Side Effects...

Don't you love the commercials and ads today?

This drug new miracle drug will cure everything from depression to ingrown toenails. It will make you feel better, have more energy, eat less, love to mow the lawn and wash dishes and you will sleep better on it.

All this is said in a soothing voice with calming music or else lovely pictures of the ocean waves or cool mountain cabins. Then there's the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.

The side effects said in a voice that can speak too fast for a human without a robotic mind to understand. If it's a newspaper or magazine ad the whole next page will be filled with side effects that are written in type so small that a gnat wearing bifocals couldn't read.

This drug caused the following side effects in a study of ten thousand people: insomnia, fatigue, sleepiness, ingrown toe nails, hair loss, hair gain, hypertension, low blood pressure, inability to mow the lawn or dust furniture, hatred of cats, allergic reactions to spouses, toe nail discoloration, to hear spouse when he/she talks, sore throat, ability to sing on tune and in key when you've been tone deaf your whole life, muscle aches, low blood sugar, diabetes, etc. etc. etc.

And then there's the last of the story: after six months some law firm is going to figure out that the drug caused a woman to spill her margarita on Saturday night and ruin a pair of brand new cowboy boots so the law firm creates a class action suit against the folks who made the drug in the first place. Now that poor man who's in hot water who couldn't hear his wife tell him to take out the trash, or that woman who has ingrown toe nails has someone in their corner.

I was thinking about this in terms of writing.

Hypothetically, there is a new drug on the market called Miragical. It's a combination of magic fairy dust and a break through drug that creates miracles when combined with the dust. One 50mg pill a day guarantees that an author can write twenty out of twenty four hours, fall asleep instantly and get up ready to go again. The author never has writer's block and absolutely never has to rewrite one word. She/he can produce 5 to 10 thousand perfect words every single day with no problems!

However the side effects include: rapid weight gain, hatred of all nutritional foods such as fruit and vegetable, desire to eat only bacon and chocolate (sometimes combined), potato chips and lattes, chipped finger nail polish, eye strain (from looking at all the research pictures of hot cowboys), inability to speak to normal human beings (that would be those who do not have voices in their heads), loss of voice (from never talking to anyone in a real world), etc. etc.

Do you ever read that foot long list of side effects attached to a prescription? Or have you ever experienced the side effects and then read them?