Please Read Instructions on the Label
written by: Mark Woodward
They hand you the paper bag like it’s lunch,
but the only thing being served is surrender.
You nod, like someone with a clue,
though you’ve got about as much idea
as a squirrel handed a tax return.
Congratulations,
you’re now the proud owner of
sixteen different ways to take something
that may or may not save your life,
depending on whether it’s raining
and if Jupiter is rising in a bad mood.
“Take with food”
but not within forty minutes of broccoli.
“Take on an empty stomach”
unless you’ve eaten rice in the last lunar cycle.
“Swallow whole” – but it’s a suppository.
“Do not swallow” – but it looks like a mint.
“Not to be taken orally”
yet the instruction is printed in Comic Sans
on something shaped exactly like a .45-calibre Tic Tac.
You open the leaflet.
Out it folds. Again. And again.
Soon you’re standing in your hallway
trying to read a manuscript
longer than the Magna Carta,
written in font size microscopic,
by a committee of caffeine-addled wizards
who have clearly never been ill.
The side effects are broken down
like family gossip –
Common: nausea, insomnia, mild confusion.
Uncommon: sudden belief you are a bee.
Rare: spontaneous urge to juggle ferrets
while declaring allegiance to the moon.
You ring the 111 ‘helpline,’
and a bored call-taker named Chloe
reads from the same parchment
you just dropped in the toilet.
She tells you, very calmly,
that only 0.04% of patients
have ever grown an extra toe
in response to this medication,
and it’s usually quite tasteful.
You spend your Monday morning
balancing on one leg
while swallowing a capsule
with a yoghurt not containing citrus,
singing Baa Baa Black Sheep
because the instructions
said to “relax the throat.”
You become a part-time acrobat,
part-time monk,
full-time pharmacist’s unpaid disciple.
The world outside goes on,
but you’re in the kitchen
measuring out thirty millilitres
of peppermint-scented sorrow,
with a pipette the width of a violin string.
You’re told:
DO NOT drive, operate machinery,
or make major life decisions
within six hours of taking Tablet C.
Which is awkward,
because Tablet B must be taken
within twenty minutes
of falling out with your ex.
The word “may” appears
fourteen times in one sentence:
“This tablet may or may not cause
twitching, blinking, spontaneous tap-dancing,
or a strong desire to laminate things.”
It’s like the drug was invented by a poet
with a grudge and a hobby in origami.
You start to suspect
some of these medicines are not real.
Tablet F has instructions
that require a snorkel and a qualified falconer.
Capsule Z must be crushed,
but only while facing East
during a solar eclipse,
surrounded by consenting witnesses
named Trevor.
One gel says:
“Apply sparingly to area affected”
– but the ‘area’ is your internal organs.
The pill bottle whispers
“May cause temporary grandiosity” –
which would explain your sudden belief
that you are, in fact, the CEO of Cabbages.
Meanwhile,
your friends say things like:
“You look well, actually!”
which you understand to mean:
“You haven’t collapsed in Lidl yet.”
You go to the support group.
No one speaks.
Everyone’s trying to interpret
the new batch of side effects
that includes:
‘perception of taste as colours,’
‘hobby in 14th century fencing,’
and a compulsion to adopt a goose.
Your dog is avoiding you.
Your postman keeps leaving parcels
three doors down.
And you’ve forgotten your own name
but remember the Latin chemical formula
of everything you’ve swallowed since March.
You are now an ecosystem,
a mobile cocktail of medicinal decisions
held together by pharmacy bags
and blind hope.
You smile at the nurse,
who nods and says
“You’re doing brilliantly, keep going,”
as she wheels in the trolley
labelled Possible Adjustments.
You laugh then.
A little too loudly.
Because the alternative is crying
and no one told you
whether you’re still allowed to do that
on Tablet H.
Or was it, ‘Preparation H?’
But you keep going.
You keep taking the stuff,
following the rituals,
setting the timers,
muttering your mantras
about milligrams and minutes.
Because somewhere in all this
chemical circus
is your chance.
Not for a cure, maybe.
But for a way through.
For a way to say:
“I’m still here,
even if I now glow faintly
in UV light
and have a strange fondness
for listening to tea bags.”
And maybe one day,
you’ll meet someone
in the pharmacy aisle
muttering “Do not crush”
with the haunted look of a fellow traveller,
and you’ll smile,
hand them the leaflet,
and say:
“Please – read instructions on label.”
- Please Read Instructions on the Label - May 27, 2025
