Xanax Nation

As I sat watching the 8pm News Bulletin earlier tonight, I felt a strong urge to pop one of these wonderfully fast acting tranquilisers down my throat as a pre-emptive measure against any anxiety attack.

News Bulletins around the world are generally bearer of bad news: The BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera serve us death, destruction and financial chaos on a daily basis followed without transition by the birth of a Panda in a Chinese Zoo as a reminder that hope, somewhere, still exists.

But the News Bulletin on our Lebanese screens differs in a few essential aspects by its format and content. First, the introduction, read by a charismatic anchor staring solemnly into your living room, is a masterpiece of psychological terrorism. Using grand concepts and stiff language, it is written, rehearsed and unleashed in a way guaranteed to alarm every citizen to the inevitability of impending doom. Our fate is sealed somehow shot by a sniper in the North, kidnapped by a clan in the Bekaa or worse… food poisoned by a Shawarma in Beirut.

With the level of anxiety at it peaks, we are then immediately subjected to flashing pictures of men in suits visiting other men in suits.  The effect should be similar to counting sheep in putting us all to sleep, except that we struggle to dismiss the fact that, unlike sheep, these men in suits are supposed leaders of a country we have just been told is grossly dysfunctional.

Finally, the weather report is frustratingly sexy. In the absence of meaningful fluctuations in the level of temperature, the display of the charming attributes of yet another Lebanese siren leads to fluctuation in the level of Testosterone across the nation.

The reality is that, for as far as we can remember, every Lebanese has been confronted with every anxiogenic elements known to mankind:  Aggression, Pollution, Heat, Darkness, Political instability, Alienation…and the News bulletin.

In 2012, the cast is younger, more edgy and easy on the eye; the cardboard background (think TL) has been replaced by flashy TV monitors and swanky furniture; but the message has stood unchanged: Citizen of Lebanon, you live in a country that deprives you of everything and there is no solution – A bitter pill to swallow, that even the birth of a Panda in a Chinese Zoo cannot sweeten.

The effect is predictable. Over the 10,452 Km2 of the republic, whether we are Christian, Muslim or Druze we exist in a permanent state of personal, social and existential anxiety. Despite the temperate climate we are disproportionately irritable, short-tempered and grumpy. And at 8pm every evening we sit again in front of our TV screens, listening to the News Bulletin with the Xanax within arms’ reach.