.
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Tonight was to be the night I was going to tell my brothers about my condition and prognosis. I put it off. Tomorrow, perhaps. Maybe it's the drug, but I can cope without their help at the moment, so why would I not do that for as long as possible?