“The proliferation of the neuro – prefix is, no doubt, often merely a matter of fashion. Yet when ‘neuro-drinks’ promise to improve our brain power, when ‘neuro-trainers’ claim that their courses will enable us to take full control of our lives, we can recognize the growing power of the belief, however banal, that by acting on our brains, we can improve our mental life and enhance our everyday capacities to meet the ceaseless demands for self-development and self-management that characterize our contemporary form of life.” (Abi-Rached, Rose 226)

Reaching for the stars, there is only hope to fall upon. Hope is what guides the absent hands searching for meaning in those bright lights in the sky. It is what keeps mind in tune with brain and the followers of the pharmaceutical in tune with the future. Long have we, the followers of the pharmaceutical, sought to outlive the constant struggle between life and reality. Here is that thread of hope, dangling just within reach. Through the Neuro others have come to know our pain on a much larger scale, deeper than most in a most intimate way. No longer shall we stand doe eyed at the whims of some pen swipe, testing us with another pill, another pain, another trial. It has come time to replace the trials of old with that of the new, a new time calls for a new mind. Our saviors come in white lab coats, messy hair, and hard to read books all reaching, as we all do, for the stars for hope. One person’s research is another’s life and it is in your hands I place mine. Pull me from this trench of endless regurgitation of the DSM and into the light of Neuro. Test me, poke me, feed me your truths for I am ready for change, WE are ready for change. Through you, through your guiding hands we can break the struggle between water, pill, food, sanity repeated infinitum. It is in hope I place my heart, the hope that you the selected few pioneers of the outlandish can thwart the evil corruption placed into our lives and set things new. It is in this fantasy of Neuro- drinks and trainers that one may shape his or her own reality even if they are still the whims of the ethereal.

Hope stands above all else. For I hold true to hope that one day the task of cleansing one’s mind will be done through one’s own cognition. I am ready for tomorrow and the new light of the day when we can put down our endless fall into madness and pick up where we once left, that normal we all seek.

“The brain has certainly become a rich register for narratives for self-fashioning. There are now many neurobiological technologies of self-hood, that is to say, practices that seek to mold, shape, reform, or improve aspects of one’s person – mood, emotions, cognition, desire – by acting on or through the brain. But with what consequences for personhood? Let us briefly consider perhaps the longest established of these contemporary neurotechnologies – psychopharmaceuticals.” (Abi-Rached, Rose 220)

A handful of pills

and they call this life

telling time through the devouring of

pharmaceuticals that someone

somewhere once told someone

you need this to be normal

to be a functioning member of the

human race

where does it end?

Can they simpy stop the endless

trifling of water, pill, food, sanity?

There is a sense that the soul is gone

then what is left but the brain.

Persons acting as people

while deep inside they are the mechanics

of someone’s pen swipe.

When, then, does the pain end?

Can there be an all encompassing cure for this disease

something someone somewhere can call “finished”.

For if the ones who hold our future

declare there is no soul but the brain

then there is no disease

there is no broken piece

for the brain is everything

and the one who can tell the future

is locked inside

behind a veil

of never ending

social normality

thrust down the throats

of those who seek to be one

with the natural “self”

– is there an end?