- Let’s say you’re sitting in an audience and I’m at the lectern. Here’s what I’ve likely done to prepare. Four hours or so ago, I took my first half milligram of Xanax. (I’ve learned that if I wait too long to take it, my fight-or-flight response kicks so far into overdrive that medication is not enough to yank it back.) Then, about an hour ago, I took my second half milligram of Xanax and perhaps 20 milligrams of Inderal
OK, the part where he starts potentially-attributing his anxiety to being a product of WASP and Jewish families, that's when he goes beyond me. Also, and villanize me for this comment, but at least some of this author's anxiety reminds me of paranoia, in that it all serves his ego. His anxiety is that he is so important or special or disgusting that people remember him for years after various incidents, looking at him and saying That's him - that's the disgusting one. I wonder if he has tried reminding himself that he is not nearly so important, or memorable. Oh and how charming: Three paragraphs devoted to age-old and poor arguments that "Maybe mental disturbances actually make you better at things!" which leads to the paradigms that "all artists are disturbed" etc and makes creativity seem not validated without some kind of ruffle in the underlying temperament. Those should be striken right out of the article IMHO. I suspect I might. Military pilots, by reputation, at least, are famously unanxious. And one small-scale study from the 1980s found that nine out of 10 separations and divorces among Air Force pilots were initiated by wives. Uhhhhhh, what??? This makes proof how? One small-scale study and "if he wasn't anxious he'd definitely be a jerk?" This is why this guy's a writer, not a doctor or a scientist.Historical evidence suggests that anxiety can be allied to artistic and creative genius.
“What if,” she asked, getting to the heart of the matter, “you’re cured of your anxiety and you become a total jerk?”