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.

Understatement Of The Day.

I live for pharmacy my friends. I breathe it. 24/7 my mind is on the drugs. Like just now I was spending my spare time reading about anticholinergic side effects. There is no better way to spend a Saturday night, and probably no better illustration of why I am single.

My commitment to medicine is matched only by my appreciation for stupid proclamations. Which is why I found this statement from our friends at Merck to be so personally fulfilling:

Anticholinergic effects include confusion, blurred vision, constipation, dry mouth, light-headedness, difficulty starting and continuing to urinate, and loss of bladder control. Most of these effects are undesirable.

A twofer! Informative and idiotic at the same time! Exactly which of these effects is the desirable one you suppose? Maybe the confusion. In a world gone insane, anticholinergic-induced confusion may be the best way to cope.

The blurred vision may also help with this. I see no possible role for loss of bladder control though.

It's A Short Night So I Don't Have Much For You. Enjoy This Iggy Pop Video

In an interview with The New York Times last year Iggy said of this performance:

"I'm going to be straight, I was more than a little high"

The best bands usually are:






I love how the whole hedonistic spectacle of unparalleled rock and roll debauchery is narrated by the square in the suit. I can just see him after the show in the hotel bar, tie slightly loosened, a martini in hand bending the barkeeps ear:

"Jesus Christ you wouldn't believe the things I saw today Bob"

I also love the sidekick....."hello....I'm a doofusy looking young person here to interpret what's going on here for Mr. and Mrs. small town America, and to make it appear non-threatening so we don't get too many complaints. Think of me as your window into the world of todays youth."

The youth that would have no doubt eaten him alive had he actually been in the crowd.

I was born 20 years too late. Sigh. Goodnight.