A Spoonful Of Something Or Other

A friend asked me the other day what I think the difference is between poison and medicine, and my answer in the moment was what each of them kills in you. But I spent this morning noodling on it a bit more while walking to brunch and I’m not sure that’s quite right, or rather not right in a thorough enough way. There are long stretches when personal healing/evolution feels like (and is) dying, and I have a sense that the only value in grand declarations on the topic are that they serve as entryways into the more peculiar granularities of our individual self, or selves as it sometimes feels. Here’s a quick example of what I mean:

Each year, Acetaminophen Toxicity sends 56,000-ish people to the emergency room and results in something around 500 deaths. It’s also the biggest cause of liver transplantation in the US, which I would have guessed would be alcohol abuse but we all guess all sorts of things! And a decent amount of these instances are accidental and caused either by being unaware that overlapping daily or weekly-used products have acetaminophen in them, or by having a vague sense that over the counter medicines are not that big of a deal at what we think is a reasonable dosage. I started going down the rabbit hole pretty far in terms of the financial footprint from it and (thankfully for you) stopped, but to summarize it that’s $123mm-ish a year in emergency room charges and 500 funerals because people take Tylenol too often.

For the sake of clarity, the Tylenol reference here is abstract and not intended to be a commentary on the pharmaceutical industry, or healthcare in America, or alternative ways to treat a headache. That stuff is fun dinner table fodder and frankly pretty easy pickings, I just don’t mean this as like a pro or anti-Tylenol thing. I was just struck again today, while Sloane and I decided not to wait in line for the pickleball court, that what makes something poison or medicine is complex and personal, and requires a great deal of attention on ourselves and perhaps a great deal less on everyone else. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t an answer to what the difference between the two is, but it’s to admit that I can only answer it with any detail for myself. It reminded me of this Ram Dass quote, which I’ll leave you with: “I can do nothing for you but work on myself...you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”