I'm no longer wondering! Because today I learned, along with the fact that "natural" cures are totally worthless that ADHD is linked to some protein blah blah allele something that also cause alcoholism and eating disorders and shit but turns out to be somehow useful to nomadic tribesmen in Africa.

One hypothesis is that the behaviour associated with ADHD helps people, such as hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads, who lead a peripatetic life. Since today's sedentary city dwellers are recently descended from such people, natural selection may not have had time to purge the genes that cause it.

Dan Eisenberg, of Northwestern University in Illinois, and his colleagues decided to test this by studying the Ariaal, a group of pastoral nomads who live in Kenya. The receptor Mr Eisenberg looked at was the 7R variant of a protein called DRD4. Previous work has shown that this variant is associated with novelty-seeking, food- and drug-cravings, and ADHD.

The team looked for 7R in two groups of Ariaal. One was still pastoral and nomadic. The other had recently settled down. As they report in this week's BMC Evolutionary Biology, they found that about a fifth of the population of both groups had the 7R version of DRD4. However, the consequences of this were very different. Among the nomads, who wander around northern Kenya herding cattle, camels, sheep and goats, those with 7R were better nourished than those without. The opposite was true of their settled relations: those with 7R were worse nourished than those without it.

So now we know why Amazonian shamans don't have some magical natural cure for us in the rainforests? Because they'd be too busy competing with us for food? Well… How nice for modern civilization that I am in no danger of passing on these alleles!

The Misfits [Economist]
Weighing Nondrug Options For ADHD [NY Times]

Patient Voices: ADHD [NY Times]

On second thought, you know what? Fuck the bonerkillers just this once. It turns out that Big Pharma's insatiable lust for profit seems to be funding a lot of interesting research on the female orgasm.

Like, why doesn't Viagra work on women? Well, Pfizer tested 3,000 of them, and figured out that prompting a rush of blood to the gonads didn't really do the trick. (It doesn't? I would think it would?)
"What we know is that very little of what's going on with women and sex is below the waist," Anita Clayton, co-author of a book called Satisfaction: Women, Sex and the Quest for Intimacy, tells the Washington Post. "Almost all of it is above the neck." Ugh, great. Well, then came this suntan drug that was supposed to make everyone horny (and tan!) but the FDA pulled the plug when it looked like high blood pressure was a side effect. (I have low blood pressure, guys, I'm sure it's safe for me!)

Anyway, for once in my life I have no real strong opinion. Except that all this reading about arousal is making me pretty sure I do not have the dread hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

A Dose Of Desire [Washington Post]
Related: Adderall Makes Me Hump Like A Guy
Earlier: Five Reasons To Love Viagra

I am wont to believe him, having read the bestselling works of "Economic Hit Man" John Perkins, who clearly thought up his thesis of the world under the influence of ayahuasca. But what does it all mean?

That the Burning Bush was a hallucination, too? (Yes.) That religion is a fraud? (Duh!) That the moral codes we take for granted, chalking up to an amorphous mix of socialization and/or evolutionary biology and/or something resembling an innate human conscience was concocted under the influence of hallucinogens? THAT RELIGION IS LITERALLY THE OPIATE OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TOO POOR FOR ACTUAL OPIATES???? Why yes! I mean, yeah yeah mood-altering substances bear responsibility for much of the world's bar violence/opportunistic adultery/convenience store theft. But, don't all the truly bad things happen at the hands of sober people and/or people newly off their meds? Yes they do. Is it to early for a drink? No it is not.

Moses Was High On Mt. Sinai [AFP}

1. The story of Viagra starts in 1982 with a conference of urologists in Las Vegas at which one Dr. Giles Brindley decided to display off the effects of an injectible erectile dysfunction drug he was developing by brandishing his boner onstage. The doctors in the audience described his wang as long, thin, and grayish. It was the beginning of a reliable flow of fun, bizarre erectile dysfunction-related news stories and assorted stupid crap like this.?

2. Lots of dudes get prostate cancer. My dad, for one. Don't get me wrong, I do not want to think about my parents having sex. So I am going to end this entry before I get ahead of myself. I mean, when it all comes down, you're glad breast implants exist, aren't you?

3. Viagra actually definitively solved a physical problem. How many modern pharmaceuticals can even say that? For every person you know whose, like, life was saved by Zoloft, you probably know five people whose insurance companies have spent thousands of dollars sampling an array of mood-altering drugs that left them crazy, panicky, suicidal, incapable of solving any underlying problems and/or completely devoid of the desire to have sex. And couldn't most of our first world problems be solved by a little more sex?

4. Viagra helped people talk about sex. Again, agreed: you didn't want to picture Bob Dole and Liddy having sex, but you probably didn't want to picture Ron Jeremy having sex either, and now you don't have to, because thanks to Viagra the adult entertainment industry no longer has to rely on gross freaks who happen to have massive boner-prolonging capabilities.The Viagra salesman memoir Hard Sell — which I actually read for some reason — is full of heartwarming stories about uptight Midwesterners being emboldened to talk to their doctors — and then, their neighbors! — about fucking. And what followed? Bible Belt vibrator parties, the repeal of the Texas sex toy ban, and... well, the term "va-jay-jay", but every revolution has its lame elements.

5. As long as I am going to get old, I would like to get laid. I mean, duh.

Like me, Derek De Koff took Chantix because he was disgusted that he'd allowed himself to be enslaved to such a filthy, gross-smelling and skin-yuckening addiction for so many years. Unlike me, he had some awesome side effects:

One evening, I steeled myself to go on a date, but after a few drinks with the guy, I abruptly burst into tears mid-sentence. The crying jag lasted about 30 minutes, with the thought I can't do this anymore looping through my head. This was happening a lot lately, as though someone had spliced other people's thoughts into the tape whirl of my brain.

Another night, at an East Village bar, an older man in a trench coat caught my attention. I chatted him up for a while, until I realized I was actually trying to go home with the shadow cast by a potted plant. With alcohol in my system, I was somehow able to take this hallucination in stride: "The man who got away ... " But that same evening ended with my taunting a skinhead who was improbably on the corner of Avenue A and 14th Street. "You must be lost," I snapped. "Are you looking for 1993?" He ended up chasing me into a deli and saying he was going to murder me. (The guy at the register called the cops and the skinhead fled, so I'm fairly confident that he, at least, was real.)

I'd smoked my first pack of Marlboro Lights at age 16, by the time I could get my friends to drive me from suburban gas station to gas station in search of a vendor who didn't ID. (Never took long.) By the time I was a junior in college, I was smoking a pack of Camels a day. And then, finally, I came home to live one summer. It was Father's Day. I didn't have a present. I was completely fucking broke. Suddenly, a revelation hit me. "Dad, for your birthday, I'm going to quit smoking," I promised. It was, of course, a selfish gift. Who really wants to be a smoker? It makes you smell like filth, fucks up your skin, eats all your money, and...oh yeah lung cancer. Things were better back in the sixties when you could smoke in hospitals and airplanes and, like, everyone's probably skin sucked. But they're different now.

I'd heard about Chantix from a friend's doctor-parents (who, incidentally, will prescribe you 4 different drugs for a common cold). It sounded promising, despite the warnings of gas, vomiting, and weird dreams — woot, quitting in a pill! I'd never successfully quit for more than a few days before — I can't tell you how many times I'd been at a party and drunkenly ripped off my nicotine patch to join the smokers outside. No matter how nasty and gross it is, when you're a smoker and you want a cigarette, you really friggin wannnnt one. So I knew I needed drugs. So I called my friendly neighborhood gyno (Did I mention how much I loooove whoever lets gynos prescribe mind altering substances?) She sent me two scrips in the mail.

Like De Koff says, you're allowed to continue smoking for the first week you're on the drugs, and for me it was a nice farewell period. I slowly came to enjoy each cigarette less and less, and by day seven I knew I no longer needed that filthy little fucker between my fingers. He just didn't do it for me anymore. The magic was gone. It was exactly like realizing that dude you've been obsessed with for the past two years is actually the Comic Store guy from The Simpsons — he smells bad, steals bills from your wallet, and if you keep doing him forever you'll definitely fuck up your life somehow. Girlfriend, you don't need him! You were always better than that. Now you finally see it. (If only there were such a thing as Romantix, I pined.)

So what about the side effects? Oh, I had dreams of talking dogs and my mom getting brutally murdered, but nothing like De Koff's adventures in mania land, although one time I had a panic attack while I was driving home from work. At least I think it was a panic attack; I just suddenly had this strange fear that I wouldn't be able to drive home.

But the panic attacks were nothing like what I experienced when I started taking Wellbutrin, a few months later. (I was depressed — who isn't? And was half-hoping the Wellbutrin would help me lose the weight I'd gained over the summer from not smoking.) But those Wellbutrin days — now those were some panic attacks. It's hard to describe that unsettled feeling, but usually in the afternoons I would get agitated and antsy, and then I'd start drinking, hoping that would calm me down. It only made matters worse. It was the same sort of paranoia I've felt after smoking too much pot, the feeling that you are actually losing your mind. It's horrible. Anyway, I'd never heard anyone complaining about Wellbutrin making them nuts 4 nuts until I did some googling and discovered that, no, actually many, many people have panic attacks on Wellbutrin, and some people even end up killing themselves.

So yeah, about then I started smoking again. I'd do a lot of things to lose weight, but I couldn't very well stay on the Wellbutrin. Anyway, the moral of the story: all drugs are different for different people. But Chantix wins over Wellbutrin because while both of them may cause panic attacks or suicidal thoughts, Chantix actually sort of works for quitting smoking some of the time. Hey, it worked for my great uncle Bob, and he'd even tried hypnosis! [Um, I saw Uncle Bob last year, and I'm not so sure about this... -Moe]

One Man's Experience With The Stop Smoking Drug Chantix [NY Mag]

This story is, like, my worst nightmare, as someone who has consistently had all sorts of fun dreams such as the one where I wake up with tiny sets of teeth embedded in my skin...Of course, it's hard to say what's worse: tiny sets of teeth embedded in your skin? Or the constant, ever-present sensation that they are sprouting?

But Morgellon's is actually a real thing caused by agrobacteria, which is a sort of bacteria that has long caused tumors in trees. Now agrobacteria have figured out how to implant their DNA in human cells. Maybe. Well, no one is sure, because no one has money to study the DNA of this shit. Mutant worms may be involved. It's sort of like the new bipolar disorder, combined with the new Lyme disease?

In the meantime, most doctors maintain it's all bullshit.

The writer of the story is giving an online chat on the Washington Post website in two hours, so maybe check in over there and report back. And now, excuse me while I spend the next twenty minutes rabidly scratching my scalp.

Figments of the Imagination? [Washington Post]
Related: New Study of the Bizarre Disease Where Wires Grow Out Of Your Skin [io9]

No one likes to think we're prey to the shameless "Talk to your doctor!" come-ons of the advertising industry. We like to think we are too smart for that. We like to think we make rational purchasing decisions borne of a thorough survey of all the available options — or that at the very least, we are creatures of our own innate needs and desires. I can only assume that this is why a lot of you got so defensive when I joked that fibromyalgia was a "vague pharmaceutical industry invented malady." A few of you turn out to have fibromyalgia — and "restless leg syndrome", and whatever else I treated with my signature careless disdain. I'm sorry guys; I made my point less thoughtfully than I maybe should have. We all have health problems. But right now the most highly -capitalized, influential and consumer-savvy source of all that we know and learn about those problems — the developers of the drugs, the sponsors and publishers of their studies, the sources of continuing education to your doctors — is the pharmaceutical industry, and the pharmaceutical industry exists to convince us that our problems are "syndromes" necessitating a pill you take once a day. Ever wondered why the industry doesn't seem to develop anything you can take once and be done with it? Yeah, well. Ever wondered who that cute guy in the suit with the briefcase sitting outside your shrink's office at lunchtime was? Yeah, don't ask him out, he's definitely a player and he's probably a recreational Cialis user on top of that.

Anyway, apologies to everyone out there who is suffering from something. Just hatin' on the game, so to speak. If I spoke that way. Whatever.

Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy [WSJ]

Why invent a disease? Well, if you've got a drug with a limited market — like Pfizer's Lyrica, originally developed for seizures, it's pretty genius business to make up a mysterious new ailment that a lot of people could potentially have or be scared they have. Where do you think ADD came from? What about "bipolar disorder"? "Irritable bowel syndrome"? Oh sure, those diseases affect one in 1.5 Americans, and we have them too, but:

...Those figures are sharply disputed by those doctors who do not consider fibromyalgia a medically recognizable illness and who say that diagnosing the condition actually worsens suffering by causing patients to obsess over aches that other people simply tolerate.

Drug Approved. Is Disease Real? [NY Times]

Pillhead, Jezebel's resident pharmaceutical expert, has been wanting to review the wonder drug Provigil for some time now. It makes you smart! And happy! And thin! But it's not yet generic. And...it didn't really seem to be working for Britney Spears. In fact, it could have gotten her pregnant. After the jump, a very special "Pillhead."

If today's reports are true and Britney Spears really is pregnant, again, it might not be her fault (sort of.) Recently, the fertile one has been photographed toting around a bottle of Provigil. Provigil is a prescription-only drug that has gained popularity in the past few years as a "smart drug." Like Adderall, Ritalin and the whole raft of stimulants powering today's attention-starved youths and conquering the hungover fatigue of certain bloggers I know, Provigil increases alertness. Like a certain over-the-counter drug I made Moe try for me, it helps with weight loss. It has apparently been proven to have "certain cognitive-enhancing effects" — that's where the "smart drug" part comes in. And unlike Adderall, it does all this without making you want to stab everyone less competent than you!

(You know when a pharmaceutical salesman visits the pharmaceutical rep message boards to congratulate a competing company on the drug they're peddling that you're on to something)

I took a Provigil this morning about 8:00AM and fuck sakes- I have not felt this GREAT in a LONG time!!! I'm your typical type A early 40s white male who generally spends a good amount of time being pissed off about nothing, really... Today I had FUN in every account, was laid back and really enjoyed my day.

But there was a problem: my insurance wouldn't cover it. Because it was six hundred dollars. What?! See, there's no generic version — and there won't be for the next five years.

But you can generally get insurance to cover it if you have a proven sleep disorder, and obvious jokes aside, that's probably how Britney got ahold of it — not for "cocaine addiction" as speculated, though small studies have suggested it can be effective for that. Britney allegedly sleeps for most of the day and even slept through several court-ordered drug tests and at least one widely-viewed live MTV appearance. Her insurance probably even pays for it! But there's a catch:

"Women who use hormonal contraceptives such as birth control pills, shots, implants, intrauterine devices (IUDs), or patches may have a higher chance of getting pregnant while taking Provigil and for one month after discontinuing the use of Provigil."

Even worse, if Britney did become pregnant while taking Provigil, the risks of birth defects are unknown:

"...it is not known whether it will be harmful to an unborn baby. There are no adequate studies that assess effects of Provigil in pregnant women or nursing mothers."

(Of course, Britney has recently been accused of being addicted to drugs and alcohol, which are proven to cause birth defects, so Provigil might be the least of her problems.)

Think about it: if you were Britney Spears, wouldn't you be on birth control? And if you were Britney Spears, wouldn't you probably not obsessively educate yourself about the contra-indications of your new "smart drug"? I don't think anyone hopes Britney is pregnant, but if she is, let's hope she stopped taking (any) drugs in time.

And if she isn't, maybe she should switch to a stronger drug. Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta probably won't do it for her, but I've been cruising the ADD forums and there's a drug called Desoxyn that's getting a lot of good reviews. Desoxyn has been around for awhile, but it's been stigmatized for the past few years because its generic name is "methamphetamine." But if one prospective patient could give meth heads a bad name, I think we all know who that is...

I stopped drinking caffeine and alcohol and stopped eating chocolate, cheese, M.S.G., nuts, vinegar, citrus fruits, bananas, raspberries, avocados, onions, fresh bagels and donuts, pizza, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, aspartame and all aged, cured, fermented, marinated, smoked, tenderized or nitrate-preserved meats.

I didn't like the amitriptyline. It made me gain weight. It made me sleepy.

And, once I got used to it, I came to almost enjoy being on my diet, exploring my capacity for hunger and self-abnegation, obsessing over what foods I could eat, and how, and when. At the very least, the diet made my friends happy. Renouncing food, renouncing pills, is so often, in our time, seen as the right and righteous, pure and wholesome thing to do.

And yeah, if the answer to the question posed in the headline is "to find a way to generate traffic writing about my restrictive diet because that's all dieters like to talk about in a way that causes readers to sympathize with me and communicate with one another" — not that I would venture a theory that cynical! — it sure worked!

The Migraine Diet [NY Times]

Because now that anyone with a shady doctor and a Livejournal account (or, ha ha, a job actually doing this for a living) can spew out uppers-addled rants weaving together Amy Fisher and Madonna and cutting and crying fits and her own sad, sad, sad life as an incredibly hot and intelligent young writer, it's important we preserve the laws that seal her status as the very first? Because getting a 160 on her LSATs wasn't good enough for the ACLU? I don't know; suffice it to say this story was depressing, but in a kind of overall, non-specific way. That kind of feeling where you don't know quite what's wrong with all this, and that almost makes it worse, and then the whole thing becomes an unending spiral of "I hate myself because I hate my life and it's so hateful that someone like me should hate her life because I have no real reason to hate anything about it which oh god just makes it so much WORSE..." Anyway, there are supposedly drugs for that.

Coming Soon: 'Law School Nation'? [New York Times]

This is a shame, because there are numerous diet aids and procedures dedicated to giving you the runs, from Master Cleanse to the high colonic to the foulness known as Dieter's Tea to my old crutch of choice, Senokot, or more likely, its $7.99 CVS version, "Senna-C." Sennosides are formed from some sort of leaf that, once ingested, somehow agitates your stomach to produce a wet — if still clumpy — shit. I used to take quite a lot of senna tablets, to the point where the expense was on par with a moderate cigarette habit, until finally it just tapered off. I distinctly remember the last time I took them: I was working on a story, and had just consumed an entire box of Rice Krispies in water, in addition to a wheel of Laughing Cow or something idiotic like that, and an ex-boyfriend invited me to dinner. "I don't know if I can come," I protested. "What, do you have to take a shit or something?" he asked. (Conveniently, he remembered his "prescience" six hours later when I was sitting on his bed explaining why he could not go down on me.)

Anyway, Alli is sort of like Senokot, only more expensive because the sudden, massive watery shits are augmented by a few globules of grease, to let you know it's "working." The problem is, anything that "works" by making you shit constantly is invariably going to make you hungry constantly — even if you're not hungry, you're just dehydrated; trust me you'll feel empty inside — and therefore constantly desirous of food. And if you could temper your cravings for food, would you be abusing laxatives in the first place?

Beyond that, all that shitting on purpose makes people insane. The obsession with the trajectory of your weight — the obsession that makes anorexics so dead-afraid of gaining any — becomes almost cartoonish, and then you start wondering what kind of toll the whole thing is exacting on your asshole. Seriously, though fuck your asshole for a second, and just think about all the time you have wasted. No, don't! I have years of my life where the most salient memories were of the weird pully-type toilet tank in the office bathroom, and the vaguely eerie "Psssst" of the automated freshener I assumed for months was some sort of surveillance device. God, and that's a lot of time to spend smelling the residue of other people's shits. Hours you'll never get back, kids!

Anyway, in conclusion, you're better off constipated. Hemorrhoids, after all, can be treated with a little cream. Your sanity is another story!

To summarize: sometimes people feel bad because life lacks fulfillment and getting dumped sucks a lot and antidepressants will probably help you with that although you should wait awhile before you take them, preferably until that point when you are mainly depressed because you are still so fucking depressed, and what the fuck is wrong with you already — yeah, that's when even the most conservative shrink will cough up a scrip. Some people gain weight and lose their desire to fuck, whereas some people do not, and generally the people who feel the best on the pills keep taking them, whereas the people who feel a little iffy about them stop. You're not supposed to drink on antidepressants and we're just going to act like nobody does even though everybody does, and in any event, pills will only help you in the event that you concurrently waste a shitload of money on therapy.

I think I'm depressed that I actually just wasted Adderall reading that.

The pharmaceutical industry works like the women's magazine industry: attractive people telling you what's wrong with you and how they can fix it in a super underminer-y way so as to send you shame-spiraling toward a lifelong cycle of dependence. Okay, so: Ambien. Why ever would we need it? We consulted Pillhead, who said: "You only think you don't need them because you drink yourself to sleep every night." But only because of the Adderall! "And why do you think my doctor wrote both prescriptions at the same time?" she replied. "Because he's a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry's conspiracy to invent new First World diseases because there's no money in curing the old Third World ones!" we responded, reflexively. And then we felt a sharp pang in our liver. (Whoever said you can't feel your liver wasn't an alcoholic.) After the jump, Pillhead finds eternal love with Ambien after a brief dalliance with Lunesta leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

Hi, it's Pillhead, your guide to recreational and lifestyle pharmacology. Last time I pussed out on taking Alli and shared some serious TMI about Adderall instead. This time I'm playing some soothing music and giving you the dirt on prescription sleep aids.

Sleeping pills are so hot right now! Martha Plimpton recently described her bedtime to New York Magazine as "When the Ambien Express arrives at Sleepytime Station." If you've ever taken Ambien, you know the feelings of love and devotion that little oblong white pill brings out. You also may know the feelings of WTF? brought about when you wake up with your pajamas on top of your clothes and nine popsicle sticks on the nightstand. (And maybe a mystery condom. Did I have sex last night? Yeah, so it's sort of like drinking.)

I didn't ask my doctor for a sleep aid, he just offered me an Ambien prescription and I said, "Why not?" That night, I popped half and climbed into bed with a book. The next morning I woke up with the light still on and my head on the book — I hadn't even made it through one page before sweet, sweet Ambien knocked me out. (This is why I have a theory that the decline in literacy rates and the rise of sleep aids are inextricably linked.) Ambien is a success because it's a lifestyle drug. Why leave it up to chance when you can now choose the exact five minute window in which you'll fall asleep?

Which is why its important not to take Ambien until you're actually in bed. We all know about the widely-publicized cases of people who took it and tried to drive cars, and I have a friend who took it at a party and "came to" hours later in an unfamiliar bar. Another friend used to hallucinate and babble endlessly about his favorite architects when he mixed Ambien and Jim Beam. (Yeah, so EVERYONE got in on the sleep.)

After a year on Ambien, I asked my doctor for Lunesta because I'd read it was less habit-forming, and also, obviously: those pretty magical moths in that enchanted forest. Five minutes after taking it my mouth was full of what tasted like a mixture of aspirin and copper. I fell asleep anyway, but when I awoke I was shocked to find that the taste was still there. All day long I guzzled water and tea but it only made the taste worse! I remembered "unpleasant taste" being a side effect in the pretty moth commercial but this was ridiculous! So I turned to Google, and it didn't let me down. On message board after message board, Lunesta users were one-upping each other trying to find the best way to describe the infuriating taste:

"...like a heard of wild animals nested in my mouth."

"The delightful taste I'm enjoying is not at all metallic, though; something more like dirty socks. So I've had some dirty sock eggs, a dirty sock glass of milk, a dirty sock sandwich.... you get the idea. Water, gum, juice, hard candy, mouthwash — nothing brings more than a few seconds relief, and then the dirty socks are back with a vengeance."

"The metallic taste is horrible, no matter how much water you drink or gum you chew. I think it works better as a diet pill. I don't want to eat or drink certain foods, since it makes me gag to try to do so."

"Oh man, nothing like sucking down a few coins with rotten egg!"

In my case the taste lasted for several days, and I bored my friends to death because it was all I could talk about. So: if you're in the market for a sleep aid, magic Ambien is the way to go. Besides, Lunesta is expensive and - rejoice - Ambien just went generic!

My Valentine: Ambien" image by JoeWorld [Flickr]

Dear readers, I'm sober right now. It's a strange feeling because it's one a.m. I mean, I'm tired but not quite ready to pass out, I am not really thinking up any good jokes. I still don't really feel like washing my face or brushing my teeth, which I kind of expected to be easy, given the little skirmish the amphetamines and nicotine are waging against my gums. You know, now that I think about it, I am going to brush my teeth. It's not so bad once you stand up. And look! I just stood up without getting the spins. How did this happen? I took two Campral moderation pills this evening. You're supposed to take six a day, but they're expensive and I like my moderation in moderation. Which is why, um, I have taken approximately eight Campral pills since picking up my prescription on May 11. (If anyone wants to buy/trade for Adderall... um take your illegal activity elsewhere!) Because, you see, they sort of work for me. Which I take from their shitty reputation among real alcoholics to mean I am not actually a real alcoholic, just someone who needs to take a break once in awhile. Like Lindsay! To whom I am dedicating this post.

In my experience, Campral, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2004 and peddled by Forest Laboratories, significantly quiets both the "Oh my god there's a bottle of wine in the same room as me and I really really really love wine" voice and the "Holy shit this glass of wine is almost halfway done and I really really need to know there's more coming!" voice that likes to taunt me when I'm making a conscious effort not to drink, replacing them with a new voice that just says "Water. Water. Water. Water. Water" while another one intermittently whispers "Are you being fun? Do you think you're as fun when you're not drinking? Oh, what's that, a yawn? Don't you think you should maybe go home now that you're not really feeling fun? Do you think anyone notices the effort you're making?"

I don't know how Campral works. The literature peddled by Forest says something like "no one knows." I think this is common language for literature on pharmacology drugs, which is very comforting. Anyway, so it fucks with your brain. I found out about it because I went to a shrink in hopes of getting help with my attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, not that I believe in ADHD since I read this book Generation Rx and generally distrust corporations since I had to make a living listening to them tell investors how they planned to squeeze 3 more points of operating margin out of their customers every fiscal quarter. But my mom, who is a schoolteacher, feels quite sure that as a child I had a pretty virulent strain of the "disorder," and anyway this is my job. So I needed Adderall, and my shrink, who is a nice lady but a total pawn of the pharmaceutical sales reps, not only refused to prescribe the generic form of Adderall in favor of the $1.25-a-milligram extended release version, she wrote up a prescription for Campral, which turns out to be so ineffective in most people that it's a subject of regular mockery on the message boards frequented by the pharmaceutical reps whose job it is to sell it:

"Now that it's completely gone from my bag, I'll admit, Campral sucks. To think that anyone in history has ever made it through a single month without missing a dose is a fantasy."

For the record, Campral IS a stinky drug. It also gives you a case of the stinks.

oh oh
By Denise Gellene
Los Angeles Times
The drug Campral, approved two years ago to treat alcoholism, works no better than a placebo in reducing the craving for alcohol, according to a study.

The pharmaceutical industry is sort of like women's magazines: Staffed by blandly attractive people determined to make you feel bad about yourself, and brimming with new ways to kill your libido. But wait! Pillhead may have found the elusive pink Viagra! In her second installment, Jezebel's resident pharmaceutical expert takes a break from the body obsession to have sex like RIGHT NOW. The crucial ingredient? Amphetamine salts... better known as Adderall. There are all sorts of reasons to take Adderall, from its appetite curbage (its original marketed use, when it was called Obetrol and Andy Warhol used to pop them like, well like we pop Adderall today!) to the whole "serenity" thing, to the fact that it turns some people into geniuses (though not so much others). But enough already, let's get down to business! And you know what we mean by business.

I've been taking "Adds" occasionally ever since I got hooked up with my bad doctor two years ago, but usually I just sell them to my friends. About a month ago, though, I started taking 5mg quarters more often and later in the day, and noticed a dramatic change in my libido and, uh, "performance".

A little background: I'm one of those chicks who comes from regular sex. Before you hate me, though, I can't stand receiving oral sex and it's been an "issue" in every relationship I've ever been in, so there are trade-offs. I usually have an orgasm during intercourse about 60% of the time, mainly because sometimes I'm lazy and don't feel like "going for it." Also, that cliche about women making their grocery lists during sex is a cliche for a reason, but we can't help it! It's hard to focus sometimes! Anyway, ever since a Ritalin-induced month of no libido a few years ago, I have assumed that, even though it's an amphetamine, Adderall would be bad for sex. After all, "decreased libido" and "impotence" are listed as possible sexual side effects.

Not listed as possible sexual side effects, however? The fact that it can turn some people into sex machines!* Below, an addendum to the side effects I'll call the "sex effects".

• Wanting sex all the time. Like now. At work. Especially after seeing the Lachey/Minnillo sex photos which would normally have the opposite effect.
  
• Foreplay? What foreplay? Just stick it in already!
  
• As soon as it is, uh, stuck in, I realize that I can come immediately if I want to and that I'm actually going to have to find a way to hold off. I'm going to have to get ESPN so I'll know enough about baseball to think about it.
  
• Coming twice: By myself, and then about a minute later when my partner comes. The first time this happened I actually shrugged and mouthed "I don't know either!" (I'm sure that was really flattering.) Now it happens, like, every other time.
  
• There's something different about sex on Adderall that I couldn't put my finger on until the other night: It's way more physical than mental. Needless to say, my guy loves my rebirth as an easy-to-please Adderall sex fiend, but there's only one drawback: I don't feel like giving another blow job ever again. Oh well. Tradeoffs!

*And it's not just me! I did some Googling and found more cases like mine:
"I can literally have an orgasm just sitting in a chair."
"Orgasm is like a thousand times more intense."
"It's almost starting to bother me because I orgasm very quickly." (Heh. If only everyone had that as a problem.)

The pharmaceutical industry is sort of like women's magazines: staffed by blandly attractive people, determined to make you feel bad about yourself, and brimming with new ways to stop you from being fat! Unlike women's magazines, however, Big Pharma has come up with a few weight loss ideas that actually work, which is why have learned to sit back in consent as it decimates the American health care system. With that in mind, welcome to our first installment of 'Pillhead', in which a real connoisseur reports on this exciting field and tries not to crap her pants in the process.

Some basics about Alli, if you've missed the huge marketing campaign:

• It's the first FDA approved over-the-counter diet drug.
  
• It became available late last week at drugstores and online.
  
• It works by keeping some of the fat you eat in each meal from being digested.
  
• It costs $60 a month, which depending on your situation is generally cheaper than Adderall.
  
• If you take it with a meal that has too much fat, ORANGE OIL COMES CASCADING OUT OF YOUR ASS IN A RIVER DOWN YOUR LEG AND INTO YOUR BOYFRIEND'S FACE.

  Okay, that's not exactly what the marketing materials say, but they do suggest that you wear dark pants.

  The makers of Alli call the side effects of taking an Alli pill and then going crazy with a Bloomin' Onion "treatment effects". The message board posters more cleverly call it an "Alli-oops". I call it "IM-ing Moe and saying "Oh my god I can't do this. What are you making me do? I can't do this!"

  A survey of the "personal experiences" board yields mostly callouts to join groups (40 Year Olds, Brides-to-Be, People Who Live in New Jersey) and most of the posters seem to have not yet experienced any of the dreaded "treatment effects". But then there are the posts like these that I'm praying were written by pranksters:

  I Can't Believe I Just **** All Over Myself!

  Oh god.

  As a husband, just want to clue you in on a request....when you head to the ladies room, by all means turn the fan on. Something is indeed needed to mask the ungodly sounds emanating from the toilet. It sort of takes away the mystery, the romance if you will of a romantic interlude. Plus, the kids find it hysterical...I have even had my 11 year old record mom's tunes and has created a digitalized version with her actual sound samples (and god knows there were plenty!). Just a heads up ladies, turn the fan on, or even better wait until no one is home to start your syphmony.

  I took a picture of what came out of me today (gross, I know, but the people need to know), but I don't know how to load it. The water in the toilet actually had grease floating on the surface...a lot of it!

  All of which adds up to "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!", but I am willing, gentle reader, to try Alli for one week and report back, Slutmachine TMI style. Mostly because I'm getting paid. And not planning to eat any fat of any kind. You're welcome!

  But don't worry, no pictures.