The Drugmonkey Tries His Hand At A Book Review. Because Someone Gave Me A Free Book In Recognition Of The Awesome Power I Wield With This Blog.

This may be my favorite Big Pharma ad ever:





"Modern man is the victim of this era" reads the headline.

"War...rumors of war...atomic devastation...too much government...economic uncertainty- all part of a complex pattern, all part of these troubled times. Today, countless factors are taking their psychic toll in your patients. Mental depression is one of the most common results.

'Dexedrine' Sulfate can do much to help the depressed patient. By restoring mental alertness and optimism, by inducing a feeling of energy and well being. 'Dexedrine' lifts your patient out of the gloom of depression and helps him face the future."

Dexedrine, for those of you not in the profession, is a brand name for a type of amphetamine. If nothing else, Nicholas Rasmussen's new book, On Speed, The Many Lives of Amphetamine will forever serve as documentation that there was a time when Big Pharma said the appropriate response to the threat of nuclear war was to start passing out crank.

The book is more than a collection of amusing historical pharmacy anecdotes though. (Another favorite - the tale of an early generic version of amphetamine produced in defiance of Smith, Kline & French's patent and sold in many cases "without the significant savings passed along to the customer." The name of the knockoff? Profetamine. Get it? Profet...Profit? It would be a few more years before pharmacy became the nation's most trusted profession.) In it, Rasmussen makes the case for amphetamine as a key marker of the end of the period of "snake oil" medicine and the beginning of the evidence-based medical era. He isn't shy about the downside of modern pharmaceutical marketing, although at times it seems as if he is trying a bit too hard, such as when he says the Cox-2 inhibitors Bextra and Celebrex "promised to make arthritis suffering obsolete" (they never claimed to be more effective than older arthritis meds, only to be easier on the GI tract) or that the original contraceptive formulas "probably cause cancer" (recent studies show that being on birth control tablets actually cut a woman's overall lifetime cancer risk) The documentation of amphetamine as "a drug in search of a disease," however, will sound familiar to anyone in the health care field, and may well beg questions such as why Attention Deficit Disorder was not nearly a problem on today's scale back when Dexedrine faced no competition as an anti-depressant.

While the book also follows the trends of amphetamine abuse in general society, from cramming college students, ramped up soldiers, jazz musicians, beat poets, hippies who figured out "speed kills" through today's ecstasy raves and crystal meth epidemic, it's most valuable as a chronicle of how where we've been in medicine explains a lot about where we are today.

Personally, if we were about to get nuked, I'd think I'd rather just quietly go to sleep.

From The Big Pharma Bizarro Ad File

Try to ignore the fold down the center of the ad. I tend to shove things into my pocket at work without thinking about how a crease mark down the center of a picture might look when I scan it into my computer:




So Kristalose is nice and clear and an alternative for people whose insurance will no longer cover Miralax since it went over the counter. I get it.

But why the hell is the lady staring into the sink like that? Kristalose is supposed to make you poop. What's that got to do with staring into the sink?

She doesn't look like she's washing her hands, she looks more like she's confused, or grabbing the sink in frustration. "My God it's been so long....and now I finally have to go ....but......dammit! Which one is where the poop goes and which one is for washing your hands? I can't remember!!!"

"I do remember how nice and clear that solution was when I took it though. That's important for some reason."

Perhaps someone should do some research on a possible link between Kristalose and early-onset Alzheimer's.

The lady staring into the sink like that kinda creeps me out. I'm going to spend the rest of the night trying to think happy thoughts.

Dipping Into The Mailbag And Feeling The Love Gives Another Teachable Moment About Republicans And Their Similarity To Humans.

Got this one in reaction to my fake story about Jenna Bush's selfless self-sacrifice on the battlefields of her Daddy's war:

Not sure why you even choose to write a blog like that. What a waste of keyboarding. Being a pharmacist, I know you make good money. Not that President Bush has made the right calls at every juncture, but the candidate you endorse is from a party that supports income redistribution, er, taxation. I would think that your education combined with your pay stub would cause you to be a little more protective of what YOU earned and less interested in what the next fatty on welfare who comes into your pharmacy with a nicer cell phone and $0.00 copay can reap from your hard work.

This is trick #1 in the Republican playbook my friends. Allow me to translate from Republican-talk to English:

Drugmonkey, you make a valid point about the war in Iraq, and how the people who started it are in no way prepared to make any of the sacrifices they ask of others. I can offer nothing to counter the actual point you made, so therefore I will write condescendingly about a topic never mentioned in the actual post I am pretending to react to. The condescending, fact-free manner of my writing will allow me to feel intelligent without the downside risk of being proven wrong.

Republicans use this maneuver often, thinking they can catch you off guard by pretending the subject they pulled out of their ass is the same one you were talking about. They also love to use the mythical fat welfare recipient who somehow lives a better live than you as a trump card. The fact we've pissed away twice as many dollars in the pointless Iraq war as we spend on the entire medicaid system never sinks into their heads. The only function of the federal government in their eyes is providing money to fat people with ipods. They are blind to the army, the navy, the coast guard, the national parks, the Food and Drug Adminstration, the interstate highway system, and air traffic controllers. They seem to think the only people to whom the federal government has ever paid a dime are overweight and unemployed.

They also ignore the fact that people on welfare get a lot less after Bill Clinton reformed the system in 1996.

They ignore it because it stands in the way of their hate. Republicans have to have someone to kick down so they can be assured they are not on the bottom.

I prefer to kick up. At the bastards who started this war. Kick up at the people who make it impossible for a single working mother to get decent day care so she can start to make her way past all the bootheels being aimed at her jaw. Kick up at the forces that pay me $1.50 to fill a $175 dollar prescription.

Your enemies are not below you my friends. Your hatred properly directed should flow upwards.

Surely Jenna Bush Didn't Just Get Married.

I guess it's a sign I'm getting old. I thought for sure she was still in Iraq. Sure enough though, I found this story on the drugmonkey news wire:

CRAWFORD, TX (DMN)- First daughter Jenna Bush was married today to Henry Chase Hager, son of a former Virginia lieutenant governor, in a ceremony described by a family spokesman as "especially meaningful," coming exactly one year to the day after the bride's release from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Ms. Bush had spent 6 months in the medical facility recovering from wounds she received when the Army's 507th Maintenance Company, which she commanded, came under sustained sniper fire north of the Iraqi city of Basra in November of 2006. She was later awarded the Bronze Star, which she wore on her wedding dress "in honor of all those who didn't make it home"

Sources said that shortly before the ceremony, Jenna spoke with her estranged twin sister Barbara for the first time since Barbara's claiming of conscientious objector status shortly before the beginning of the Second Gulf War.

"What Barbara did was real hard on the family" said a close friend who asked to remain anonymous. "For generations, it's almost been in the Bush DNA that the blessings of this country must be earned by the shared sacrifice of all who call her home."

"Well, maybe not so much for the last 60 years or so." Concluded the source, who then slid away to the bar.

"I'm real proud of my little girl" said the President at the post-wedding reception. "I....excuse me if I tear up here a little.....I remember when I was defending Houston from the Viet Cong back in 1970....how I hoped my children would never know the horrors of war I had witnessed. Jenna, may your's be the last generation to go through what you and I have. It's time for the world to realize peace is our only hope. I only wish I had the power to do something.....anything.... to lessen the blight of war on our planet. For once one has seen its terrible toll, no human would ever wish it on the child of another."

"I think it's time for dinner now" concluded Mr. Bush. "Bring it on"

Important Disclaimer: Jenna never served in Iraq, as George Bush is far from honorable enough to expect that his own children would assume the risks he places on the children of others. The only parts of this post that are real are that Jenna got married, and the picture below, which depending on how the dog felt about the whole thing is either animal abuse or just kinda kinky:

My Plan to Stop The Drugging

It started with a heartbreaking comment left by Madam Z to yesterday's post about The Department of Homeland Security involuntarily drugging people during routine deportations.

This is horrifying! What can we do to stop this practice? How can it be publicized?

Heartbreaking because I knew the Washington Post did far more to publicize the story when it ran on its front page than Madam Z or myself ever could. I shared her horror, but I knew that even though almost 700,000 sets of eyeballs had seen that story on May 14th, nothing had happened, and probably nothing would.

But dammit, Madam Z was counting on me, and I could not let her down. She's a self-described Amazon with flame red hair, and amazon women with red hair can get me to do almost anything. I developed a plan.

Today my friends, we shall start a rumor that the Department of Homeland Security is drugging Britney Spears against her will. Stay with me here.

In an internal email issued this afternoon, Los Angeles Associated Press assistant bureau chief Frank Baker notified his staff of a major policy change."Now and for the foreseeable future," he wrote, "virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal."

Torture of prisoners by the Federal Government? Yawn. Britney buying a toy horse at Rite Aid? NEWS!! My friends, instead of gnashing our teeth, we can use the power of Britney for good. Should this rumor take hold we all know the avalanche of outrage that would instantly be brought down on Homeland Security headquarters. My hope is that the fans of Britney would be inarticulate to the point that the bureaucrats at DHS wouldn't quite know what they were talking about, and would assume that the public is rightfully disgusted at the real involuntary drugging that's going on.

Counting on people who think Britney Spears is important not being able to state their thoughts clearly may be the strongest part of my plan.

And while the rumor would be false, I'm not too worried about getting it past the fact checkers at CNN. I think the new standard for CNN fact checkers is "slight plausibility," and I'm pretty sure we can do better than the slight plausibility that someone is pumping Britney full of Haldol:



So my friends, if you cherish Western Civilization, if you hold the ideals that gave birth to this nation close to your heart, if you believe that you and I and every soul that inhabits this planet today and tomorrow and forever has a right to be free and not to be drugged, if you love your children, you will tell everyone you know that the United States government is injecting Britney Spears with Haldol against her will. You may never do anything as important.

Not to mention..... it would explain so much.

Evidently The Department of Homeland Security Could Use My Mad DUR Skillz.

You know, if you're gonna involuntarily drug people, thereby breaking international law, quite possibly meeting the definition of torture, and most assuredly providing an answer to future questions of "Why do they hate us so much?"......could you at least get the dose right? From the Washington Post:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account.

This isn't the doping up of Guantanamo Bay prisoners I wrote about earlier. These are routine deportations. Non-terrorists.

Federal officials have seldom acknowledged publicly that they sedate people for deportation. The few times officials have spoken of the practice, they have understated it, portraying sedation as rare and "an act of last resort." Neither is true, records and interviews indicate.

What? A Federal official in the era of Bush saying something that is not true? Why, I've never heard of such a thing.

People taken into custody by the freedom loving government of the United States and involuntarily drugged when they have no history of violence or mental illness can at least rest assured that the drugs will be properly administered though, right?

Um, no.

Internal government records show that most sedated deportees, received a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states.

That would be the same Haldol that was used in Soviet "mental institutions" on political prisoners. I think every American can be proud of that.

They were also given Ativan, used to control anxiety, and all but three were given Cogentin, a medication that is supposed to lessen Haldol's side effects of muscle spasms and rigidity.

Asked to explain the reason for using Haldol and other psychotropic drugs with people who are not mentally ill, ICE responded, "The medications used by Aviation Medicine are widely used in psychiatry."

Thereby totally ignoring the fact that deporting a person with no mental illness is in no way considered the practice of psychiatry.

Agency officials said that medical escorts administer "the lowest dose possible." Combining Haldol and Ativan "allows you [to] use less of each," they said, and produces a quicker and longer sedative effect.

Allows you to use less of each he said.

typical doses to help psychotic patients accustomed to the drug are perhaps five to 15 milligrams a day. Several deportees were given a total of 30 milligrams, which (University of Toronto specialist in psychiatry and pharmacology Philip) Seeman characterized as "really high," especially for people who have never taken the drug before.

The Post's data shows two people were given over 40 mg. Allows you to use less of each he said. For Christ's sakes. It's like they're not even trying when they lie anymore.

Unwarranted Haldol is the kind of thing that happens when you suspend the rule of law and let policy be dictated by miscellaneous jack-offs on a power trip, and this is the type of thing that happens when you get the Haldol dose wrong:

Ade was being held down, he recalled, when he noticed a nurse "with a needle and a bottle with some kind of substance in it." He said he told the guards: "Okay, fine, fine. If it's going to be like this, don't inject me. I will go on my own free will."

The nurse went ahead, the log shows, injecting him in the left shoulder with two milligrams of a powerful drug, Haldol, used to treat psychosis, and one milligram of an anti-anxiety drug, Ativan. He was injected with two more rounds, as well as a third drug, in progressively larger doses, during the trip.

When he landed in Lagos, Nigeria, Afolabi Ade was unable to talk.

"Every time I tried to force myself to speak, I couldn't, because my tongue was . . . twisted. . . . I thought I was going to swallow it," Ade, 33, recalled in an interview. "I was nauseous. I was dizzy."

As he was being flown back to Africa, his American wife alerted his parents there that he was on his way. His father was waiting at the Lagos airport. It was the first time in three years that they had seen one another. Shocked by how woozy the young man was, his father decided not to take him home and frighten the rest of the family. Instead, he checked his son into a hotel.

Ade was in the hotel for four days before the effects of the drugs began to abate.

Yesterday the power tripping jack-offs were turned loose on people accused, but never convicted of, terrorism. It was done in secret and hidden for as long as possible.

Today it's people married to Americans and it's published in the Washington Post. It's OK though, because the people being abused have funny names.

Ask yourself who might have a little (or a lot) of Haldol in their future tomorrow. Ask yourself if drugging people who aren't sick is the kind of thing you want done in your name.

I'm guessing it's not, and I'm guessing it'll be a long way back from being the type of country that does such things.

Maybe we can start by getting the dose right.

Today, A Sincere Thank You To The State Of West Virginia......

....for reminding me why I got the hell out of that part of the country.

Mrs. Clinton defeated Senator Obama Tuesday in a primary where racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor.

The number of white Democratic voters who said that race influenced their choice on Tuesday was among the highest recorded in voter surveys in the Clinton-Obama nomination fight. Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said that race was an important factor in their vote,

Two in 10 is another way of saying 1 in 5. And that's the number of cracker-asses in West Virginia willing to admit to being racists. The real number is much higher, as most racists aren't brave enough to say publicly what they are. Trust me on this. I'm an insider.

Here's the funny part. Most of these hillbillies have probably never seen a black person. I was 13 years old when I saw my first black dude. I played baseball and he was the coach of the visiting team. I was probably in college before I saw any more.

So, I don't say this often, so listen up West Virginia. Vote for McCain in November. I want to be as much unlike you as possible. I don't want to look like you, I don't want to sound like you, I don't want to like anything you like, and I sure as hell don't want to think like you, when you bother to think. Because you're stupid.

Too stupid to see how you, your parents, and your parent's parents parents have been nothing but fucked over by people who weren't black.

Did a black man own the coal mine that broke the spirit of your grandfather? No.

Is a black man blowing the tops off your mountains and dumping the waste in the holler? No.

Did a black man start the pointless war that killed your child? No. Yet somehow you still get all teary-eyed believing the lie that is your daughter Jessica Lynch.

I hate to tell you this hilljacks, but you have far more in common with the people dealing with the legacy of slavery than you do with the people spending the profits of king coal.

But you're too stupid to see it. Vote for McCain West Virginia. It's kinda funny to watch them fuck you now that I'm gone.

The rest of you know what to do.

A Quick Question For Everyone Who Works In A Doctor's Office.

Why do you think you need a fax from me to renew someone's prescription? You really don't. You can issue a prescription at any time, in any way you like. You can write it down, you can phone it in, you can leave it on the voicemail. Hell, when I was in Ohio the law still said you could transmit it by telegraph.

Yet you'll sit by the fax machine, sometimes for hours, and wait like you need the fax machine's permission to do your job. Sometimes you'll even call me..... tell me what the patient asked you for, and instead of approving or denying the refill request, you'll say something like "WE HAVEN'T GOT A FAX YET!!"

Why do you think you need one? I mean, it's a renewal, and you have a record of what you've prescribed the patient in the past....don't you? I mean, when the doctor issues a prescription, you guys do write it down somewhere, right? All that medical type information necessary to provide proper care.....you do keep track of that.....I hope.....

If not, maybe you should start. Because I bet your office could save a lot of time if the doctor didn't have to re-examine and re-diagnose every patient every time they came in.

Or maybe you do have the information, and would just rather sit on your lazy ass stuffing snacks into your face and talking about the new weight loss fad instead of getting up and finding the chart.

I think you know which one I think it is.

I'm Tired Of Being Everyone's Soap Bitch.

I'm going to write something in this post that may at last lift the veil of semi-anonymity that has covered this blog for the last three years. It may also frighten any of you that shop at corpo-pharmacies:

When the soap is empty in the store's bathroom, I replace it.

There you go. If you work or have ever been in a drugstore, and there was soap in the bathroom, you now know exactly who I am. Because I SWEAR TO GOD I seem to be the only person on the planet capable of putting soap in the bathroom of a pharmacy. This now covers 16 years, three different pharmacy chains, and two states. Tonight however, I have seen the empty suds bottle one too many times. I'm calling a soap strike.

This time I put the soap next to the sink in the pharmacy. There's plenty for me. There's none in the bathroom. It'll be an interesting experiment to see how long it stays that way.

Just don't interrupt me when you see me come up from the back of the store and head to the pharmacy sink. That really wouldn't be in your best interest.

I Randomly Dive Into The Giant Pile Of Crap Mail That Never Gets Opened, And Come Out With A Stupidity Nugget

Many of you will look at this ad and undoubtedly be confused by the model pictured power walking her way to health.



You're confused because you can't read the fine print beside her leg:



"Hi, Bob? Great job on the Levemir layout. We just have one small problem. When we showed it to focus groups, about 20% of the people who saw it thought the purpose of the model was to explain the intricacies of quantum mechanics, and they didn't get the connection with a diabetes treatment."

"What?"

"Another 15% thought we were making fun of Oprah."

"Oh my God!! We're already over budget on this! And we sure as hell can't afford to get sued by Oprah! Jesus, what are we gonna do!!??"

"Calm down Bob, I think I've got a solution. If we add some microscopic print that should take care of everything. We simply must state the sole purpose of this model in a way most people will overlook."

"Do you think it will work Dirk?"

"It will have to work."

Bob walked out of the office frightened, but somehow reassured that the steady leadership of Dirk would once again get the department through another crisis.

At that moment Bob realized he was in love.