I think I’m suffering from a touch of the vapors lately. The symptoms are clear; boredom, lack of energy, easily distracted, forgetfulness. Sadly, to get a good Patent Medicine requires a prescription these days. Oh for the good old days when Coca-Cola had real Cocaine in it. I bet those crazy Victorian’s threw some wild parties. Of course, back then they called it “taking a cure”.
What this country needs is more Moxie.
A good old fashioned opium laced elixir to help get us through these trying times. Simple coffee is no longer cutting it.
Lil’ Miss 20 Prospect is currently on a Gluten Free, Dairy Free, food free diet as we try to determine if she has a food allergy. So we’ve been suddenly thrust into the world of Natural Foods. Walking the aisles of the local organic / natural food market, I can’t help but look at the packaging, and see the similarities to the patent medicine craze of the Victorian era.
Sadly, organic, gluten free, corn bread pancake mix is a poor substitute for opium.
20 Prospect 
I’ve always enjoyed the barbiturates myself. In fact, I just had that conversation with my mom today. She was all, “You and the morphine don’t mix, right?” And I’m all, “I’m bad with all the -ines but boy am I good with barbiturates.”
Suddenly I realize this isn’t a very good story but I’m not going to untype it.
And SCENE!
Oh, I totally understand. Me and Codeine are not friends. Ugh, that stuff makes me feel so groggy, and miserable. I’ll stick with Scotch.
Oh, man — food allergies suck. My daughter was born allergic to milk — poor baby broke out into enormous hives — and she outgrew it, but there were years of inspecting every food label suspiciously. I hope you figure it out soon! Luckily, there are a lot of almost decent substitutes these days for whatever food she needs to avoid.
I’m discovering that. I can’t imagine what our parents would have done if we’d have had a food allergy. Hell, we were just happy if they weren’t swigging Martini’s during pregnancy, and blowing Winston smoke into the baby crib.
A good portion of my “team” at work are lactose intolerant, suffering from Crohn’s, necessarily gluten-free. Can’t help but wonder how miserable some of these people were before we discovered that some food really isn’t good for some people…
Pearl
I’m sure the Victorian’s just called it having the “Consumption”, and drank a bottle of Laudanum to ease the pain. Of course, they were all dead by 60 too.
Percocet. That is all.
Sweet baby Morgan Freeman that’s a lot of radiation! Probably explains there doing things like throwing mummy parties, where they unwrap a mummy in the parlor and then party and talk about it the rest of the night. With it still in the house!!!