The Malady Consuming Society

A friend tells me, slightly ashamed, that he has just started taking anxiolytics. I order a beer, point my finger at it, and, grinning, tell him that I have too. He gets angry and tells me that it’s a very serious matter, that a few weeks ago he thought he was dying and when he got to the hospital they told him that the arm he was clutching so painfully while crying out “heart attack, heart attack” was his right arm; that, usually, the emergency medical staff take you a little more seriously if you’re clutching the right arm. I found his drama amusing, but it failed to move me, because I have little respect for the disease of anxiety.

As a writer, I have been consuming anxiolytics and antidepressants for as long as I can remember, I use whiskey as a source of inspiration, and my daily workout program to keep body and soul in balance consists of trying to stay away from the women I like. 

The latest celebrity artist trend is to go on social networks talking about “their case” and how they feel. The last one was Alejandro Sanz, who said a few days ago that he was sad. This is not surprising, as it has just been leaked that an old friend has swindled him 15 million euros and left him bankrupt. 

Numerous writers, actors, and singers are publicly talking about their experiences with depression, anxiety, insanity, and other maladies. The idea is to normalize it. The truth is that the plague is so widespread in the industry that what needs to be normalized is normality. 

The first time I suffered an anxiety attack, I was 15 years old. I was studying (first miracle) mathematics (second miracle), I had been sitting in my room for several hours (third miracle) solving equations (fourth miracle), and suddenly the table began to spin (fifth miracle), the walls began to spiral violently (sixth miracle) and I lost my balance (I had not been drinking — seventh miracle), I fell to the floor, grabbing the desk so hard that my fingernails bled. Then I told my parents, who recommended I rest (eighth miracle), stop studying mathematics (ninth miracle), and not worry about how I did in the exam (and 10th miracle).

The next panic attack I remember was in a disco. I was 18 years old, you weren’t even born, and I was overcome with a paralyzing sense of claustrophobia. I had to be taken outside by my friends. I couldn’t enter a disco again until four years later (bonus track: 11th miracle). 

Since I was 18, my low moods have only been compensated by my emotional highs, as well as by the chemical component of certain pills for emotional balance. For long periods of time, I was able to give up anxiolytics, sometimes; antidepressants, other times; and sleeping pills, occasionally. For some periods of time, I also gave up alcohol and tobacco, but in the end there is always some event important enough to instantly get me back on both; for example, Real Madrid winning or losing the final of a Champions League.

For years I thought that with all that was happening to me, I was oh so original, until I started working in television and understood that, in the newsroom, you could not take two steps without finding a handful of antidepressants and anxiolytics in a pillbox on someone’s desk. If the journalist is over 40 years old, next to the pillbox you would also find a silver flask. I thought this was a myth from movies about journalists until I saw it with my own eyes. Anyone else would have thought it a rather bleak spectacle, but I found it amusing. Except for politics, there are few professions that allow you to be stoned and drunk at the same time whilst on the job.

These days everything that years ago was true of certain industries linked to the arts — and to little sleep, and to bad life habits, and to pressures, and to precariousness — is everywhere, because everyone has figured out a way to get stressed (through Twitter), to be sad (through Tinder), or to feel bad about themselves (through Instagram). The culprit is not the networks, of course, but the way we live and the lack of belief in an afterlife. I’ll also tell you that my, as a teenager, believing I was dying of panic every night gave me a clear sense of living, so even that was not salvation. 

I guess we are all crazy today. Don’t think that I take heart and head ailments for granted; it’s just that now I refuse to let them condition my life more than they should. A disease that makes you believe in things, illnesses, and situations that are not really happening to you is quite ridiculous. So, you see — just in case, when the specter appears, I try to laugh at it and order another drink. It doesn’t cure me, but at least I have some fun.

Translated by Joel Dalmau.

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