6 Medication Side Effects Straight Out of a Horror Movie
Most ads for prescription drugs tell you more about the side effects than they do about the intended use. They're basically three solid minutes of soft-focus couples romping in a field to vivid descriptions of diarrhea. It's pretty informative, we have to admit.
But there are some things even the commercials don't tell you. Not necessarily because the side effects are too terrifying (though some are), but simply because some of them sound more like ironic gypsy curses than anything science is capable of.
On-Demand Orgasms
Clomipramine is an antidepressant prescribed to treat depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. One potential side effect of the drug is decreased sexual ability, but that's nothing new: Pretty much every drug that wasn't expressly designed to cause boners accidentally takes them away.
So if you take one clomipramine with one Viagra and then flash someone, is that half a sexual offense?
But it gets way weirder than that. One study relates the experiences of three people taking clomipramine: The first woman wanted to be taken off the drug because every time she yawned, she experienced "irresistible sexual urges." Another woman took it a step further; she had full-blown orgasms whenever she yawned. She could even achieve a real orgasm while faking the yawn -- a fact that throws literally everything we know about women on its head.
Figuring out what this woman is doing is like a virginity test.
The last patient, a male, had occasional orgasms when he yawned, but not with any predictability. That's right: Every time he got bored or sleepy, or just saw somebody else yawning, he had to play a perverse game of Russian roulette with his own pants. The medication did help his depression, however, so he chose to continue taking it.
I don't know why, but these constant orgasms really help my depression!
His solution? He just wore a condom. All the time. Hopefully it was ribbed, for the trousers' pleasure.
Piss the Rainbow
If you've never had a urinary tract infection, consider yourself lucky. The main symptoms are foul-smelling urine, the constant urge to urinate and a burning pain while doing so. It's essentially like having the alien from Alien instead of genitals. Doctors usually prescribe antibiotics to clear up the infection and something else to help manage the symptoms while the antibiotics do their work. They'll also probably tell you not to drop any acid for a while, because they don't want you to freak out and throw your dick out the window once rainbows start shooting out of it.
"Weed is totally OK, though. Pissing is like a spiritual experience."
Urelle (and similar medications like Urised/Usept/UTA) is a combination of several medications: a painkiller, an antispasmodic and an antiseptic. Possible side effects of these drug cocktails vary, but only in color: Urelle will turn your urine and possibly your stool anywhere from a lovely verdant green ...
... to 2000 Flushes blue.
This is thanks to the antiseptic part of the cocktail, called methylene blue. It's a dye that turns into formaldehyde when it comes in contact with acidic substances. Methylene blue is completely harmless, though, and as such, it has been used in practical jokes for over a century. Even M*A*S*H got in on urine-manipulating good times back in the day, when Hawkeye drugged a member of a rival bowling team with the stuff. Presumably, in true M*A*S*H fashion, this levity was immediately countered by two hours of maudlin sobbing and a lecture about the horrors of war.
"That blue piss, that was the sky once. And now it's red, red with blood, and man I should really check that out with the doctor."
Tongue of Darkness
We've all taken Pepto-Bismol dozens if not hundreds of times -- to settle our stomachs, to eliminate heartburn or just because we once heard that if you ingest enough calcium from the tablets, you'll get unbreakable Wolverine bones. It's in everybody's medicine cabinet; surely it can't do anything too weird to you, right?
Although drinking much of the liquid will cause Professor X-like telepathy and hallucinations.
Just ask Max Anderson. Max, like most people, had used Pepto-Bismol many times to treat an upset stomach with no complications. Then he took it one night, just before bedtime, for an upset stomach. When he woke up in the morning, turned to his wife and yawned, she took one look at him and immediately screamed, "What happened to your tongue!?" Confused, Max ran to the bathroom and found that his mouth looked like he'd been going down on Cthulhu all night.
The actual name of this condition is black hairy tongue, and although it looks like the start to either a flesh-eating infection or an argument about your burgeoning octopus fetish, black hairy tongue is completely harmless. Despite the name, it's not just your tongue that changes color; it's actually your entire gastrointestinal tract. Some BHT-stricken individuals also reported pooping out elongated charcoal briquettes later in the day. Hopefully they're just being descriptive there, and not holding the worst barbeque in history.
"I can't believe you butchered and cooked the corpses of our neighbors! You're so clever."
The condition is caused when the bismuth in Pepto-Bismol reacts with sulfur, common in many foods, to create bismuth sulfide -- the black substance. Like we said, it won't hurt you, but keep in mind that the effect can last for several days. So if it happens to strike you, be prepared to either give mini-lectures on basic chemistry for an entire weekend or to live with the reproach and disgust that our society unjustly heaps on the black-tongued.
Also, what the hell is that? A mohawk? You're barred.
Blue Steel
Quick, what do you think of when we say "Viagra side effects?" Is it the four-hour boner? The look of terror in an elderly woman's eyes? Golf? It's probably golf. Well, whatever it may be, you probably don't think "Smurf Vision."
Well, the type of people who want to Smurf their Smurf on Smurfette probably do.
John Pettigrew just wanted what every 58-year-old man wants: Hot, leathery, waddle-slapping old-people sex. He had a controlled prescription for Viagra but claimed he was "having too much fun" to stick to the recommended dosage. After a night that almost certainly culminated in bowlegs and divorce papers, John woke up to a side effect shared only by Na'vi fetishists: He saw the world in shades of blue. At the time of this interview, John had spent 14 days with blued vision and worried that his normal vision might never return. He even claimed that he would "... give up all the sex in the world to be able to see a red letterbox again." This, incidentally, was indicative of another hitherto unknown side effect: traumatically misplaced priorities syndrome.
"But ... I pay for Viagra with a postal order."
And he wasn't just making it up: Though it's not advertised in the commercials -- stuffed to the gills, as they are, with physical innuendo for humpin' -- the side effect is listed right on Viagra's official website.
This happens because Viagra affects an enzyme in your retinal photoreceptors similar to the infamous boner-inducing one. The effect actually makes you hypersensitive to all light, but especially the blue wavelengths. It doesn't affect your vision otherwise; it just looks like you're seeing the world through light-blue-shaded sunglasses, or one of the cameras used to film Terminator 2.
"I need your Viagra, your boots and your motorcycle. I'm busy having a midlife crisis here."
Party Zombie Syndrome
Though doctors classify Ambien as a sedative and say it should hinder arousal as opposed to heighten it, many people claim that Ambien has led to some of the best sex of their lives. Entire message boards are dedicated to telling stories about the wild nights people have while taking Ambien, and only 99 percent of them are probably lies. Even one of Tiger Woods' mistresses, Rachel Uchitel, claims that the two of them would regularly have "crazy Ambien sex." (Note to Mr. Woods: Just roll with this. This is the best plausible deniability ever. You're totally absolved of all responsibility for your actions, but the whole world still knows exactly how awesome you are at boning.)
Tiger Woods calculating his scores.
It's not just the sex: Ambien makes people do a variety of things in their sleep -- walk, eat, drive -- but no one remembers doing them afterward. So while the good news is that the sex is awesome, the bad news is that you're just going to have to take your partner's word for it. Maybe you can politely ask for an America's Most Wanted-style dramatic re-enactment.
Try not to get carried away.
This phenomenon is called anterograde amnesia: the inability to turn short-term memories into long-term ones. Ambien basically shuts down the part of your brain that makes you not awesome, but it doesn't affect functionality. All accounts say the users acted just the same as they did awake -- they held conversations, made meals and fucked like rabbits -- but didn't recall a second of it in the morning.
But it makes a great movie plot.
Now, we're certainly not advising the abuse of any drug, but we'd like to relay something either a lawyer friend or a John Belushi movie once told us: Nothing is illegal if you can't remember it.
Alien Hand Syndrome
For many people, epileptic seizures can be suppressed through medication, but the more severe cases may require brain surgery. One of these procedures involves cutting the corpus callosum, a band of fibers that connects the two halves of the brain. It's highly effective at curing seizures, but unfortunately, it's also highly effective at infusing your limbs with poltergeists.
"Oh holy crap, how do I get down? I'm not doing this on purpose."
The side effect is officially called alien hand syndrome, and it's exactly what it sounds like: The patient's hand, usually the nondominant one, suddenly starts to act of its own accord. It's not just ineffectual twitching, either. The alien hands complete complex tasks, seem to have their own agendas and generally react as if an entirely different person is controlling them. One woman ended up with a smoking problem, but not in the addiction sense -- in the Airplane! sense. She would put a cigarette in her mouth with her obedient hand and go to get her lighter, but before she was able to retrieve it, her alien hand would remove the cigarette and throw it away.
If she tried grabbing the lighter with the alien hand, she set herself on fire.
Another woman was actually seeing her doctor about it when her alien hand started unbuttoning her blouse. She didn't even realize it was happening until her doctor pointed it out, at which point she quickly rebuttoned her shirt with her good hand. The alien hand immediately started unbuttoning again. There are a lot of theories to explain these behaviors, but nobody really knows exactly why the procedure causes you to share your body with a sex offender.
Now, we know what you're thinking, dear reader, and we'd just like to say: No. No, we cannot find any fault in your logic. If you combined Ambien with this procedure, you would have complete plausible deniability for your every action, and you would never, ever have to stop masturbating.
You're a goddamn genius.
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For more medical insanity, check out The 10 Most Insane Medical Practices in History and 8 Terrifying Instruments Old-Time Doctors Used on Your Junk.
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