Free Drugs – Maximiliano Guzmán
January 3, 2026
I put a pill in my mouth, it’s red and orange. For hypertension? It has a strange name. I can’t repeat it to the camera, the previous pills are already taking effect. I’m drooling.
There’s a mix of chemicals in my stomach going up and down like a roller coaster.
Should I vomit?
But there are twenty more boxes left.
Why would the owners of the town’s radio station give away pills with prescriptions that sick people (healthy or already dead) no longer need?
Incomplete boxes of pills you can pick up from a table without restrictions. You don’t even have to leave your name or illness on record. No signature required, you just take them and bring them home. You can swallow the pills sitting in the ice cream shop with a Coke, but it’s not recommended.
At the radio station there’s no doctor to answer your questions or select what you really need.
It’s a beautiful metaphor of “choose your own adventure,” but I’d call it “choose your own medicine” or poison, you choose.
I’m making this sacrifice for everyone in this damned town.
This is a revelation.
I’m doing it because it’s my mission in this life.
And they’re watching from my Instagram account.
At the end of every month, at the radio’s front door, they place the pill boxes on a small wooden coffee table. They announce it in their programming.
And if you sit in front of the place, you can see men, women, and children looking, touching, and stuffing pills into their pockets. You could accept it if they were just cold medicine but…oh, there are pills for cancer, HIV, and anal hemorrhages. They’re all mixed together and no one can say “I won’t take this one.”
With their phones they type questions into Google. But Google isn’t a real doctor. Others ask their favorite artificial intelligence because here everything is about “prevention.” But are there real answers, or do they just accept what they want to read?
When it comes to consuming, everything is relative.
People don’t know—or don’t care—that they might be allergic to penicillin or ibuprofen and end up with skin problems, trouble breathing, or nausea. Some could even die.
But it’s free!
And I’m not complaining, I’m an experienced patient.
According to doctors, I’m a hypochondriac. That means I can create in my mind and in my body any illness I consider appropriate depending on the mental, emotional, and physical season I’m in.
And that’s how I start to get sick and need the care of my uncles or friends. Y tomo And I take pills and my body heals. Am I a mutant? It’s something I think about too much.
Maybe my genetics aren’t like everyone else’s, or maybe I was simply born to be sick. And it’s a gift, a mysterious heavenly gift that allows me to stay in bed fifteen hours, not work, and receive a monthly disability payment. I’m incapacitated from being healthy!
My illness is the cure for illnesses. I talked about it with my psychiatrist.
He doesn’t believe it. He says I exaggerate.
“It’s a ridiculous theory, Ramona.”
My uncles, who live two blocks from my house on Pedro Cano, are trying to commit me to a farm for “people like me.” They can’t take responsibility for me. I’m almost forty and my body looks like the body of an animal beaten under the rain. Am I a mutant?
And the live comments are so comforting.
I breathe deeply in my dizziness, with my glasses I read my followers. Some kids are from Recreo, others from Frías, and there’s even a Pole.
Rogelio017: Ramona, show me your tits
They flatter me. Sometimes I think they believe I’m beautiful. But it’s the filter, a filter I saw women use on TikTok.
49aladeserpiente: I have red pills in my mouth.
I’d like to answer the comments but I can only read them with difficulty. My throat burns as if I had drunk a glass of whiskey. My eyes water. I think my face is swelling.
Annaahno777: My mother says you’re a bad influence on me.
The names blur together. Maybe I need to shower or scream.
I take new pills from a new box.
These are fat and white. Pheno…Phee…phenobarbital. I say it out loud.
I smile at the camera.
I put eight pills in my hands.
I shove them into my mouth. I bite, chew, and drink a sip of wine. It’s a combination that hidrates or that’s what my uncle Horacio meant.
He likes wine. He’s a drunk, and when he gets angry he tries to hit me, but my aunt is my human shield. Or maybe he just prefers hitting her. Is that what love is about or not?
The damp powder of the pills runs down my throat.
Down.
Down.
And my hands tremble.
I open a new box.
Kete…kete…ketorolac.
I start laughing. I feel like I’m sitting on a cloud. And it smells bad.
In the box there are one, two, four, five pills.
I take them out and put them in my hands.
Eroioc_182: When I grow up I want to be like you.
The comment embarrasses me, though I don’t know what I’m reading.
I swallow the pills.
And my brain travels with my broken neurons.
I’m going to say something to Eroioc…
“I love you tube.”
Is that coming out of my mouth?
There’s a knock at the door.
Pum
Pum
Pum.
Three knocks at the door.
“Aroma, aroma, aroma”
Yes…there’s a horrible odor.
“Can you smell it?” I ask my followers, but my tongue juggles in my mouth, sticks to my teeth. I don’t hear my own voice. I don’t understand…
“Aroma, aroma, aroma”
Three more knocks.
Silence.
Robitux11: hey girl…
don’t read the next words.
And the comment box fills up.
The words are a boomerang in my eyes. I blink.
My mouth is open. And a fly lands on my tongue.
I try to close my mouth. And the fly?
I taste bitterness.
The phone is lying on the table.
And the floor is cold.
It’s snowing in summer.
Let’s all go out to 25th of May Square.
“I’m fine,” I say.
There’s urine and feces in my hands.
“I’m fine,” I repeat.
And I think I’m crying or laughing or convulsing. I don’t know.
It’s so soft…
And sticky.
Bubbles on my lips…