Anti Anxiety Medication Thoughts (poem)

The poem as it was first uploaded online in May 2013.

Anti Anxiety Medication Thoughts (originally spelled as Anti Anxiety Medication thoughts) is a poem written by Matthew Little. The poem accounts an experience Little had while high on an anti-anxiety medication drug, and was written while Little was still feeling said drug. It appears in his debut collection of poetry Hell in a Basket.

About the poem

Anti Anxiety Medication Thoughts was written May 10, 2013. Little wrote the poem while intoxicated after ingesting a few "Klonopins", which is a drug usually prescribed to people who suffer anxiety problems. While Little has stated he does in fact suffer from a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, he has never been prescribed the drug personally, but wont say where he got the medication from. Little has also said he isn't addicted to the substance, and only takes them when he has problems with his anxiety.

Style

The poem departs from Little's usual writing style, which usually is written traditionally with stanzas, rhyming, etc. He said he wrote the poem while really feeling the effects of the medication, and wanted to portray that same feeling in writing.

The entire first part of the poem slants almost off the page, giving the feeling as if whoever's writing it is drifting out of consciousness. As it was written in its published form, the poem writes like:

Pills

 Taken,

   I'm drifting 

    Into a land

     Where anxiety 

       Will never touch me

After each line a space is added to make each newer line seem further than the last. Then, the poem jumps around back to the edge of the page, and finally the last "stanza" appears almost in the center of the page. At the end of the poem, which is written almost on the opposite side of the page from where it began, he writes sleep with the "s" in a line of its own and drops "leep" in another line as a way of making the reader slur the word while reading.