Category — Speculative Fiction

Here is the scenario:

A character who finally, after years of struggling with depression and anxiety, finds a drug that helps him be happy. He concurrently also rediscovers his abilities as a writer. Working in that high-tech field made him very ill – physically and mentally – from the stress.

He then tried his hand at photography, and had some success. Then he gets into painting from his photos. He was good at it, creating works of great technical proficiency, impressive in their clarity and mastery, but lacking in warmth and feeling. To him, the reward was in the accomplishment, in solving a problem, getting good at it, proving he could do it. The learning. Not in the doing. The doing was pure hard work

He would spend weeks or months slaving away on a painting, pushing himself to the edge of his abilities. But then, what did he have? A mere image. Something to look at for seconds, minutes perhaps. Something that people would ooh and aah at, and compliment him on. But there was no real dialogue, no meat for his mind. On top of that it brought in none of the extra money he used to pay his bills, pay off his loans and buy toys. All that intense work for a few minutes of pleasure didn’t seem worth it to him.

Then writing out of desperation, as an outlet or therapy for his frustrations and all the thoughts and questions and ideas plaguing his mind.

However the drug also takes away his ability to write because it knocks out short term memory and word retrieval, so all he can write is very poor quality material, like from an adolescent or a drunk. How does he resolve this, what ways does he try?

Without the drug, he wrote brilliant essays skewering current political, social and scientific events, but he was an intolerable, irascible crank socially, a critical ball of irritability constantly in a struggle with himself to not say what he was thinking about what his wife, or anyone else was doing, or the state of society. On the drug, he became a warm, friendly, funny, loving person. But all he could write were silly verbal gymnastics, like “perhaps the perfunctorily piddilating pooch prefers perambulating in the presidio”. Which were enjoyed by his wife, who liked his silliness, but elicited nothing but groans from his editors and literary friends.

It was no contest for his spouse: the choice between the calm, friendly, relaxed, tolerant, affectionate man, and the prickly grump was a no-brainer. They had enough money to live on from her family (her father made sure she was taken care of before he died), and the house was paid off. But to him it was a serious and terrible dilemma, of Greek proportions.

Things had only gotten worse lately - he had tried alternating weeks, on and off the medication. When he was off it, he became increasingly irritable. He’d recently gotten irate about having to pay for a “public museum” , asking the museum clerk “Is this public or is this private!? Do you sell the works here?” Fortunately, he quickly brought himself under control and calmed his nerves - a trick years of meditation had taught him.

A modern pharmaceutical Scylla and Charybdis.

On the one hand was his wife: the cute, sexy, fun, warm (and rich) infinitely supportive female with and about whom he said he felt like he’d “won the lottery”. The woman that loved him absolutely.

Charybdis - the whirlpool - was the drug. It swallowed his talent whole. His writing is what gave his life as a whole a meaning. It was the forge where he could take anything in life, any experience, any confusing or distressing thoughts, and make sense of them, or at least create art from chaos. It’s what gave him public recognition, pride, a love for work, a sense of accomplishment, a way of connecting with people in the world. It was a way for the inner and outer to mesh: essential for an inward thinking type personality like him.

Scylla was his life and work without the drug: alluring, and deadly to his marriage.