A Painful Prescription

Melissa Bond

Author, Blood Orange Night: My Journey to the Edge of Madness, Poet, Renegade, Mama to Special Needs Kiddo

What would you say to your older self?

“Baby, you are so good. You do not have to crawl on your hands and knees for hundreds of miles repenting. You` only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Mary Oliver taught me that.

Something you refuse to give a f about? 

I refuse to give a f*ck about what people think when my special needs son does his special needs stimming or has a meltdown in a crowd. That kid is the most honest human in the world and I’ll sit with him on the pavement for as long as it takes for him to feel safe again. 

What are you curious about right now? 

I’m really chewing on how to integrate some of the very pressing political questions of today into my next book. 

Prescription drug dependence: killing her softly, no more.

Blood Orange Night chronicles your battle with dependence on benzodiazepines, commonly prescribed drugs (Ativan, Valium, Xanax) that are insidious in the way they cause addiction and harm. It’s likely we all know someone who has been prescribed one for, say, a long flight or a medical procedure. Why do you think the problem with them is so under-discussed in comparison with, say, opioids? 

Our culture has a long and complicated history with the drugs we manufacture. We love our tinctures and medicines but we also put them on a pedestal and run them through testing that’s often focused on getting them to market rapidly. The dangers of opioids have come to the forefront of our awareness precisely because of their lethality. Addiction and/or dependence to these drugs have resulted in innumerable deaths due to overdose. The cause and effect are clear. This is the distinction between opioids and benzos. Benzodiazepines have a much murkier cause and effect. They’re equally addictive, but they cause a cascade of debilitating neuromuscular, gastrointestinal, neurological and mental emotional disorders that are less often lethal, but which can rapidly spin people into a disability that destroys every aspect of their lives. Opioids are a neon sign of cause and effect. Benzos are shadowy. They’re stealth in their lethality. Most people have no idea the drugs are causing the debilitating symptoms that are ruining their lives.

In the throes of withdrawing from an extremely irresponsible (on the part of the doctor) high dose of Ativan you were prescribed for insomnia, you bring us into what feels like a primal existence where you were just trying to survive. You also mention sarcasm as a coping mechanism (“True Dependence sounds like a hard-core rock band. Sonic Youth and True Dependence will tear this medical system apart at the seams. They’ll tune their guitars with Big Pharma gift pens.”). What would you say to someone struggling with this experience, having now come through it on the other side? 

I would tell someone struggling with this experience that this will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. And I’d tell them with a full heart that they can do it. Anyone going through this will have to build a narrative that will help them fight for their life. The story I used was that I was in the Olympics of drug withdrawal (in an empty stadium with the lights out and my husband slipping out the back door!). Create a story that will give you strength and then find the things that you need to do everyday to make it through. This is not your average drug withdrawal and you need to find what helps you manage the symptoms and keep your spirits out of the gutter. And find the peeps that will support you. That’s essential.

Your book alludes to the very American push-pull between a ‘bootstraps’ mentality and an instinctive rush to medicate. What do you think is the right balance and how do we as a nation figure out how to cope positively with mental health and wellbeing? 

I think the cultural dialogue around mental health and wellbeing is a huge start. We need to identify how our national identity around independence and productivity are killing us. Individually, we need to take a long hard look at how often we sacrifice our wellbeing and why. Because I almost lost my life in this process, I now realize that I can no longer place anything above my physical or emotional health. During my time of withdrawing from benzodiazepines, I kept a journal of what made me feel joy and what helped my body feel better. From this journal, I created my own toolkit of wellness that I continue to use to this day. If I’m depleted at all, I pull whatever I need out of my toolkit to replenish. Bootstrapping will break you. Identifying and using a wellness toolkit will heal.

The story you share seems to be as much about finding your footing as a mother as it is about your triumph over trauma. You speak so truthfully about the idiosyncrasies of parenting (“Who knew there would be so much laundry? Who knew one could run out of milk and diaper cream every other day?”). Any advice for parents out there who are trying to manage a crisis of any sort with the realities of parenting today, in a world where the social media sheen can mess with our minds with its artificial perfection? 

Parenting is one of the most beautiful, heart opening and tough jobs you’ll ever encounter. You’ll be brought to your knees at times. You’ll have your heart break open like the sun at others. If you’re in crisis, let yourself soften to the humanity of what you’re going through. Don’t steel yourself against it, don’t push so hard you break. Let your children see the humanity of what you’re going through and reach out to a community that can support you. And go ahead and cry. Soften to the messiness of it all and do everything you can to hold the love for yourself and your children. It’s easy to love in the easy moments. It’s loving in the hard moments that will build muscle. This is what will carve you out like a sculpture. Go in and through and know you’re not alone. And take a fast from curated worlds of social media. They don’t show the messy.

Much of the beauty of your storytelling is so clearly from your roots as a poet. Carrie Fisher once said, “Take your broken heart and make it into art,” or in your own words, “Art and poetry gave my wounds a home.” How has writing this book and sharing your story helped accelerate your healing? 

For me, writing and storytelling gives me time to listen deeply to myself. I become both the teller of the story and the witness. As a witness, I can find the beauty and the compassion for what I’d gone through that I may not have had when I was in crisis. Art takes our pain and transforms it into a beauty we can share with others. Ultimately, this telling, witnessing and transforming makes us (and made me) feel less alone. Art connects and connection heals. I don’t think I’d realized how profound this process would be until I was done. My story is no longer traumatic. It’s something beautiful and I feel deeply connected with others because of it.