Side Effects Include

I’ve found myself looking after elderly family members recently, which entails the consumption of evening news before supper. I naturally notice things, and spending lots of time outside the United States on business heightens my attenuation to our unique malaise. Even here in America, I’ve never bothered to get a cable package, so mandatory time in front of the mainstream media is really jarring and with the ads being the worst part.

When possible, I’ll grill a meal [pro tip: buy everything and bring it, don’t trust what’s in an elderly person’s fridge] for us outside, so I’m able to escape the news with a beer in their backyard. Last night, it was pouring rain so that route was closed. One thing you never see abroad are the drug commercials, so I guess Americans don’t have perspective on being subjected to these truly dystopian things which couldn’t be made up in a novel about a nightmare country in the future.

Nobody anywhere else steadily consumes long ads where 1/3 is about why you should tell your doctor to prescribe you this drug to relieve your agony and then the next 2/3 are about how you could perish from the horrific side effects while footage plays of contented people thriving in life.

Suicide is frequently mentioned as a side effect in any drug meant to improve your mood, help you sleep, or control some behavior like smoking. To improve your life, you’re rolling the dice on staying alive. I remember these Chantix ads. Of course, there are now multiple class action lawsuits.

This appears to be a part of the product cycle of many prescription drugs, and probably the companies factor them in as a cost of doing business ahead of time, calculating they’ll still come out ahead financially once the bodies are in the ground. Probably, it’s also about speculating about the stock price at particular times rather than the long term profitability of the company anyways.

You’re listening to the narrator talk about fatal bleeding while happy people browse a farmers’ market or play around at a sunny picnic, it’s a startling juxtaposition. Honestly, the ads for class action lawsuits over the drugs advertised in years past do have their comedic value.

Compounding my dismay is that, generally, I’m blissfully unaware of the maladies involved. For instance, prior to the commercial, I had no idea there was a disease so painful that one would consider having all of his teeth removed. Last night was the first time I heard about some sort of condition where extra skin forms in the penis that causes excruciating erections. Whew.

What does this do to people who consume it on a regular basis? If you notice such things, questions about the implications naturally follow. The other thing is that the elderly are the last demographic in America with the attention span to sit through steady rounds of these drug commercials. They’re nearly as lengthy as they are dystopian and it’s just one after the other.

I also ponder how this dynamic will develop in the future. My conclusion is that this will prove a fleeting moment in time because perhaps the Boomers will collect on their retirements, but looking at a demographic chart, even this doesn’t seem so likely over the next 20 years and that’s setting aside all of the budget issues and the long-term viability of the Yankee dollar as the global currency.

Ensuing generations probably won’t be getting scared into what drugs to ask their doctors about because none of us will be able to afford them, let alone retire. Medicine might go back to being far more improvisational, so there won’t be so much money to make off of all these prescription drugs for which nobody will be able to sit through the commercials.

Hey, look at the bright side, perhaps the medical techniques of yesteryear will be better than bleeding to death from a rectal ulcer because you were taking pills to improve the quality of your sleep or hanging yourself in the garage because you wanted to relieve your anxiety and you were led to believe a pharmaceutical company could do the trick.