Without Relief

Seems I'm still too sick to write about anything other than how I feel.  I've tried several times sitting here in the black darkness while other people experience REM.  I can't make it artful, and I don't want to whine.  What I want is a big opium ball to eat or to smoke so that I can go to sleep and not feel the painful spasms in my gut.  I want to drift away in narcotic dreams.  Paregoric would do, I think, though even that is not offered any more.  The most common medicine in the world, the one used most often by more people than anything else, is opium.  It is a cure-all.  I have never had it, never seen it.  But I've had codeine and know that it is the best medicine for something like this.  One dose, a long, comfortable sleep, and--BOOM!--you are better.  Of course you are addicted for life and will seek out dope peddlers and will use dirty needles and kill grandmothers for their loose change and contract AIDS then prostitute yourself and spread the wicked disease to others.  So it is perhaps best that I spend days and nights suffering through this minor ailment without relief.  Doctors know best.  That is why they are rich.