Results tagged “drugs” from GGWoo
The NYPost's Page Six Magazine had a facinating article yesterday (though there is no damn online link to it that I can find which sucks) on desktop junkies or what kind of drugs, prescription and otherwise, are being popped by the 'average New Yorker'. Now given that this is Page Six, I'd expect it to be a bit...sensationalized, and even though they presented the eight people as randomly selected, I'm sure it was probably a group of people who all knew and referred one another so the scientific merits of true randomness are completely debatable. That being said, I was struck by the narrative that went along with each bio.
The thrust of the story was each person keeping a one week record of every pill they took, whether over the counter, prescription (theirs), prescription (someone elses), or non-legal. There was an equal distribution of men and women, all between 26 and 33 years old, with a variety of jobs such as lawyer, model, graphic designer, writer, etc.
In each case, every person was on at least one anti-anxiety/depression med, usually Lexapro, with 3/4 of the people on a second or third and had been for years. Several of the people were taking additional prescription meds almost daily for migraines, one for a UTI, or other medical conditions. A few were taking really strong meds or had scored some pain meds from friends or associates and were taking them with their evening cocktails or in the case of the chick with the UTI who couldn't drink while on her antibiotics, took some SOMA when she went to a party to get high. There were additionally, an assortment of over the counter supplements, vitamins, etc. I especially liked the guy who was taking a three-day anti-cold/flu prevention remedy because he'd "been on a coke binge all weekend".
I was just kind of dumb-founded at the roster of things everyone was taking and even living here, it was hard for me to step back and think it wasn't actually a good sampling and had tons of error built in. But the non-scientific part of me just sat back and thought...WTF? Is this the young go-getters of NYC? It almost seemed to creep up on me how backwards and middle-America I felt reading it, because I just didn't connect to it at all. It's just not me. So I did a quick mental calculation of my drug use in the past week and came up with 1600mg of Ibuprofen on Sunday through Wednesday which dropped to 800mg on Thursday and Friday, and then nothing over the weekend (I'm still in my cast after my surgery last month). We were out for dinner both on Friday and Saturday but no one was sharing prescription narcotics with each other over wine and appetizers. So again I come back to "who are these people?" in a way that is not so much judgmental but rather just curious as if I'm missing out on something that I should know? When did this all start happening?
I'm still kind of bewildered, honestly.
