It sounds like one of those 1950 and 1960s era filmstrips we thirty and forty somethings like to mock, the irony of those pitifully naïve exhortations of the wonders of science now apparent– global warming, polluted oceans and seafood, tainted freshwater and food supplies, obesity, etc. The list is endless. But modern medicine, despite the very real ills of the healthcare and drug approval and testing systems, can, in fact, promote better living through chemistry. Antibiotics. Synthetic insulin. Blood products. Organ replacements. Sterile plastic and stainless steel instruments. Antidepressants. A wonder of products of chemistry, to address, if not cure, what ails you.

I know, full well, that chemistry doesn’t always effect a cure. And I took high school and college chemistry. I know, intellectually, that in order for a chemical reaction to come out the way it’s supposed to, you have to set up your experiment carefully. Maintain the controls. Measure your ingredients carefully. And keep an eye, at all times, on how the experiment is doing, once you’ve set it in motion. There’s a reason why the good professors make you take careful lab notes every step of the way. Even today, if you set me in front of a lab bench, with instructions of ingredients, order of steps, and possible things to watch out for, I’d watch every step, take careful notes, be meticulous in observing this external reaction, from start to finish. If something went wrong along the way, I feel pretty secure that I’d see it early on, and seek help to stop things from boiling over, or evaporating, or exploding, or turning into a rock hard lump so melted to the crucible that I’d have to throw everything out. I’d know that if not watched carefully, the whole process will be spoiled, and I would have to start over again.

And yet knowing that, I still fall prey to ignoring the process when it comes to myself. Moving the experiment from the lab bench, where I can see it, objectively, to my brain, doesn’t translate the way it ought to. I don’t have the right frame of mind. I still want it to be a miracle cure—not an ongoing experiment that if carefully watched, may succeed at maintaining its slow, nurturing boil for a while. But I still need to watch it. These compounds and chemicals run out of steam, and new inputs, like changes in diet, stress, sleep, the amount of sunlight, the seasons, all affect the reaction. If I stop keeping my lab notebook, meticulously, then I can miss the early stages of a downhill reaction, and don’t recognize it until it’s too spoilt to step in and fix it, salvage the reaction, achieve the same result after some tinkering with more or less of the initial ingredients. I let the Bunsen burner of stress burn too hot, don’t take that extra ativan when I stop sleeping so well, don’t call my doctor after the third night of anxiety dreams, because I’m not following the proper chemistry protocol.

The chemical reactions are only as good as the chemist watching them. It’s time to go back to school.