Essays in Idleness

I have a friend in another country who has a sister who can be a real problem. This is not because she happens to be insane. The doctors have put her on Clozapine, which is a popular anti-psychotic medication. Tests say that it discourages suicide, though I, a non-enthusiast for Big Pharma, wonder how the tests are tested. Its chief value, according to my friend, is that it makes the subject incapable of saying no to anything. So if she isn’t specifically asked to commit suicide, I imagine that she will put it off.

In the meantime, she will obey all orders.

Her recent acts of obedience have cost my friend not only his peace of mind, but also much of his property. I won’t go into it.

We, by which I mean I, should not mock such people as this sister. They live in a world that might resemble Hell, in some of its particulars. Had I such a sister I would, like my friend, endeavour to protect her, especially from her doctors. It is frustrating, however, when the girl is asked to sign on to some fraud. While one may argue, smugly, that fraud is illegal, and could surely be reversed by a court, the person who argues this is in the same position as a Clozapine user. He simply believes whatever he is told, and I daresay votes accordingly.

He is, in short, the portrait of a Canadian voter, or to be more fair, an urban voter in Ontario, for I understand that there are different propensities among voters in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and other remote places. I myself live in a neighbourhood of Toronto where I have noticed that most of my fellow residents are mad, prescribed drugs if they are not self-prescribing, and vote very reliably for the Liberal Party. They simply cannot say no, and believe everything they are told by their political masters. (Alternative messages are administratively suppressed.) Indeed, I wonder if Clozapine is now in the water supply.