entirely safe and fun

I’ve been going back over my comment spam a bit, and I noticed a few things that really disturbed me. Probably the strangest thing was the ubiquity of ads for the proton-pump inhibitor (stomach acid reducer) Prilosec. You expect to see online sales for drugs that people are embarassed to ask their doctors for, or drugs with recreational uses. Sure enough, the most commonly advertised drugs I’m seeing are C1alis and Via.gra, or substances with similar names, and perco-cet/VIC0DIN/fen+an yl/Lora%epam/etc. Most Internet sales are probably to abusers.

But almost every comment spam offers Prilosec. In the same spam as the tram/a-dol and the alpra%o1am. What’s the attraction?

“Yeah, man, when your heartburn goes away, it makes you feel real good. If you snort it, man, that’s a rush, like six hours later… wow. Your whole esophagus feels, like, you know, the fire is going out. Cosmic. One time, Phish were in town, maybe in ‘01? - and I got backstage, and ate, like, a spicy hummus pita off the sandwich tray… the one I took that morning, that was the best ‘Sec ever, and I was feeling it while they were jamming to ‘You Enjoy Myself’ for, like, an hour. Yeah, like, totally feeling it. Wow. The helping, friendly purple pill.”

“I was at this party in a warehouse in Pittsburgh, and I had been dancing for so long my glowsticks were fading. Also, I was getting kind of faint, so I scarfed a hot ham Primanti’s. But then I starting feeling pretty bad, and the music started to all sound the same. Then, this guy came over, and he gave me a purple pill, and wow! What a rush! Like right away, five or six hours, tops, I was dancing again, and I kept going for at least another hour before the sun came up. Now I always roll with a ‘Sec when I go out. Peace.”

“Prilosec was the technology of Control. In the Zone, only foods of the most dubious biological, even chemical, makeup could be found, and so all citizens had reached an arrangement with The Man about their gastric pH. Most, in exchange for their fix, lined up to submit to masochistic sex acts in the public pharmacies, where secret degradation junkies sat behind one-way mirrors, lipless white faces practically priapic at the parade of assholes arranged for their pleasure. The acid-reduction metabolism had replaced sex for them. I had started working a short con with Fruity Moe, painting Flutamides purple. Now, Fruity Moe had a prolapsed esophagus…”