Sometimes We Need a Medicine Meal

I think it was during this time some years ago, when I found myself picking up a friend from the hospital. Her medications had decided to quit their day job and Ferris-Bueller-it inside her head, frolicking free and causing hallucinations. Big green bug hallucinations. She was recovering from anxiety and depression when it happened, and she was not going to let the things floating in the air keep her from healing. Ignoring the size and menacing looks from the bugs, she took herself to the hospital and explained what was going on.

When she arrived, the-authorities-that-be flat out ignored her reporting of the big bugs and pesky voices. Why? Because she had also casually mentioned death. Not "I'm going to hurt myself" death. Just...a healthy fear of death...the kind you'd have if the bugs you're seeing are bigger than you. Her requests to have her meds adjusted or to be given an antipsychotic were ignored. Soon, my friend was admitted to the hospital against her will. Even with her therapist on the phone saying there was no need for a hospital stay, she was confined to the “funny” ward for three days. Not funny.

At the end of her captivity, I got the call. What? They did what? I raced to the hospital in a taxi to meet her, watching the rain crawl across the windows. I couldn't get there fast enough. The idea that you could be locked up all of a sudden when you had committed no crime and even with hallucinations still had the presence of mind to say, "Hey, I need a little help," infuriated me.

The walk to the ward was long and deep inside the recesses of the hospital. Did I know my way back out? Creepy. I rushed, keeping my jacket on, ready to get her out like yesterday. But then, no. That wasn't going to happen. I was inspected and explained to. I was placed in two different rooms. I still didn't take off my jacket. I had a meeting with a doctor. And then finally, after a few official-looking papers were signed and some last looks crossed over us by the nurses, we were through the cavernous hospital and out on the street. Thankfully, the rain had let up.

“I have to fill my prescription for the antipsychotic," she said, "but after that, I want cake.”

I understood completely.

I’ve been down that road—the depression road, even the hospitalized road—and I must say that I never ever want to go down that path again, even if the experience taught me some of the most important lessons of my life like learning to love myself and understanding that my job is not my identity. Depression is a hard teacher like failure, divorce, and disaster, but unlike these where one event arrives, strikes, and leaves a trail. Depression is like a bad roommate—a caustic character you have to continually monitor, so that he doesn’t steal the things most precious to you.

We dropped off the prescription to be filled at the pharmacy and walked a good many blocks for the cake. She only had one cake in mind. Peanut butter and chocolate mousse cake—and only from her favorite eatery in the East Village. This. This cake would fit the bill.

After tucking ourselves into a table and procuring forks and napkins, she draped herself over the slice of cake and dug in. It was comforting and tasty, turning her world right-side up again. She ate slowly, savoring it. I tasted it too, giving it my thumbs up. Amidst bites, she took the time to call family members, letting them know that she was out, she was fine.

Thoughts of my own battles flooded my brain. Once when I was in the worst of it, I had refused to come out of my galley kitchen for nearly 24 hours. All I wanted was to eat chips and salsa and drink red wine. Thankfully a friend had coaxed me out with more wine and no judgement. Bless that man.

I brought my attention back to my friend. She looked brighter. When enough cake was down the hatch, we headed back to the pharmacy.

The pharmacy was in no hurry, so I took a seat by the pick-up window and waited for my friend to go through the rigamarole of confirming identity and paying. I looked around at the ridiculous advertising hung at the ends of the aisles. They all seemed poised and ready to fling products at me any minute.

“You NEED this!” they screamed. “NEED!”

I ignored them and fiddled with my phone. I didn’t mind waiting. This was not a day about time. This was a day about relationships. I checked on my friend, waiting for the pharmacist to return with the standard, stapled white bags.

“I want chips, too,” she said. “Am I crazy?”

“No,” I said. “You are completely normal.”

Truth is, anyone can find themselves in need of a medicine meal. We all at one time or another have sought shelter from a rough and horrible day with a fork in hand.

On one particular record-breaking bad day, my husband and I found ourselves glancing at each other with tears in our eyes walking down a street in lower Manhattan. I finally pulled him to a stop and said,

“Let’s eat. We need comfort food.” He hugged me in agreement.

Our dinner began with hot milk, went through several courses of delicious fare, and ended with apple pie and pistachio gelato. Soon we relaxed, let the day go, and found our footing. It was a medicine meal.

When my grandfather passed away, my husband brought me four different entrees of spicy Mexican food from a nearby restaurant. He hadn't known what would be best. I sat at our table stuffing myself with one hot, jalapeño-infused morsel after another—from all four entrees. The oil from the peppers burned my lips and fingers as I wiped my salty, teary face. Medicine meal.

When I was exhausted from being displaced from Hurricane Sandy and spending the holidays away from anything familiar, I cried eating tortellini in brodo at the Christmas table. My husband’s zias (aunts) must have had a premonition that I needed it, because at that moment, the best moment...the one where my tongue found the hint of nutmeg and kiss of olive oil floating in a warm healing broth...yes, that moment. That was when my world turned right-side up again. Medicine meal.

I love that there are others who understand the medicine meal. Walt Whitman knew of them. He had comforted the dying and wounded during the Civil War by bringing them ice cream. In a letter to his mother in 1864 he wrote,

“O, I must tell you, I [gave] in Carver hospital a great treat of ice cream, a couple of days ago went round myself through about 15 large wards (I bought some ten gallons, very nice). You would have cried and been amused too. Many of the men had to be fed; several of them I saw cannot probably live, yet they quite enjoyed it. I gave everybody some. Quite a number [of] Western country boys had never tasted ice cream before. They relish such things [as] oranges, lemons, etc.”

Medicine meal.

Unfortunately, many comfort foods have been misplaced in our canon of meals—especially sugar. No longer a celebration or a medicine, it's gone the way of the daily franken-food. Sugar is taken captive to labs and forced into new versions of itself like Ripley’s incubated clones in Alien Resurrection. Now, quite understandably, sugar is seen as a no-no, a demon food, the cause of all our modern ailments such as obesity and diabetes.

Poor sugar. No one knows the real you anymore. And those wonderful comforts of good medicine you can bring—fluffy like cake, creamy like gelato—they all seem to fall silent amongst the noise.

As I took my friend back to my home to give her a place to regroup and be fed something better than hospital food, she seemed to gain a bit of strength.

“Thank you for not talking to me like I’m a crazy person.”

“We’re all crazy,” I said. “What kind of chips did you get?”

“Corn tortilla chips.”

“Awesome. My favorite.”

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