QUOTE : I remember my first dose of Klonopin the way I imagine the elect recall their high school summer romances, bathed in the golden light of a perfect carelessness, untouched and untouchable by time's predations or the foulness of any present pain. As Cat Stevens wrote, The first cut is the deepest, though I've always preferred Norma Fraser's cover to the original (the legendary Studio One, Kingston, Jamaica, 1967). Stevens sings it like a pop song, but Fraser knows the line is true, that she'll never love like that again. Her voice soars over the reverb like a bird in final flight. The first cut is the deepest. I've since learned all about GABA receptors and molecular binding, benzos and the dangers of tolerance, but back then I knew only that I had received an invisible and highly effective surgery to the mind, administered by a pale yellow tablet scored down the middle and no larger than an aspirin. There is so much drivel about psychoactive meds, so much corruptions, bad faith over- and underprescription, vagueness, profiteering, ignorance, and hope, that it's easy to forget they sometimes work, alleviating real suffering, at least for a time. This was such a time.