He was kindly enough, considering his beard and bulk. He got me to tell him everything and kept nodding his head. This seemed reassuring. Then it occurred to me that I too used to nod my head while clients were talking and I felt somewhat less reassured.

However, he said that I was suffering from a particular form of adjustment disturbance. The separation had worked in my psyche like a time bomb and after a while had caused something to snap. Caused, in fact, a series of ruptures. I had made a mistake in neglecting the problem for so many months. There had been a degeneration of the adjustment disturbance, which was in danger of evolving into a depressive state of moderate gravity. Such situations ought not to be underestimated. There was no need to worry, though, because the fact of having come to a psychiatrist was in itself a positive sign of self-awareness and a prelude to recovery. I was certainly in need of pharmaceutical treatment, but, all in all, after a few months the situation would be decidedly improved.

A pause and a piercing look. They must have been part of the therapy.

Then he began writing, filling a page of his prescription pad with anxiolytics and antidepressants.

I was to take the stuff for two months. I must try to find distractions. I must avoid dwelling on myself. I must attempt to see the positive side of things and avoid thinking there was no way out of my situation. I must hand over 300,000 lire, there was no question of a receipt and we’d meet in two months’ time for a check-up.

From the doorway as he showed me out, he advised me against reading the descriptive leaflets enclosed with the drugs. He was a real authority on the human psyche.

I hunted for a chemist’s a long way from the centre of town, to avoid meeting anyone I knew. I didn’t want a client or colleague of mine present when the chemist yelled out to the assistant in the back some such phrase as “Look in the psychotropic cupboard and see if we have extra-strong psychiatric Valium for this gentleman.”

After cruising around a bit in the car, I selected somewhere in Japigia, on the outskirts of the city. The chemist was a bony young woman with a rather unsociable air, and I handed her the prescription with averted eyes. I felt as much at my ease as a priest in a porn shop.

The bony chemist was already making out the bill when I recited my little speech: “While I’m here I’ll get something for myself as well. Have you some effervescent vitamin C?”

She looked at me for a second, without a word. She knew the script. Then she gave me the vitamin C along with the rest. I paid and fled like a thief.

When I got home I unwrapped the package, opened the boxes and read the enclosed leaflets. I found them all interesting, but my attention was irresistibly drawn to the side-effects of the antidepressant. Trittico with a trazodone base.

The patient began with simple dizzy spells, passing swiftly on to dryness of the mouth, blurred vision, constipation, urinary retention, tremors and alteration of the libido.

It occurred to me that I had already seen to altering my libido on my own, then I went on reading. I thus discovered that a limited number of men who take trazodone develop a tendency to long, painful erections, what is known as priapism.

This problem might even require an emergency surgical operation, which in turn might result in permanent sexual impairment.

But the end was reassuring. The risk of fatal overdose of trazodone was, fortunately, lower than that resulting from the use of tricyclic antidepressants.

Having finished reading, I fell to meditating.

What do you do in the case of a prolonged and painful erection? Do you go to a hospital holding the thing in your hand? Do you put on very comfortable underpants? What do you say to the doctor? What does permanent sexual impairment amount to?

And again, how much does one need for a fatal overdose of trazodone? Are two pills enough? Or does it require the whole packet?

I found no answers to these questions, but the Trittico ended up down the bog, along with the rest of the medicines prescribed by my psychiatrist. My ex-psychiatrist.

I conscientiously emptied all the packets and pulled the chain. Into the rubbish bin went the boxes, phials, ampoules and descriptive leaflets.

That done, I poured myself an ample half-glass of whisky – avoid alcoholic beverages – and put Chariots of Fire into the video machine. One of the few cassettes I had brought away with me.

When the first pictures started coming, I lit up a Marlboro – avoid nicotine, especially in the evening – and for the first time in a very long while I almost felt in a good mood.