Have you noticed all the pharmaceutical commercials on TV? Last night while flipping channels I came across such commercial for restless leg syndrome. Apparently, if you can't sit still and feel the uncontrolled urge to stand, there is a pill you can take that will make you more sedentary. I'm not sure what shocked me about this, except for the fact that I'm not at all certain such a condition really exists.
Imagine this, you're at a dinner party filled with people, you're seated on a sofa with the worlds most boring person prattling on about nothing. Suddenly, you have the urge to get up--the urge starts in your big toes and moves up your whole leg until you finally jump up. The person talking to you is taken aback at your seemingly rapid departure until they hear you say, "It's okay, I suffer from restless leg syndrome."
Now I wonder how exactly they come up with these "syndromes" that go along with their drugs or do they simply invent the syndrome to go along with a drug so that it won't be a wash out? Imagine again some guys seated in a board room, saying, "Okay we've got a drug that makes you want to sit, how shall we market this? Never mind it's actually a negative side effect for the drug we designed to give runners more endurance (I don't know if that's true but often that's how drugs are discovered). The other thing that really cracks me up are some of the "warnings" that go along with certain drugs. For example, a certain antidepressants some of the "less serious" side effects include sexual dysfunction, eating troubles (i.e., gastric), weight gain, etc., but what the hell as long as you're feeling better.
It just all seems a little bit silly to me. Like the commercial with the woman sitting in the meeting with a million different thoughts going through her mind, saying that suffers from adult attention deficit syndrome. Ironically I saw another on TV that had nearly the same claim, but it was for a non addictive forming sleep aid.
While I'm on this new subject exactly what exactly does non-habit forming, or non-addicting mean? Can't anything be habit forming? I use earplugs, after so many years I can't sleep without them; I wonder if they make non-habit forming earplugs. I just find it difficult to believe that if you take something each night to help you sleep, eventually you're going to form a habit. Just like brushing your teeth in morning or going to the bathroom when you first wake (maybe sort of).
This subject will now move into another (though related) rant for feminine hygiene products and those pithy sexual dysfunction for men commercials. Have you seen the one with the girls in the classroom passing around a tampon while the idiot teacher asks if she has enough for everyone, causing her to reply maybe for the girls. Or the pad commercials with wings, flaps and now thinner than ever. It makes me want to pull my hair out, so one of those female hair loss products might come in handy, but not as badly as the ones on Spike TV about "Bob." The "Bob" commercial is set in the 1950's and suffers apparently from sexual dysfunction, and takes a pill once a day, and proceeds to lead the conga line around the barbecue--his wife looks happier too. What about the guy walking through the office and everyone wonders what's different about him...I guess what is different is that he finally got a hard on.
Next rant will likely be about why they make adults on cartoons or sitcoms appear so stupid.
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