Medicine

Last night i got in around 11:30 p.m. I had been at a friend's house helping set up a computer- based recording studio kind of thing. I didn't want to stay out that late because i hadn't got squat for sleep the night before, but i had anyway and was mad at myself. Alison had already gone to bed so i stood in the kitchen alone wondering if i should bother to eat the dinner i skipped. I was tired, and for some reason really sore, too and kinda irritable and...you know...just wasn't all that happy. As i heated up a somewhat bland plate of leftover stroganoff i recalled an evening long ago in Massachusetts....................

School had been wearin' me out. I was sore from doing physical labor, i was tired from not enough sleep, i was depressed for being away from home for so long, my somewhat dungeon-like basement apartment was cold and that chill had reached its way into my very bones. Thankfully, i had already gone to the grocery store and stocked up on some good stuff for dinner. I wouldn't have to go back out into the cold New England night and buy something. I stared into the fridge hoping it would inform me what i wanted for dinner when i saw the jar of Santa Barbara Olive Company Habenero-Stuffed Olives i'd bought a few days before. I hadn't opened them yet, but as i was just too worn out to consider what i actually wanted to eat, i pulled the jar out, twisted it open with a *POP* and flummoxed down on the couch in a cold, tired, sore, disenfranchised blob.



Not really thinking about the fact that the jar was full of Habanero-stuffed olives, i used my little tiny olive-eatin' fork to spear me one and bit off half of it right away. Within two seconds, two things happened: 1) my mouth was on fire, and 2) the room suddenly brightened, the soreness in my back and knees and head flitted away into the quickly diminishing dimness, i didn't feel so alone, i was no longer cold and school felt very manageable. Capsaicin had come to the rescue. Although capsaicin has topical uses of its own, in this case its intense heat caused my pituitary gland to produce a whole truckload of endorphins. Suddenly, all was right with the world............


So, last night after the Strog had about 30 seconds in the microwave, i got out the jar of just straight up habaneros i always keep around these days, chopped one up and mixed it (and a little bit of salt) into my late dinner. Works everytime.


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