Days of Wine and Roaches

Believe it or not, there's actually something called good news going on. Sadly, it gets swamped by the other kind, and we spend most of our time trying to keep from drowning and don't notice these little life rafts floating around. A case in point is this story about medical discoveries that is encouraging on several levels. I've remarked in other places that there's only one way we come into the world, but there are countless ways we can leave it. Few of them, by the way, are free from either pain or ugliness.* And surely, one of the ugliest is Alzheimer's. It's a horror that can last years and years. No disease is so all-inclusive of the support system for a sufferer than this one. Whole families die of Alzheimer's disease. Cancer is ugly, but by comparison, it's almost merciful.

So any news about advances we've been able to make against this disease are welcome, and if the advances are as jolly as the ones recently discovered . . . well, that's good news indeed. Get this: researchers have discovered that Alzheimer's ravages can be combated by drinking red wine and ingesting marijuana. In the case of the latter, it's not entirely clear that smoking dope does the trick, but THC definitely does. Whoa! I'll drink to that! And stoke up the bong while you're at it!

*Sherwin B. Nuland, The Way We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (1994)