Valium Quotes

What I said yesterday didn't mean anything! I love everyone in the flock! Plus, it was the Valium talking!" "Uh-huh. You just keep telling yourself that. You looove me." Max: (tries to punch him) "Pick a tree. I'll go carve our initials in it." Max: (screams and runs into bathroom)

I'd blow someone for a valium," I said in Jacob's ear. "Maybe he's got one... but try offering a hand-job first so you retain some leverage.

Maybe you feel pressure to be positive because so many people rely on your good, fake-positive energy? If that's the case, screw everybody else. You're not a bottle of Valium.

I call her Val because it's short for Valium and I always tell her she needs to take that shit by the bucketful. I wasn't lying when I said she was fucking crazy.

Down in the national news section, there's an article on a new pill, the 'Valium' they're calling it, 'to help women cope with everyday challenges.' God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.

Have you ever gotten to a point where you looked at your own life, thought "Fu** this," and reached for the economy-sized Valium? Ah, suicide. So dark and seductive.

My goldfish is swimming around all excited inside the fishbowl on the fridge so I reach up and drop a Valium in its water.

It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.

Finest kind of dope. Book-Valium. No more heebie-jeebies. No more whim-whams

Diazapam (that's valium), temazepam, lithium, ECT, HRT - how long must I stay on this stuff? Don't give me anymore!

The truth was, Librium and Valium were marketed using such a variety of gendered mid-century tropes—the neurotic singleton, the frazzled housewife, the joyless career woman, the menopausal shrew—that what Roche’s tranquilizers really seemed to offer was a quick fix for the problem of “being female.

Mashed potato is the gentile's chicken soup. It's nature's tranquilizer. I take it instead of valium.

I take fifty milligrams of amitriptyline every night, and then an extra ten milligrams of Ambien if I really want to sleep through the night. Sometimes I add a Lunesta, and if that doesn’t work, I get out the Valium—

It is a strange thing that the human species can only go three days without water and three weeks without food, before the body dies. Yet, so many people can go years hanging onto pain and feeling emotionally dead inside. I suppose if it was the other way around more people would go to school to be morticians because of the booming business, or pastors would have to hand out Valium with the sacrament, just to keep the census high.

If you stop drinking, I’ll stop taking Valium, and then we’ll see who’s who and who’s what.

My problem is I love sex. No joking I really love sex. Life without sex is unbearable for me. As a child my mum says I loved men and hated women. I use to smile at men when I was in the pram and offer them lollipops or sweeties. I guess it is in my genes, my little weakness. I can live without the Valium and Vodka but not my sex. To me my choice is simple men or Paradise and I love them both. I cannot make that choice. It is like there is some evil force driving me to flirt and sleep around. No one man has ever been enough for me and now I have to live like a nun in rehab. I am not bold I am just misunderstood. No, don’t laugh it is an illness and an exhausting one I am so tired, so very tired.

With the amount of diazepam in me, I should have been content to lie back and let events unfold as they may, and my curiosity did for a moment consider it, but then a punch of panic reminded me that people far saner than I were murdered for less in more conspicuous locations.

Valtakunnanuutisten osastossa on artikkeli uudesta lääkkeestä nimeltä Valium, "joka auttaa naisia selviytymään arkipäivän haasteista". Luoja, voisin ottaa kymmenen tuollaista pientä pilleriä juuri nyt. (Skeeter)

Valium rubs out speech marks and pops thought-bubbles.

BABY KILLS She carries Mother’s Bible Mixes Valium with her beliefs

As the floods of God Wash away sin city They say it was written In the page of the Lord But I was looking For that great jazz note That destroyed The walls of Jericho The winds of fear Whip away the sickness The messages on the tablet Was valium As the planets form That golden cross Lord I'll see you on The holy cross roads After all this time To believe in Jesus After all those drugs I thought I was Him After all my lying And a-crying And my suffering I ain't good enough I ain't clean enough To be Him The tribal wars Burning up the homeland The fuel of evil Is raining from the sky The sea of lava Flowing down the mountain The time will sleep Us sinners by Holy rollers roll Give generously now Pass the hubcap please Thank you Lord

Down in the national news section, there’s an article on a new pill, the “Valium” they’re calling it, “to help women cope with everyday challenges.” God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.

If a child was sick, maybe her mother was tense. Valium was marketed above all to women, pitched as way of bearing the stress of lives as wives and mothers. Before the feminist movement, women were presumed to need that kind of help for the rest of their lives, thus there was no worry then about its addictiveness.

We sagged into ourselves, small talk dispensed like so much recreational Valium.

J&B I am thinking. Glass of J&B in my right hand I am thinking. Hand I am thinking. Charivari. Shirt from Charivari. Fusilli I am thinking. Jami Gertz I am thinking. I would like to fuck Jami Gertz I am thinking. Porsche 911. A sharpei I am thinking. I would like to own a sharpei. I am twenty-six years old I am thinking. I will be twenty-seven next year. A Valium. I would like a Valium. No, two Valium I am thinking. Cellular phone I am thinking.

JOHNNA: What pills does she take? BEVERLY: Valium. Vicodin. Darvon, Darvocet. Percodan, Percocet. Xanax for fun. OxyContin in a pinch. Some Black Mollies once, just to make sure I was still paying attention. And of course Dilaudid. I shouldn’t forget Dilaudid.

this morning I go to pay for breakfast and there, right there at the Kroger check-out, staring me in the face is a national magazine with your picture on the cover. Counterfeit Countess, it said. In great big, bold type: Counterfeit! Countess! Counterfeit,” he reiterated, “a word interchangeable with forgery and often associated with arrest.” Ah, yes. Patrice had called from Austin and warned me she had sold the story to Woman’s World magazine. “Last sentence?” Mittwede asked. “You know what it is?’ “No, I’ve not seen it.” “Tanya says, ‘I’m going to grow up and be a con artist.’” It had struck me as pretty funny when I said it, but Mittwede had better delivery. I think it was the hysteria. He was saying, “I remember that story. That was like a year and a half ago. You didn’t tell me you were that girl, the Dallas Countess. I already knew the story but I read it again, and I know all the cops have read it again, too. And now your picture is with Passport Services and at the check-out counter. You think federal agents don’t buy groceries? You’re fucking crazy. We’re going to be arrested.” “You maybe need to take a Valium.” “I threw them all in the fire!”   ~~~~~~

At five that night, I went back to the market and bought three sixteen-ounce Rainier Ales. I bounced back to my house, Mary Lou Retton-like, sipped the first ale, took the Valium, smoked a joint, drank the second ale, took another Valium, listened to “Into the Mystic” ten times, drank the third Ale, too the Valium and the Halcion, and discovered two unhappy thoughts. One was it was only seven o’clock. The second was that I was wide awake.

A dragonfly settles on a bulrush an inch from my nose. Its wings are like cellophane and Jonah says, “Its wings are like cellophane,” and I say, “I was just thinking that,” but Jonah says, “Just thinking what?” so maybe I just thought he’d said it. Valium rubs out speech marks and pops thought-bubbles. I’ve noticed it before.

Valium was marketed above all to women, pitched as way of bearing the stress of lives as wives and mothers. Before the feminist movement, women were presumed to need that kind of help for the rest of their lives, thus there was no worry then about its addictiveness.

Something like Valium," she suggested, "but not Valium." It sounded like a riddle

The thing about Valiums . . . is they don't kill the pain but at least you're not pissed off about being hurt.

New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my drugs because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I always thought it was: mad cow. No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her—which, in the medical field, is known as the “full Limbaugh.” They opened her up, and a Walgreens jumped out. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone—this woman was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. I’m not going to say his name, but only because (a) I don’t want to get sued, and (b) my back is killing me. This month marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of a famous government report. I was sixteen in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon’s much ballyhooed National Commission on Drug Abuse came out and said pot should be legalized. It was a moment of great hope for common sense—and then, just like Bush did with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage, and from there the ’70s went right into disco and colored underpants. This week in American Scientist, a magazine George Bush wouldn’t read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could reach from the toilet, described a study done in England that measured the lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than pot, LSD, or Ecstasy—which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this same area. The Beatles took LSD and wrote Sgt. Pepper—Anna Nicole Smith took legal drugs and couldn’t remember the number for nine-one-one. I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what they’re addicted to and making it illegal—it’s a miracle our government hasn’t outlawed fat white women yet—but I leave with one request: Would someone please just make a bumper sticker that says, “I’m a stoner, and I vote.

He worked for two months without pause. His functional day was twenty-two hours. He would try to go to sleep in a kind of buzz, and awaken two hours later with his thoughts exactly where he had left them. His diet was strictly coffee. (Even when healthy and at peace, Feigenbaum subsisted exclusively on the reddest possible meat, coffee, and red wine. His friends speculated that he must be getting his vitamins from cigarettes.) In the end, a doctor called it off. He prescribed a modest regimen of Valium and an enforced vacation. But by then Feigenbaum had created a universal theory.

What would happen if most people tried to act intelligently on their own behalf? Anarchy. (....) So what can we do with this intelligence we don't need and can't use? Stupefy it. Valium for housewives, glue-sniffing for schoolkids, hash for adolescents, rotgut South African wine for the unemployed, beer for the workers, spirits for me and the crowd I left downstairs fifteen minutes ago.

In some cases, these communities also happened to have long-standing problems with prescription drug abuse. In some parts of Appalachia, people would pair an OxyContin with a Valium—one of Richard Sackler’s pills and one of his uncle Arthur’s. They called this “the Cadillac high.

She’s better than a drug. I always knew she had it in her. Like a fucking drug. But I don’t want her to let me go. It took so long to get us here I hate Olivia Jaeger. I fucking hate her, and I’d happily never love anything if I could hate her my whole life. Bitter but beautiful, like Valium on my tongue. That’s what she’s like

The first time I took Valium was the first time that I experienced being unbothered by my own body. The thing is, until the calm of that little pill spread its lovely little tentacles all through me, I had absolutely no idea how uneasy in my own skin I'd always felt. I am not just talking about pain, either. It's more of an extreme and ever-present awareness of my body, as if I don't quite fit myself properly, as if my flesh is a pair of underpants that is forever sliding up the butt crack of my soul.

And it’s bad enough to be caught in your underpants but even worse to be caught in your underpants scratching out a valium prescription on someone else’s pad.

Valium rubs out speech marks and pops thought-bubbles. I’ve noticed it before.

It seemed to him that a society in which the most common prescription drug was Valium was, by definition, a society with unsolved problems.

Finest kind of dope. Book-Valium.

Her hair was as straight and red as ironed ketchup. Her astonishingly round breast jiggled ever so slightly, like balls balanced on the noses of Valium eating seals.

avail. I choose my mood, she told herself as she stood in the kitchen, tossing back evening primrose capsules like Valium.

There was a little of nineteenth-century patent medicine in Valium’s DNA. It didn’t treat any root cause of stress. Instead, it treated vague symptoms and thus allowed doctors to avoid the complicated work of understanding the causes of that stress. Like patent medicines, Valium was a name-brand drug, promoted together with the idea that a pill could solve any ailment.

Every word was like a pillow pressed against her face, but he didn't notice.....Each day that passed she found him harder to like.... She smiled even as her skin crawled. There wasn't even time to take a Valium.

Roche offered a different interpretation: while it might be true that some patients appeared to be abusing Librium and Valium, these were people who were using the drug in a nontherapeutic manner. Some individuals just have addictive personalities and are prone to abuse any substance you make available to them. This attitude was typical in the pharmaceutical industry: it’s not the drugs that are bad; it’s the people who abuse them.

I hate when a man feels I’m obligated to disclose my marital status to somebody I don’t even know. Even this bullshit about status itself as if married and spinster are the only two choices for defining myself. Or because I’m a woman I’m supposed to have a status at all. Hey big boy, here’s my status. Hi, before I tell you my name here’s my status. Maybe I should just say I’m a lesbian and throw the problem back in their faces for them to define it. Xanax for anxiety. Valium for sleep. Prozac for depression. Phenergan for nausea. Tylenol for headaches. Mylanta for bloating. Midol for cramps. I mean, Jesus Christ, menopause come already. Isn’t there some fast-track for a hot flash? It’s not like I’m ever going to breed, so why keep the damn store door open?

Sounding a bit like Arthur Sackler when he dismissed the dangers of Valium, Romagosa asserted that fears of people becoming hooked on morphine had been overblown, because addiction “is a psychological malady” and only occurred when morphine was misused by “those who do not need it.

You will be happy for Doogie, who, after conquering a twenty-year Valium addiction, now spends his days working with Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab, and his nights kicking back in the mansion in Valencia he bought with the proceeds of his successful XXX-rated series, Do Me Now Sir, DP: Volumes 1-35.

Yep! I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America, and that’s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was an addict, for one. A pillhead! I was also an alcoholic-in-training who drank warm Veuve Clicquot after work, alone in my boss’s office with the door closed; a conniving uptown doctor shopper who haunted twenty-four-hour pharmacies while my coworkers were at home watching True Blood in bed with their boyfriends; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly hallucination-prone insomniac who jumped six feet in the air à la LeBron James and gobbled Valium every time a floorboard squeaked in her apartment; a tweaky self-mutilator who sat in front of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, digging gory abscesses into her bikini line with Tweezerman Satin Edge Needle Nose Tweezers;

.,,women are numbed enough to endure rough sex acts through extreme humiliation. When alcohol isn’t enough and the pain spirals into addiction, porn stars are sent to local doctors in conspiracy with the porn industry to receive prescriptions for Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and other anti-anxiety drugs to help them cope with the trauma.

Pfizer had a tranquilizer that it recommended for use by children with an illustration of a young girl with a tearstained face and a suggestion that the drug could alleviate fears of “school, the dark, separation, dental visits, ‘monsters.’” But once Roche and Arthur Sackler unleashed Librium and Valium, no other company could compete.

On a small island off the coast of Panama lives the pygmy three-toed sloth, which appears to be addicted to a Valium-like substance in its diet of red mangrove leaves and may be going extinct.6 Thus, it seems that an entire species can disappear if it finds an ecological niche where it can satisfy its reward system in a maladaptive way.

The Mozart Effect and The Mozart Effect for Children. Pardon the pun, but his works have obviously struck a chord, since millions of the CDs and cassette tapes that accompany his books have also been sold. Strengthen the Mind features music for intelligence and learning, Heal the Body presents music for rest and relaxation, and Unlock the Creative Spirit focuses on music for imagination and creativity. Don chose other musical selections especially for the needs of pregnant mothers, infants, and children. The director of the coronary-care unit at Baltimore Hospital states that listening to classical music for half an hour produces the same effect as ten milligrams of Valium.

But the original House of Sackler was built on Valium, and it seems significant, and revealing, that for the rest of his life Arthur would downplay his association with the drug, emphasizing his achievements in other areas and deliberately obscuring (or leaving out altogether) the fact that his first fortune was made in medical advertising.

The second thing that I struck me was that people are not, contrary to popular belief, rude. Not in the slightest. In fact, most of them are exceptionally polite. What they are, however – and what is, I think, mistaken by many as rudeness – is busy. So busy you almost feel sorry for them. So busy that you wish Brita would start putting Valium in their filters.

In the mid-1980s, the medical world wrestled with how to use the new opiates that pharmaceutical companies were developing to treat pain. David Procter was an early and aggressive adopter. He prescribed opiates for neck, leg, and lower back pain, arthritis, and lower lumbar spine pain. He combined them with benzodiazepines—anxiety relievers, of which Valium and Xanax, Procter’s favorite, are the best known. In Portsmouth, people had anxiety and they had pain. Appalachia had a long history of using benzodiazepines—dating to the release of Valium in the early 1960s. Little old ladies used it. In this part of the country, anything that relieved pain was welcome. But opiates and benzos together also led quickly to addiction.

And maybe this is the story we need to write. If the story of surviving abuse, of being queer, isn’t about getting to normal as the end goal. Isn’t just sheets and towels and a long, quiet, Valium calm. Isn’t disaster and death and everything we ran from either. Isn’t anything we could’ve predicted, isn’t anything predictable. What comes after the disaster we keep surviving every day?

I would not mind going mad. It would absolve me of any need to go on coping, which is a particular kind of living hell. The simplicity of letting go, of shuffling about in a Valium- induced haze, is alluring. I lack the kind of ruthless ability that Victoria had to bring about a complete physical destruction of the entire human package. It is my fate to keep waking and find myself alive.

1:09 A.M.: EACH SEIZURE LASTED about twenty seconds. River’s arms would flail around, while his knuckles and the back of his head kept smacking against the pavement. Davis started hoping for more seizures—they were evidence that River was still alive.   1:10 A.M.: JOAQUIN CALLED 911, frantic but trying to keep it together as his beloved brother passed away before his eyes. “It’s my brother. He’s having seizures at Sunset and Larrabee. Please come here,” Joaquin begged. “Okay, calm down a little bit,” the dispatcher replied. Moments later, Joaquin said, “Now I’m thinking he had Valium or something. I don’t know.” His voice cracked with anguish. “Please come, he’s dying, please.”   1:12 A.M.: AN ACTRESS ON the scene remembered, “Outside there was a crowd of people, and I saw him—lying flat, totally ghostly white.

and Hoffman la Roche, manufacturers of Valium. The cost of the raw material and manufacturing of Valium to Hoffman la Roche is $3 per kilo (2.2 pounds). It is sold to their distributors for $20,000 per kilo. By the time it reaches the consumer, the price of Valium has risen to $50,000 per kilo. Valium is used in huge quantities in Europe and the United States. It is possibly the most used drug of its kind in the world.

For a long time being female was treated by science and medicine as being akin to having a serious psychological disorder. Women were routinely prescribed hysterectomies or anxiolytics like valium to treat the symptoms of hysteria which is a syndrome with symptoms that are suspiciously similar to the symptoms of being of human female who has to deal with stupid sexist bullshit. Although scions and medicine has come a long way since these sorts of practices were common place every woman i know has had an experience of being treated as less rational version of a man. Sometimes even by our own doctors simply by virtue of our gender. There belief that women are irrational and therefore underserving of the same rights as men is something that has lingered in the public consciousness in a huge way. And women are very aware of this. We have to listen to a lot of people say a lot of dumb shit about our hormones and about whether we deserve the right to control our own fertility. These types of claims particularly when combined with sciences and medicine mishandling of women for so long have made it very difficult for anyone, even female scientists, to have thoughtful conversations about things like women's hormones and fertility regulation. These topics unaddressed by science are often met with suspicion by anyone who has ever owned a pair of ovaries or is an ovarian sympatist.

In 1994, Friedman wrote a memo marked “Very Confidential” to Raymond, Mortimer, and Richard Sackler. The market for cancer pain was significant, Friedman pointed out: four million prescriptions a year. In fact, there were three-quarters of a million prescriptions just for MS Contin. “We believe that the FDA will restrict our initial launch of OxyContin to the Cancer pain market,” Friedman wrote. But what if, over time, the drug extended beyond that? There was a much greater market for other types of pain: back pain, neck pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia. According to the wrestler turned pain doctor John Bonica, one in three Americans was suffering from untreated chronic pain. If that was even somewhat true, it represented an enormous untapped market. What if you could figure out a way to market this new drug, OxyContin, to all those patients? The plan would have to remain secret for the time being, but in his memo to the Sacklers, Friedman confirmed that the intention was “to expand the use of OxyContin beyond Cancer patients to chronic non-malignant pain.” This was a hugely audacious scheme. In the 1940s, Arthur Sackler had watched the introduction of Thorazine. It was a “major” tranquilizer that worked wonders on patients who were psychotic. But the way the Sackler family made its first great fortune was with Arthur’s involvement in marketing the “minor” tranquilizers Librium and Valium. Thorazine was perceived as a heavy-duty solution for a heavy-duty problem, but the market for the drug was naturally limited to people suffering from severe enough conditions to warrant a major tranquilizer. The beauty of the minor tranquilizers was that they were for everyone. The reason those drugs were such a success was that they were pills that you could pop to relieve an extraordinary range of common psychological and emotional ailments. Now Arthur’s brothers and his nephew Richard would make the same pivot with a painkiller: they had enjoyed great success with MS Contin, but it was perceived as a heavy-duty drug for cancer. And cancer was a limited market. If you could figure out a way to market OxyContin not just for cancer but for any sort of pain, the profits would be astronomical. It was “imperative,” Friedman told the Sacklers, “that we establish a literature” to support this kind of positioning. They would suggest OxyContin for “the broadest range of use.” Still, they faced one significant hurdle. Oxycodone is roughly twice as potent as morphine, and as a consequence OxyContin would be a much stronger drug than MS Contin. American doctors still tended to take great care in administering strong opioids because of long-established concerns about the addictiveness of these drugs. For years, proponents of MS Contin had argued that in an end-of-life situation, when someone is in a mortal fight with cancer, it was a bit silly to worry about the patient’s getting hooked on morphine. But if Purdue wanted to market a powerful opioid like OxyContin for less acute, more persistent types of pain, one challenge would be the perception, among physicians, that opioids could be very addictive. If OxyContin was going to achieve its full commercial potential, the Sacklers and Purdue would have to undo that perception.

The other major hormonal player in your cycle is progesterone. It helps to prepare the uterus for implantation with a healthy fertilized egg and supports pregnancy. If no implantation occurs, progesterone levels drop, and another cycle begins. Progesterone receptors are highly concentrated in the brain. Progesterone can support GABA, the brain’s relaxation neurotransmitter; acts to protect your nerve cells; and supports the myelin sheath that covers neurons. I like to think of progesterone as the “feel-good hormone.” It makes you feel calm and peaceful and encourages sleep. It’s like nature’s Valium, but better, because instead of making your brain fuzzy, it sharpens your thinking. It has also been shown to help with brain injuries by reducing inflammation and counteracting damage. It is so much more than a sex hormone. Progesterone increases during pregnancy, which is why many pregnant women often feel great. Some women with hormonal issues, in fact, feel so much better during pregnancy that they will

It changed the life of mankind more radically than the printing press. It created suburbs and a hundred other dependencies—sexual and economic and narcotic—upon the automobile. And the automobile paved the way for more profound – more inward- inner dependencies upon Television and then robots, and finally the ultimate and predictable conclusion of it all: the perfection of the chemistry of the mind…It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.

I make my way back whistling. Gerry nods towards Mrs Brady who is standing beside the trolleys. Morning, Mrs Brady, I say cheerfully. I push her provisions out to the car. Things are something terrible, she says. You can't trust anybody. No. It's come to a sorry pass. It has. There's hormones in the beef and tranquillizers in the bacon. There's men with breasts and women with mickeys. All from eating meat. Now. I steer a path between a crowd of people while she keeps step alongside. Can you believe it - they're feeding the pigs Valium. If you boil a bit of bacon you have to lie down afterwards. Dear oh dear. Yes, I nod. The thought of food makes me ill. The pigs are getting depressed in those sheds. If they get depressed they lose weight. So they tranquillize them. Where will it end? I don't know, Mrs Brady, I say. I begin filling the boot. That's why I started buying lamb. Then along came Chernobyl. Now you can't even have lamb stew or you'll light up at night! I swear. And when they've left you with nothing safe to eat, next thing they come along and tell you you can't live in your own house. I haven't heard of that one, Mrs Brady. Listen to me. She took my elbow. It could all happen that you're in your own house and the next thing is there's radiation bubbling under the floorboards. What? It comes right at you through the foundations. Watch the yogurts. Did you hear of that? No. I saw it in the Champion. Did you not see it in the Champion? I might have. No wonder we're not right. I brought the lid of the boot down. She sits into the car very decorously and snaps her bag open on her lap. She winds down the window and gives me 50p for myself and £1 for the trolley.

AS SUMMER DWINDLED, my sleep got thin and empty, like a room with white walls and tepid air-conditioning. If I dreamt at all, I dreamt that I was lying in bed. It felt superficial, even boring at times. I’d take a few extra Risperdal and Ambien when I got antsy, thinking about my past. I tried not to think of Trevor. I deleted Reva’s messages without listening to them. I watched Air Force One twelve times on mute. I tried to put everything out of my mind. Valium helped. Ativan helped. Chewable melatonin and Benadryl and NyQuil and Lunesta and temazepam helped.

but mostly I took sleeping aids in large doses, and supplemented them with Seconols or Nembutals when I was irritable, Valiums or Libriums when I suspected that I was sad, and Placidyls or Noctecs or Miltowns when I suspected I was lonely. Within a few weeks, I’d accumulated an impressive library of psychopharmaceuticals. Each label bore the sign of the sleepy eye, the skull and crossbones. “Do not take this if you become pregnant.” “Take with food or milk.” “Store in a dry place.” “May cause drowsiness.” “May cause dizziness.” “Do not take aspirin.” “Do not crush.” “Do not chew.” Any normal person would have worried about what the drugs would do to her health.

I wasn’t crying,” I said. “And I hope you’re not packing any shorts. Nobody wears shorts in Manhattan. And they’ll shoot you in the street if you go around in those disgusting tennis shoes. You’ll look ridiculous. Your father isn’t paying this much for you to go look ridiculous in New York City.” I wanted her to think that I was crying over my father’s cancer, but that wasn’t quite it. “Well, Goddamnit, if you insist on getting weepy,” my mother said, turning to leave. “You know, when you were a baby, I crushed Valium into your bottle? You had colic and cried for hours and hours, inconsolable and for no good reason. And change your shirt. I can see the sweat under your arms. I’m going to bed.

First up, Blackwell [1972] did a set of experiments on fifty-seven college students to determine the effect of colour—as well as the number of tablets—on the effects elicited. The subjects were sitting through a boring hour-long lecture, and were given either one or two pills, which were either pink or blue. They were told that they could expect to receive either a stimulant or a sedative. Since these were psychologists, and this was back when you could do whatever you wanted to your subjects—even lie to them—the treatment that all the students received consisted simply of sugar pills, but of different colours. Afterwards, when they measured alertness—as well as any subjective effects—the researchers found that two pills were more effective than one, as we might have expected (and two pills were better at eliciting side-effects too). They also found that colour had an effect on outcome: the pink sugar tablets were better at maintaining concentration than the blue ones. Since colours in themselves have no intrinsic pharmacological properties, the difference in effect could only be due to the cultural meanings of pink and blue: pink is alerting, blue is cool. Another study suggested that Oxazepam, a drug similar to Valium (which was once unsuccessfully prescribed by our GP for me as a hyperactive child) was more effective at treating anxiety in a green tablet, and more effective for depression when yellow. Drug

We have been removed from the environment within which we evolved and with which we are uniquely designed to interact. Now we interact and coevolve with only the grosser, more monolithic, human-made commercial forms which remain available within our new laboratory-space station. Because we live inside the new environment, we are not aware that any tradeoff has been made. We have had to sacrifice the billions of small, detailed, multispectral experiences—emotional, physical, instinctive, sensual, intuitive and mental—that were appropriate and necessary for humans interacting with natural environments. Like the Micronesian islander in Chapter Four trapped between two modes of experience, we have found that functioning on an earlier multidimensional level has become not only useless but counterproductive. If we remained so attuned to the varieties of snowflakes that we could find fifty-six varieties as the Eskimo can; or to dreams so that we could find hundreds of distinct patterns as the Senoi Indians can; or to the minute altitude strata, inch by inch above the ground, occupied by entirely different species of flying insects as the California Indians once could; all this sensitivity would cripple any attempt to get along in the modern world. None of it would get us jobs, which gets us money, which in turn gets us food, housing, transportation, products, or entertainment, which are the fulfillments presently available in our new world. We have had to re-create ourselves to fit. We have had to reshape our very personalities to be competitive, aggressive, mentally fast, charming and manipulative. These qualities succeed in today’s world and offer survival and some measure of satisfaction within the cycle of work-consume, work-consume, work-consume. As for any dormant anxieties or unreconstructed internal wilderness, these may be smoothed over by compulsive working, compulsive eating, compulsive buying, compulsive sex, and then our brands of soma: alcohol, Librium, Valium, Thorazine, marijuana and television.

perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common: and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution, which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug: for there are many properties in itm if universally known, that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us than the Turks themselves: the result of which my knowledge,' he adds, 'must prove a general misfortune.' In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur

AS SUMMER DWINDLED, my sleep got thin and empty, like a room with white walls and tepid air-conditioning. If I dreamt at all, I dreamt that I was lying in bed. It felt superficial, even boring at times. I’d take a few extra Risperdal and Ambien when I got antsy, thinking about my past. I tried not to think of Trevor. I deleted Reva’s messages without listening to them. I watched Air Force One twelve times on mute. I tried to put everything out of my mind. Valium helped. Ativan helped. Chewable melatonin and Benadryl and NyQuil and Lunesta and temazepam helped. My visit to Dr. Tuttle in September was also banal. Besides the sweltering heat I suffered walking from my building into a cab, and from the cab into Dr. Tuttle’s office, I felt almost nothing. I wasn’t anxious or despondent or resentful or terrified. “How are you feeling?” I stood and pondered the question for five minutes while Dr. Tuttle went around her office turning on an arsenal of fans, all the same make and model, two installed on the radiator under the windows, one on her desk, and two in the corners of the room on the floor. She was impressively nimble. She no longer wore the neck brace. “I’m fine, I think,” I yelled blandly over the roaring hum.

He's got a cat tied to the seat of the toilet and a bubble bath all set for someone to jump in. I excused myself for a second and went over to the kitchenette and popped a couple of Valiums. I was already loaded on junk but I could see this was going to be strictly from fruit. When I got back in the john he was already naked and in the tub frosted in bubbles . . . the poor cat was still chained to the john seat, yelping away. The guy laid his plan on me. He wants me to whip the cat dead after I first piss on him in his bubble bath, then when the cat has had it I'm to jerk off into his mouth while he's still in the tub. Out from under the bubbles he hands me a whip, a tiny cat size whip with leather fringes laced with broken ends of razors. ... I untied the cat, he tried to get up and stop me, I punched his chump face, he landed back on his ass in the tub and I gave him the whip across the chest . . . a nasty wound. . . . I grabbed his hair, opened his mouth and pissed in it . . . he spit it out, the piss mixing with the blood oozing from his lip from the punch and he let out a slow motion yell at the sting of urine dripping into the cuts on his chest. He sank under water to cool the burn, I rifled his wallet for sixty bucks, picked up the kitty and split.

Beauty Killer" If I can't be beautiful.. I'd rather just die. So self-obsessed with my mascara and mistakes. Vanity's like a funeral an everyone's at my wake. Before I run out of air there's more makeup to apply. Doll eyes stare into Valium colored skies... I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. Rhinestone my eyes closed and please fix my hair. This concealer can't hide all my pink nightmares. Before I run out of air there's more makeup to apply. Doll eyes stare into Valium colored skies. I almost died but it felt great. Faking perfection wasn't worth the wait. I may be easy, easy to hate. But you're so fucking easy.. easy to break. I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. I almost died but it felt great. Faking perfection wasn't worth the wait. I may be easy, easy to hate. But you're so fucking easy.. easy to break. Tell me your secrets and ill tell you my lies. Everything is monotone in my dead eyes. If I cant be beautiful..I'd rather just die. I'm a beauty killer. I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. Gorgeous killer. Hot pink killer. Fierce killer. I'm a beauty killer. I'll fucking kill you...

Yep! I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America, and that’s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was an addict, for one. A pillhead! I was also an alcoholic-in-training who drank warm Veuve Clicquot after work, alone in my boss’s office with the door closed; a conniving uptown doctor shopper who haunted twenty-four-hour pharmacies while my coworkers were at home watching True Blood in bed with their boyfriends; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly hallucination-prone insomniac who jumped six feet in the air à la LeBron James and gobbled Valium every time a floorboard squeaked in her apartment; a tweaky self-mutilator who sat in front of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, digging gory abscesses into her bikini line with Tweezerman Satin Edge Needle Nose Tweezers; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl fellatrix rushing to ruin; and—perhaps most of all—a lonely weirdo who felt like she was underwater all of the time. My brains were so scrambled you could’ve ordered them for brunch at Sarabeth’s; I let art-world guys choke me out during unprotected sex; I only had one friend, a Dash Snow–wannabe named Marco who tried to stick syringes in my neck and once slurped from my nostrils when I got a cocaine nosebleed;

Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer. The ubiquity of chemical intoxicants in our lives is undeniable evidence of the continuing universal need for safer medicines with such applications. While use may not always be for an approved medical purpose, or prudent, or even legal, it is fulfilling the relentless drive we all have to change the way we feel, to alter our behavior and consciousness, and, yes, to intoxicate ourselves. We must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk free and as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants? I mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death. Imagine an alcohol-type substance that never caused addiction, liver disease, hangovers, impaired driving, or workplace problems. Would you care to inhale a perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air? How would you like a pain-killer as effective as morphine but safer than aspirin, a mood enhancer that dissolves on your tongue and is more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine, a tranquilizer less addicting than Valium and more relaxing than a martini, or a safe sleeping pill that allows you to choose to dream or not? Perhaps you would like to munch on a user friendly hallucinogen that is as brief and benign as a good movie? This is not science fiction. As described in the following pages, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can’t crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, perfectly safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are. This book is your guide to that future. It is a field guide to that silent spring of intoxicants and all the animals and peoples who have sipped its waters. We can no more stop the flow than we can prevent ourselves from drinking. But, by cleaning up the waters we can leave the morass that has been the endless war on drugs and step onto the shores of a healthy tomorrow. Use this book to find the way.

Kim was twenty-three, single, on her own, and at a job making $27,000 per year. She had recently started her Total Money Makeover. She was behind on credit cards, not on a budget, and barely making her rent because her spending was out of control. She let her car insurance drop because she “couldn’t afford it.” She did her first budget and two days later was in a car wreck. Since it wasn’t bad, the damage to the other guy’s car was only about $550. As Kim looked at me through panicked tears, that $550 might as well have been $55,000. She hadn’t even started Baby Step One. She was trying to get current, and now she had one more hurdle to clear before she even started. This was a huge emergency. Seven years ago George and Sally were in the same place. They were broke with new babies, and George’s career was sputtering. George and Sally fought and scraped through a Total Money Makeover. Today they are debt-free, even their $85,000 home. They have a $12,000 emergency fund, retirement in Roth IRAs, and even the kids’ college is funded. George has grown personally, his career has blossomed, and he now makes $75,000 per year while Sally stays home with the kids. One day a piece of trash flew out of the back of George’s pickup and hit a car behind him on the interstate. The damage was about $550. I think you can see that George and Sally probably adjusted one month’s budget and paid the repairs, while Kim dealt with her wreck for months. The point is that as you get in better shape, it takes a lot more to rock your world. When the accidents occurred, George’s heart rate didn’t even change, but Kim needed a Valium sandwich to calm down. Those true stories illustrate the fact that as you progress through your Total Money Makeover, the definition of an emergency that is worthy to be covered by the emergency fund changes. As you have better health insurance, disability insurance, more room in your budget, and better cars, you will have fewer things that qualify as emergency-fund emergencies. What used to be a huge, life-altering event will become a mere inconvenience.

Strict Time There's a hand on a wire that leads to my mouth I can hear you knocking but I'm not coming out Don't want to be a puppet or a ventriloquist 'Cause there's no ventilation on a critical list Fingers creeping up my spine are not mine to resist Strict time Chorus: Toughen up, toughen up Keep your lip buttoned up Strict time Oh the muscles flex and the fingers curl And a cold sweat breaks out on the sweater girl Strict time Oh he's all hands, don't touch that dial The courting cold wars weekend witch trial Strict time All the boys are straight laced and the girls are frigid The talk is two-faced and the rules are rigid 'cause it's strict time Strict time You talk in hushed tones, I talk in lush tones Try to look Italian through the musical Valium Strict time Thinking of grand larceny Smoking the everlasting cigarette of chastity Cute assistants staying alive More like a hand job than the hand jive Strict time

In addition to being essential for metabolism, individual B vitamins have also been identified for their role in neurotransmitter production. Vitamin B6 is required for the production of dopamine, serotonin, and an amino acid neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA promotes relaxation and reduces stress and anxiety. Widely touted as the “anxiety amino acid,” GABA is our body’s version of Valium. And to get that effect, rather than popping a pill you can eat foods high in vitamin B6 including skipjack tuna, chicken, bell peppers, turnip greens, shiitake mushrooms, and spinach.

his first day at Pharmstar, Mazzio had sat in when Iron Jack briefed newly-hired business school graduates on strategy. ‘I want the next Prozac or Valium, the next Lipitor or Zantac,’ Jack had said, striding up and down, his big voice booming across the hall. ‘I want you to scour the world for billion-dollar-a-year blockbusters. Between you and me you can screw the cure for cancer as a financial proposition. What we need are treatments, not cures. Treatments that patients take every day, year in, year out. The clinical areas are obvious: depression, migraine, back pain, arthritis, cholesterol control, weight control. And the target market is only one: first world and affluent.

Parents who needed a little chemical help to develop that favorable attitude could turn to pharmaceuticals. As in the Victorian era—the last time mothers were encouraged to do all the child-rearing themselves—drugs again became a popular at-home activity. Enter Miltown and Valium, aka mother’s little helper.*

was sick of people in the program quoting the principles of the Big Book. I wanted to scream when I heard, “But for the grace of God.” What fucking grace had God given me? And don’t get me started on the gratitude list. I had no gratitude. The distress and loneliness made me again consider ending my life. I thought the program was a trick to psychologically prevent me from slicing my wrists. Quotations like “Easy does it,” “This shall too pass,” “Thanks for sharing,” “Keep coming back,” did nothing for me but induce intestinal illness. Holding hands and watching people go out of their way to do anything and everything for me made me extremely uncomfortable. I loathed the closeness and companionship of the people who were working hard for my benefit. The disgrace of not having my own form of transportation, career, dignity, and independence made me resent everything this horrible existence had to offer. I held these feelings inside and operated like a robot going through the motions of living. I contemplated how to extinguish my mental anguish. Death is what first came to mind. I'd fantasize driving at a hundred miles an hour into a tree, taking a full bottle of Valium or Trazadone, or, better yet, taking a full bottle of both drugs and then doing it. But something inside woke me up, convincing me there was a certain merit, some reason worth living for on this miserable planet. From there, my determination and drive to attain dignity and independence kicked in. I wanted to believe there truly was a good person inside. I wanted to find him. Insidious images of relaxation flashed through my mind like bright pictures. It was as though all my tension was being released after inhaling a fat line of cocaine while watching porn. The excitement of reliving the act seemed so real that my heart palpitated erratically. I'd get furious with myself for even thinking about going back to that sinister part of my life. When I returned to the Oxford House after the retreat, I was introduced to a local priest who was in the fellowship for treatment. When I first found out he was a priest, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. It disgusted me that people gave him respect because he was a man of the cloth. The fellow addicts thought it was cool they had one of God’s errant angels among them confessing his sins of addictions. Little

Thinking back, I can almost feel the air in the commons that day, the things eddying around us. We were breathing in violence and desperation and other people’s hallucinations, but it was all invisible to us then. Like the fluoride in the water or the radiation from Brookhaven, the DDT and the valium and the Strontium 90. All the heavy atoms and alkaloid molecules that shape us and then break us apart.

Thinking back, I can almost feel the air in the commons that day, the things eddying around us. We were breathing in violence and desperation and other people’s hallucinations, but it was all invisible to us then. Like the fluoride in the water or the radiation from Brookhaven, the DDT and the valium and the Strontium 90. All the heavy atoms and alkaloid molecules that shape us and then break us apart.

It really freaked me out. I don’t know whether to ask for a cigarette or a Valium.” “You are pretty worked up,” he pointed out after a beat. “Add a blowjob to my list of needs.” “I can offer one of the three, but you’ll have to guess which.

But the truth was, Librium and Valium were marketed using such a variety of gendered mid-century tropes—the neurotic singleton, the frazzled housewife, the joyless career woman, the menopausal shrew—that as the historian Andrea Tone noted in her book The Age of Anxiety, what Roche’s tranquilizers really seemed to offer was a quick fix for the problem of “being female.

Miltown, Librium, Valium,

Valium

Benzodiazepine medicines such as Ativan, Xanax, and Valium can reduce anxiety and help people fall asleep. They are dangerously addictive, however, and can lead to early dementia when used for as little as several months.

But the truth was, Librium and Valium were marketed using such a variety of gendered mid-century tropes—the neurotic singleton, the frazzled housewife, the joyless career woman, the menopausal shrew—that as the historian Andrea Tone noted in her book The Age of Anxiety, what Roche’s tranquilizers really seemed to offer was a quick fix for the problem of “being female.” Roche

On a small island off the coast of Panama lives the pygmy three-toed sloth, which appears to be addicted to a Valium-like substance in its diet of red mangrove leaves and may be going extinct. Thus, it seems that an entire species can disappear if it finds an ecological niche where it can satisfy its reward system in a maladaptive way.

I’m popping Valiums and waiting for something. To my left was Jeff Bridges. I could still tell time at that point. I looked at my watch, and I thought, This is crazy. They haven’t gotten anywhere near to the Best Actor award. So I turned to Jeff, who I would come to know in the future as one of the most wonderful human beings and such a great actor. But at the time, I didn’t know him at all, and I guess the impending dissipation of my altered state led me to say, “Hi, excuse me,” as he looked at me like he was looking down from ten feet high. I said to him, “The hour is almost up. I guess they’re not going to get to the Best Actor.” He considered me like I was some poor, pathetic wretch. “It’s three hours long, man. Three hours long.” And I said, “Oh. Thank you.” I went numb after that.

Over-familiar, the music has become a kind of audio-Valium, background music rather than something I listen to actively and attentively. A gin and tonic after a long day. A shame, I think, because while each note remains the same, I used to hear them differently. It used to sound better.

Pasamos por delante de la catedral. La niebla cubre otra vez la ciudad y todo parece una película de terror. Me imagino que Marianne está esperándome en algún rincón con un puñal, como en los tiempos en que Ginebra era una ciudad medieval, en constante lucha con los franceses. Ni el frío ni la caminata me calman. Cogemos el coche y, al llegar a casa, me voy directamente a la habitación y me trago dos pastillas de Valium, mientras mi marido le paga a la niñera y mete a los niños en la cama. Duermo diez horas seguidas. Al día siguiente, cuando me levanto para seguir la rutina matinal, empiezo a pensar que mi marido está un poco menos cariñoso. Es un cambio casi imperceptible, pero hay algo que ayer lo hizo sentirse incómodo. No sé muy bien qué hacer, nunca me había tomado dos tranquilizantes a la vez. Estoy en una especie de letargo que no se parece en nada al que

Overeating, or comfort eating, is the cheap, meek option for self-satisfaction, and self-obliteration. You get all the temporary release of drinking, fucking, or taking drugs, but without - and I think this is the important bit - ever being left in a state where you can't remain responsible and cogent. In a nutshell, then, choosing food as your drug - sugar highs, or the deep, soporific calm of carbs, the Valium of the working classes - you can still make the packed lunches, do the school run, look after the baby, pop in on your mum, and then stay up all night with the ill five-year-old - something that is not an option if you're coming off a gigantic bag of skunk or regularly climbing into the cupboard under the stairs and knocking back quarts of Scotch. Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-deconstructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice.

Flight attendant Sherly needs Prosac, Valium, and a shot of vodka after just thinking about working the trip.

On December 10, 2013, Eric Boyles, the man who lost his wife Hallie and only daughter Shelby in the fatal accident, discovered that Mr. Couch would serve the minimal time in prison for his actions.[ 16] In fact, Mr. Couch was sentenced to exactly zero days in prison. Although Mr. Couch was driving 70 mph in a 40 mph zone, had a blood alcohol level of 0.24, and had valium in his system, Judge Jean Boyd granted Mr. Couch extreme leniency.[ 17] In lieu of prison time, the Judge sentenced Mr. Couch to ten years of probation and In assessing the ruling, a New York Times Article suggests the defense of “affluenza” played a critical role in the decision. The Article stated: Judge Boyd did not discuss her reasoning for her order, but it came after a psychologist called by the defense argued that Mr. Couch should not be sent to prison because he suffered from ‘affluenza’ — a term that dates at least to the 1980s to describe the psychological problems that can afflict children of privilege. Prosecutors said they had never heard of a case where the defense tried to blame a young man’s conduct on the parents’ wealth. And the use of the term and the judge’s sentence have outraged the families of those Mr. Couch killed and injured, as well as victim rights advocates who questioned whether a teenager from a low-income family would have received as lenient a penalty.[ 19] "This has been a very frustrating experience for me," said prosecutor Richard Alpert. "I'm used to a system where the victims have a voice and their needs are strongly considered. The way the system down here is currently handled, the way the law is, almost all the focus is on the offender.

On June 15, 2013, Ethan Couch killed four pedestrians and injured two others in Westlake, Texas.[ 13] Mr. Couch killed Breanna Mitchell, whose car broke down; Hollie and Shelby Boyles, who came to assist Breanna; and Brian Jennings, a youth minister who also stopped to help. In addition, Mr. Couch critically injured two of his passengers, Solimon Mohmand and Sergio Molina.[ 14] The sixteen-year-old teen admitted to speeding and being drunk when he lost control of his pickup. Tests revealed he had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit and traces of Valium in his system at the time of the accident. -------- ------ -- On December 10, 2013, Eric Boyles, the man who lost his wife Hallie and only daughter Shelby in the fatal accident, discovered that Mr. Couch would serve the minimal time in prison for his actions.[ 16] In fact, Mr. Couch was sentenced to exactly zero days in prison. Although Mr. Couch was driving 70 mph in a 40 mph zone, had a blood alcohol level of 0.24, and had valium in his system, Judge Jean Boyd granted Mr. Couch extreme leniency.[ 17] In lieu of prison time, the Judge sentenced Mr. Couch to ten years of probation and In assessing the ruling, a New York Times Article suggests the defense of “affluenza” played a critical role in the decision. The Article stated: Judge Boyd did not discuss her reasoning for her order, but it came after a psychologist called by the defense argued that Mr. Couch should not be sent to prison because he suffered from ‘affluenza’ — a term that dates at least to the 1980s to describe the psychological problems that can afflict children of privilege. Prosecutors said they had never heard of a case where the defense tried to blame a young man’s conduct on the parents’ wealth. And the use of the term and the judge’s sentence have outraged the families of those Mr. Couch killed and injured, as well as victim rights advocates who questioned whether a teenager from a low-income family would have received as lenient a penalty.[ 19] "This has been a very frustrating experience for me," said prosecutor Richard Alpert. "I'm used to a system where the victims have a voice and their needs are strongly considered. The way the system down here is currently handled, the way the law is, almost all the focus is on the offender.