On the way out to California last week, standing in the scrum of passengers at the gate, waiting to board the fully committed Jet Blue flight to Oakland, a guy asked my son to hand him a set of headphones. Adam was staring into the middle distance, knackered by lack of sleep, life, circumstance. He didn’t hear the guy, a New Yorker with gray curling hair who bore a more than passing resemblance to Lou Reed. A woman grabbed some headphones from the bin and passed them to him and he said, to me, not realizing I was his father, “I want some of the drugs he’s on.”

Well, no, Lou. You don’t. Over the last five years Adam has been prescribed a host of medication meant to address his depression, his anxiety, his anger, his concentration…and there have been times that I suspected that they were as much the problem as the cure. One of the things I hoped to do on my visit was visit with the doctor who was currently doing the prescribing and see if there might be some adjustments that could be made.

The doctor was better than others I had met. He seemed to listen when my son talked and was open to my concerns. True, there was a moment when, listening to Adam, I thought he might press a button under his desk, summoning hidden white-jacketed attendants. But who could blame him? Maybe he could lock me up while he was at it. But instead he decided to try something slightly different, and meet again in a few weeks time. I have never thought medication alone was the cure for anything and looking at the doctor’s computer screen, on which the history of my son’s past prescriptions looked longer than the list of departing flights at JFK, only confirmed that belief.

Standing outside the hospital pharmacy, waiting for Adam to fill his latest prescription, I stared at the Chinese restaurant across the street and wrote a haiku:

Five Happiness has
Take out menu — which one are
We to try this time?