Yoga in a Pill: Our Obsession with Pharmaceutical Drugs
Published by Rodney Ohebsion at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Rodney Ohebsion
America is really into pills. About half of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and Americans as a whole use half of the world’s prescriptions drugs. 310 million Americans use half—and the world’s other 6.7 billion people use the other half. We’re like that drunk guy at a bar or party who says, “I’ll do twenty shots for every one shot you do.” Does that guy even exist? Probably not. So even the drunkest person at a bar or party is looking at us and saying, “You guys are getting a little carried away.” That’s a sign that we’re a little overmedicated.
Just watch TV for an hour, and you’ll be bombarded with commercials for drugs. “How’s your blood pressure? Is it OK? How about your cholesterol? Blood sugar? Your mood? You definitely need some sort of pills. Let’s just figure out which ones. Are you feeling depressed? Take this. Do you want to quit smoking? Take this. Are you annoyed by your mother-in-law? We have a pill for that. Are you tired of having to change your clocks for daylight savings time? We have a pill for that, too. Do you hate taking pills? We have a pill for that. Are you not taking enough pills? We have a pill for that. Are you taking too many pills? We have ten pills for that. And if you aren’t sure which pills to take, we definitely have a pill for that. We have a pill for everything. We even have a pill for nothing.”
It’s like all of these drug manufacturers are some sort of drug dealer following you around everywhere you go and pestering you. Channel 15: “Do you want some uppers?” Channel 16: “Do you want some downers?” Channel 17: “How about some uppers and downers? The effect will be neutral. But it’ll be a really good kind of neutral. You’ve never experienced a neutral like this before, man! I’m telling you—take this!" FOX News: “If you don’t take this pill, the Democrats will win.” MSNBC: “Rupert Murdoch doesn’t want you to take this pill. That means you should take it.” MTV: “I got 99 pills...”
At least actual drug dealers draw some sort of lines. They’re unwilling to go to certain places. They don’t go to church, interrupt the preacher, and say, “OK—who wants some crack? Crack time. Time for crack. Crack and church are a good combination. You haven’t heard Amazing Grace until you’ve heard it on crack.” But the pharmaceutical companies—they’ll go anywhere. They have a master key. It’s only a matter of time before they start advertising on Nickelodeon. “Is your daddy a poo-poo head? Tell your mommy to get him... Happy Daddy. Side effects might include a daddy who pee-pees a lot, and forgets your birthday.”
And of course, kids themselves are taking psychiatric drugs. That’s why Tommy is watching Nickelodeon, and not smashing up a room.
Over 5 million American kids and teenagers are calmed down regularly with the prescription drug Ritalin. As in. “Oh—look at Tommy. Tommy’s out of control! We gotta give him something. Let’s give him some pills. There we go. That calmed him down. Now he’s watching Nickelodeon. Alright.” But I actually have a really good Ritalin alternative. This works just as well or better than Ritalin. Just put your kid in a cage with padded walls and a toilet—and leave him there for 4 or 5 hours. And if you want, you can play the Benny Hill music, too. He’ll have a great time—and that should take care of everything. Without any side effects.
And you can attach his arms and legs to something that’ll use his movements to generate power. There we go. I just solved the energy crisis. One kid will be enough to power an electric car battery. And all of Las Vegas. I’ll bet Jesus put hyperactive kids in this country to reduce our reliance on Muslim oil. That makes a lot of sense. Any time you give your kids Ritalin, you’re helping the terrorists. I’ll bet OPEC owns shares in the company that makes Ritalin. The FDA should force that company to put a Saudi Arabian flag on its bottles.
So don’t give your kid Ritalin. Just put him in a cage. And if you don’t want to put him in a cage, just attach his hands to a rickshaw, and have him carry you everywhere. Just imagine a left wing environmentalist type coming across something like that. He’d be really conflicted. “Uh... wait a second. They’re helping the environment, but they’re being pulled around by their kids. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this.”
So drug companies are telling us that we don’t need cages or rickshaws. I’m not necessarily saying we do—but they don’t want you to even consider my theory. Why? Mainly because they’re in the business of selling pills. They want Johnny to take a pill, and they want you to take a pill. So, they try to reduce everything to a pill. “What’s your problem? It doesn’t matter. Here’s the solution. A pill. Just take a pill. There you go. Oh. You don’t have problem? No problem! We have pill for you, too.”
And they’re selling a lot of pills. And people are using a lot of pills. But alternative medicine is also popular. It’s becoming more popular. And it’s taking business away from your Mercks and your Pfizers. They’re going to have to do something. Pretty soon they’ll offer their own versions of alternative treatments. Like yoga... in a pill. Yoga in a pill. “You want some yoga. Take this pill. There you go. There’s your yoga. Ommm. Ommm.” Although I guess the chant, the mantra, will also be a pill. “Ommm should not be taken with sedatives or antidepressants.” So we’ll have Pfizer yoga. Merck yoga. Pfizer ommm. Merck ommm. Although they’ll probably call it something like yogatherenol or isayogafin or ommmatherodox or parasnalinommm. I don’t know how well they’re going to sell, though. A lot of guys go to yoga mainly to stare at women who are in unusual positions. So basically, they’ll have to put some sort of picture on the bottle. Or better yet, it should come with a poster. Pfizer—you should hire me.
Oh—and there’ll probably be air in a pill at some point. “You need air. This pill contains it. Oxygenastifil.” Oxygenastifil. People aren’t even going to breathe anymore. The pills will take care of that. A few decades from now, only 1% of the population is going to actually breathe. Breathing will be like what listening to vinyl records is to us now. As in, “You play records on—what is that—a phonograph? What—you’ve never heard of an iPod?” Only it’ll be, “You breathe air through your nose and mouth? What—you’ve never heard of oxygenastifil? What the hell is wrong with you?”
They probably won’t stop at air. What about thinking? “You use your mind to think? What—you’ve never heard of thinkegenastitherenol?”And as western medicine progresses, we end up taking more and more pills. because they keep on introducing more and more pills. I can only imagine what things are going to be like in the year 2100. When you go on vacation, you’ll take a suitcase for your clothes, and another one for your freaking pills. If the airline loses your luggage, you’ll turn into the Tasmanian Devil. “Ah—I need my pills!”
They’ll be tons of psychiatric drugs. Right now, there are a few hundred disorders in the book—but at some point there will be a few billion. They’ll just keep on finding new ones. And if they have to invent a few, so be it. There will be billions of disorders. The average person will have twenty thousand of them, and be on twenty thousand pills. Half of our lives will consist of us just taking pills off of a conveyor belt. We’ll just lie underneath the end of one, and it’ll drop pills in our mouths. George Orwell, are you listening to this? 1984? 2084. There’s a novel. Someone write it. I’m not going to do it. I don’t have time. I have pills to take.
How are people going to keep track of all those pills? That’s what I want to know. Pretty soon, that’ll be a main subject school. Math, science, English, history, and pill management. We’ll take E Pluribus Unum off of our money, and replace it with, “Don’t forget to take your pills.” Or maybe there’ll be some iPod iPad whatever for your pills. And Apple will collect the information, and use it to make recommendations. “People who take parasnalinommm, bradpitaophil, celebutrix, and butriselix, also listen to Lady Gaga, watch Michael Douglas movies, read Dostoevsky novels, visit TMZ.com, and should really consider breaking up with their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife.”
Apple and Merck will merge into one company—applegenastimerck—-and they’ll basically determine what we do. So there are some more ideas for 2084. The novel. And the movie. Paramount—you should hire me. Someone should hire me. This entire routine is really just me seeking employment. That’s a side effect of being a nobody in this industry. “Side effects include...”
I like how commercials for drugs have to list all of the drug’s side effects. Right there. Right in the ad. The government requires them to do that. When I see something like that, I know my government is working for me. But the thing is, all of these drug commercials—they play this nice, pleasant music, and someone with a pleasant voice tells you how great the drug is—and they continue all of that right through the side effects. “Side effects might include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, gonorrhea, and death.” Ah. I think when they get to the side effects part, they should be forced to change the ad into some sort of horror film. Like Friday the 13th.
A commercial starts off with some sort of nice, relaxing, calming music. “Celebutrix treats this, it treats that. It’s so great. It can improve your life. Hey! You should get some.” Then the side effects part starts and the music changes “REEH! REEH! REEH! REEH!" And a guy with e hockey mask and a chainsaw comes on and says, “SIDE EFFECTS MIGHT INCLUDE GONORRHEA, DIARREAH, VOMITING, NAUSEA! IT MIGHT KILL YOU!" Then he should take the chainsaw and slice off someone’s head. Now that’s what a call a drug commercial.
In many parts of the world, the government is like that when it comes to cigarettes. In some countries, it’s not enough for a cigarette pack to have a warning. They actually have to include a picture of someone who’s been harmed by cigarettes. Like a picture of someone with a hole in his throat. Or someone’s black, cancerous lung. They put that right on a cigarette pack. Along with a warning. “There you go. If you want cigarettes, you’re going to have to look at this first. We’re not messing around here.”
I think we should do that with other things, too. Like marriage licenses. Each one should have a picture of Fred and Ethel Mertz on it. “This might happen to you.” And they should also have a picture of a happily married couple. As in, “This might also happen to you.” Present the big picture.
And they should do that with cigarettes. Next to the guy with a hole in throat, there should be a 93 year old Chinese guy smoking three cigarettes at once, and a quote: “I’ve ben smoking four packs a day for the last 83 years, and my lungs are cleaner than a Whole Foods Market in San Francisco. [Inhaling] Oh—that’s good. Oh. Menthol.” That seems fair. That Chinese guy should have his own band of cigarettes. He’d become as popular as the Marlboro Man. That’s a good idea. Philip Morris should hire me.
Cigarette companies can hardly get away with anything these days. We’re pretty hard on them. But food companies? We give them some room. A while back Coca Cola tried to market itself as health food. “Oh—it’s refreshing.” OK. Well, I guess it is. And beating your wife—that’s exciting. Maybe the wife choking industry should advertise that. “You want some excitement? You should beat your wife. Especially if she forgets to buy Coke. Coke is refreshing. And beating your wife is exciting.” Yeah—that should help popularize wife beating. By the way—I don’t want to the wife beating industry to hire me. I have principles. I’m not going to work for them. Well—I might. If the Philip-Morris deal doesn’t work out. Hey—I have to make a living.
So that was Coca Cola. And nowadays, a lot of food manufacturers and restaurants advertise the fact that their food contains... food. They’re bragging about that. “Wow—this food contains food. You should eat some!”
I saw an ad for Lay’s potato chips. They made a big deal about how their potato chips contain potatoes. They even show video of the actual farm with potatoes growing. “Look—these potatoes. They come from the earth!"
Or Domino’s. They go on and on about how their tomato sauce contains tomatoes. “Ooh!" And again, they show you video of the farm. I guess people watch those ads and think, “Hey! They contain actual tomatoes! Great. I figured they just took a bunch of used tampons and squeezed them. No—they’re using tomatoes. Wow! We should get some Domino’s.”
Wendy’s is even worse. They’re advertising natural cut French fries. What does that even mean? Natural cut French fries? As in they don’t use blades to cut them? I’ll bet they have some employees in back, biting off pieces of potatoes and spitting them into a deep fryer. “There you go. Natural cut French fries. Enjoy.” I hope Wendy’s has a good health care plan—to make sure their teeth are nice and clean. Otherwise, I’m not eating natural cut French fries. I’ll tell you that right now.
So this is good. I’ve destroyed the reputation of Wendy’s—they might have spit in their fries—and Coca Cola—they want you to beat your wife. And, I’ve also presented cigarette smoking in a positive light. There is in fact Chinese guy who’s smoked 2.5 million cigarettes over his lifetime, and his lungs are fine. And I’m talking about unfiltered cigarettes.
OK. Now I’m going to target Trader Joe’s—the health food store. Hopefully I’ll ruin their reputation, too.
Trader Joe’s can get away with almost anything. It's crazy. three quarters of what they sell isn't health food, but it doesn't matter. It sells. They'll represent anything as health food. “Nature’s Valley Deep Fried Pork Rinds.” Only they won’t call them pork rinds. Organic triple sauteed protein crisps. With 4 milligrams of EFAs.
Trader Joe's is like that South African character from Lethal Weapon II. The one with diplomatic immunity. He just killed people left and right, and then whenever Mel Gibson and Danny Glover wanted to arrest them, he just flashed some card and said, “Diplomatic immunity.” And they backed off. From now on, Lethal Weapon II is the official film of Trader Joe's. That South African guy is their mascot. They have immunity. They can get away with anything. “Heath food store immunity. It’s not deep fried. It’s triple sauteed.”