A Layer of Cotton Wool

Pills prescribed in five minutes do exactly what they promised: they muffle. But numbness is not selective — along with fear and pain it also mutes joy, resistance, and the inner voice that “cried that this wasn’t right”. For a person still living inside a dangerous environment this is not treatment; it is anesthesia without the surgery.

Note the line about the voice growing “day by day weaker”: the author is describing a real risk with precision. Actual help begins not with a prescription but with the questions the doctor never found time for. Medication works — but only together with a person who has truly looked.