Popping Pills With Purpose

If you have not had this moment yet, you'll find yourself at some point in the future wandering through the vitamin aisle at your local store like it's a casino: Bright lights, too many choices, and no clue what's a win. It's almost like Vegas, but it's less actual fun.

For a GenX kid, it's not hard to remember when all we needed was a Flintstones vitamin and a glass of Tang. Any other minerals came from the garden hose.

After you start getting a bit long in the tooth, the quick lesson is that your 20s are for pizza and beer; your 50s are for calcium and antacids. The doctor won't let you have pizza because of the diabetes, or your kids have a gluten allergy, which is the same excuse that your partner will use to stop you from having a beer.

We used to say that we could have a beer because it was basically like bread, and now that's the very same point that gets it removed from your dietary repertoire, against your will, of course.

The older we get, the more our shelves look like a pharmacy. It just happens to be the way that cookie crumbles. Speaking of cookies, you can't have them anymore, either.

Metabolism slows down, your hair turns gray, and the doctor starts saying things like, "Have you considered fish oil?" I hear it's good for my heart, but the aftertaste has me wondering if it's worth dying young. It seemed to me like there could be a plus side somewhere. It's great for your heart, bad for your breath. So unless you have a special someone with an affinity for anchovy-scented things, your mileage may vary.

"I can do the fish oil part," I told my doctor, sensing his glee. "This means that I just go fishing, right? I catch the fish, eat the fish, and that's my fish oil."

"No. That's not how that works."

I started with one multivitamin. Now, I'm basically a walking GNC store. You go from one little thing that you think will be better for you than a spinach IV to a cornucopia of pills, tablets, gelcaps, and assorted items meant to go down your gullet at the properly prescribed times. I have a pillbox now. Not for medication, mind you, just for all the vitamins.

You know you're getting older when your pill organizer takes up more space than your coffee mug. I don't have a particularly small coffee mug.

There's a vitamin for every letter, but somehow, we all need D and B12. I'm told I can't survive on fluorescent light and Netflix alone. For some reason, only a health foods representative can explain; I need the whole damned alphabet flowing through my system.

I like to eat things. It has not escaped me that this is the very thing that got me into this mess, besides a clock and a calendar; still, I'm told that so much can be resolved by eating right. So why does a bottle of Vitamin C cost more than a year's supply of oranges?

You crawl through the Speak N Spell, and with every letter, it looks like there is a pill for it you've never heard of, but the experts all declare you need for base survival. I don't know who discovered Vitamin K, but I bet they were running out of ideas after E.

There's no end to all the different pills, remedies, and protective things out there. I tried magnesium for sleep. Fell asleep during a meeting. That is not what I meant. I've learned to sleep on a dime with the best of them, from manifest lines in the chute shed as a paratrooper to the lines of a DMV. This was not that.

That day, the dreaded Z-Monster was handed a mystical weapon that I had to pull back on. Too many, and you go beyond the sleepiness. Like fiber, the benefits can become explosive. Sure, the fiber tastes like gummy bears, but don't eat too many unless you want to redecorate your bathroom.

Sometimes, I forget if I took my vitamins. If I ever double up on ginseng, I might vibrate out of my chair.

All of the promises are just there to make you feel better in your misery. As we get older, some parts are fun, and other parts are not. Apparently, this one pill will give me energy, grow my hair, and make me better at math. By the time I finish reading the label on a bottle of probiotics, I've lost the will to live. Isn't that ironic?

These days, I've come to a simple rule: If a supplement promises to make you 25 again, they're probably selling it out of the trunk of a car.

You can get some of the most intriguing supplements marketed to you on YouTube, and those can be very entertaining. They usually have some hard luck story about some fellow with high blood sugar or a guy who owns a club that doesn't actually exist. Through some weird alchemy and bro code, this poor sap meets up with a buddy who just happens to work at Harvard and, through rigorous testing, has defied science and medicine with a new supplement.

I've seen this doctor. He's a handsome fellow that looks like Kenny Rogers and has six fingers.

Still, there is no harm in trying to understand what they are saying and determining how much of it is useful. I have discovered that staying upright and mobile is more fun than not. You can't outrun Father Time, but a little calcium helps you trip him up, and that's what counts.

A good deal of reading and research has gone into this, and while life may not come with instructions, it does seem to come with a recommended daily allowance.

Suffice it to say that getting older isn't easy, but at least there's a pill for that.

Or an app.