"Now," said the doctor, "this costs you a good deal of money, but it is worth it to you.
Here is the prescription: don't worry.
"Now"-he stopped me as I started to expostulate-;"now, I realise that you can't follow the
prescription immediately, so I'll give you a crutch. Here are some pills. They contain
belladonna. Take as many as you like. When you use these up, come back and I'll give
you more. They won't hurt you. But they will always relax you.
"But remember: you don't need them. All you have to do is quit worrying.
"If you do start worrying again, you'll have to come back here and I'll charge you a heavy
fee again. How about it?"
I wish I could report that the lesson took effect that day and that I quit worrying
immediately. I didn't. I took the pills for several weeks, whenever I felt a worry coming
on. They worked. I felt better at once.
But I felt silly taking these pills. I am a big man physically. I am almost as tall as Abe
Lincoln was-and I weigh almost two hundred pounds. Yet here I was taking little white
pills to relax myself. I was acting like an hysterical woman. When my friends asked me
why I was taking pills, I was ashamed to tell the truth. Gradually I began to laugh at
myself. I said: "See here, Cameron Shipp, you are acting like a fool. You are taking
yourself and your little activities much, much too seriously. Bette Da vis and James
Cagney and Edward G. Robinson were world-famous before you started to handle their
publicity; and if you dropped dead tonight, Warner Brothers and their stars would
manage to get along without you. Look at Eisenhower, General Marshall, MacArthur,
Jimmy Doolittle and Admiral King-they are running the war without taking pills. And yet
you can't serve as chairman of the War Activities Committee of the Screen Publicists
Guild without taking little white pills to keep your stomach from twisting and turning like a
Kansas whirlwind."
I began to take pride in getting along without the pills. A little while later, I threw the pills
down the drain and got home each night in time to take a little nap before dinner and
gradually began to lead a normal life. I have never been back to see that physician.
But I owe him much, much more than what seemed like a stiff fee at the time. He taught
me to laugh at myself. But I think the really skilful thing he did was to refrain from
laughing at me, and to refrain from telling me I had nothing to worry about. He took me
seriously. He saved my face. He gave me an out in a small box. But he knew then, as
well as I know now, that the cure wasn't in those silly little pills-the cure was in a change
in my mental attitude.
The moral of this story is that many a man who is now taking pills would do better to
read Chapter 7, and relax.
I Learned To Stop Worrying By Watching My Wife Wash Dishes
By
Reverend William Wood
204 Hurlbert Street, Charlevoix, Michigan