For almost all of my life, I have suffered from colitis. This is what you think it is: gut pain accompanied by constipation and diarrhea. This problem hit me in class, on long car trips, and most especially when I was being yelled at by my mother.
It hit its worst in the summer of 1966. Anxiety about entering Yale Law School. A struggle by yours truly about girlfriends. I had two choices, both fabulously great women. An acute shortage of money. A job at the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The terribly hot and humid days and nights. I did not have an Air-Conditioned Car. It was a nightmare and daymare.
One night, my pain was so extreme that I called my family doctor, Stanley Moskovitz, at 3 AM and begged for meds. He answered my call. There was a 24-hour drugstore a few blocks away on Connecticut Avenue, NW. Savior Dr. Moskovitz called in a few ounces of “Paregoric.” I took a good swallow, and next thing I knew, the pain had stopped. Not only that, but I was happy.
Paregoric, an ancient med, had a small amount of tincture of opium in a lot of chalky something.
My redeemer lived. I was able to sail back into life. I did so well that I graduated as valedictorian of my class.
Since then, until about five years ago, I had every damned intestinal problem you can have and came out smiling. Thank you, Dr. Moskovitz. I did not become a drug dealer, and I did not crash my poor little Chevy into any brick walls.
I sometimes had to shell out more money for intestinal meds than I could afford. But I have avoided bankruptcy. I love Paregoric. On my worst digestive days, Paregoric would bring relief.
That worked to allow me to work as a lawyer, as a speechwriter for two presidents, as a novelist, a nonfiction writer, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, for the New York Times, as a law teacher, as an expert witness in complex securities litigation, as a father, as a husband, and then latterly, as an actor and as the host of a long running game show that bore my name. And then to bear the death of our son Tommy when he had just passed 32 years of age. That was a killer. A real killer.
He was an angel of the first degree.
In all the stages of my life, colitis would rear its ugly head. Paregoric would allow me to keep functioning.
Then, more or less out of the blue, about five years ago, the bureaucrats, people who press the buttons that control our serf lives, decided that I needed to suffer quite a lot longer. They stopped allowing the sale of Paregoric.
The hounds of hell were unleashed upon me. The pain issuing from my intestines was breathtaking. The circumscription of my movements was scary.
Yes, there are other meds, especially “Imodium.” But it does not work well for me. And so I am back in my personal hell once again.
Now, as I said, there are other meds. But nothing works even close to as well as Paregoric. I am 81 years old. I do not know how much longer I have to live. I do know that I still have in my life the world’s most wonderful wife. She and I have been together since 1966. (Yes, that is not a typo.)
I have a glorious sister and many wonderful friends. But I live in dread of that cruel pain of colitis. It is the Himmler, the Beria, the hellhound of pains.
I am a privileged man who gets some sympathy from my Goddess wife. And yet I am endlessly on the run from my own intestines.
WHY???? As far as I can tell, Paregoric is not a dangerous drug. I have never read of anyone dying from overdosing on it, and I know of no other drugs even close to as effective.
So, again, why can’t I get it?
This is part of the slow drip against us old people. I just don’t get it.
Please let me have some relief.
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