Todd had a problem. He was addicted to pills.

He wasn’t addicted to pills in the way that you might think. He wasn’t addicted to painkillers or sleeping pills or antidepressants or anything specific like that, he was just addicted to pills. Didn’t matter what it was, if he saw one he had to take it. Couldn’t help himself.

It had gotten him into trouble in high school when he started taking his sister’s birth control pills and he had to get breast-reduction surgery. His parents put him in rehab and it worked for awhile, until one day his dad left his Viagra on the counter.

He’d been to rehab a number of times, tried detox, psychotherapy, nothing worked. A therapist once told him it was phallic. For Todd, the pills represented testicles and his obsession revealed his repressed homosexual tendencies.

“Fuck it,” Todd told him, “If you’re gonna tell me shit like that I’ll stick with the pills.”

After that, he gave up trying to find a cure.

I always gave Todd the pills my psychiatrist gave me. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, antibiotics, antihistamines, you name it. They didn’t ever work for me, and Todd enjoyed taking them. Plus, I knew eventually my doctor was going to get tired of me and decide to write me a prescription for something deadly. I felt a little guilty every time I gave Todd my newest prescription, but I figured that he’d probably OD one day anyway so it’s not like it’d really be my fault.

Plus he kind of got on my nerves.