writing as poison/cure

I've been thinking of Derrida's writings on the pharmakon while recently feeling the birth pangs of writing and understanding its simultaneously poisonous and medicinal effects. "The ‘essence’ of the pharmakon lies in the way in which, having no stable essence, no ‘proper’ characteristics, it is not, in any sense (metaphysical, physical, chemical, alchemical) of the word, a substance." Writing is hard.