I'm a Stranger Here Myself Read Free Page A

buy them by the armloads. Almost $75 billion is spent each year in the United States on medicines of all types, and pharmaceutical products are marketed with a vehemence and forthrightness that can take a little getting used to.
    In one commercial running on television at the moment, a pleasant-looking middle-aged lady turns to the camera and says in a candid tone: “When I get diarrhea I like a little comfort” (to which I always say: “Why wait for diarrhea?”).
    In another, a man at a bowling alley (men are pretty generally at bowling alleys in these things) grimaces after a poor shot and mutters to his partner, “It’s these hemorrhoids again.” And here’s the thing. The buddy has some hemorrhoid cream in his pocket! Not in his gym bag, you understand, not in the glove compartment of his car, but in his shirt pocket, where he can whip it out at a moment’s notice and call the gang around. Extraordinary.
    But the really amazing change that occurred while I was away is that now even prescription drugs are advertised. I have before me a popular magazine called
Health
that is chock full of ads with bold headlines saying things like “Why take two tablets when you can take one? Prempro is the only prescription tablet that combines Premarin and a progestin in one tablet.”
    Another more intriguingly asks, “Have you ever treated a vaginal yeast infection in the middle of nowhere?” (Not knowingly!) A third goes straight to the economic heart of the matter and declares, “The doctor told me I’d probably be taking blood pressure pills for the rest of my life. The good news is how much I might save since he switched me to Adalat CC (nifedipine) from Procardia XL (nifedipine).”
    The idea is that you read the advertisement, then badger your “healthcare professional” to prescribe it for you. It seems a curious concept to me, the idea of magazine readers deciding what medications are best for them, but then Americans appear to know a great deal about drugs. Nearly all the advertisements assume an impressively high level of biochemical familiarity. The vaginal yeast ad confidently assures the reader that Diflucan is “comparable to seven days of Monistat 7, Gyne-Lotrimin, or Mycelex-7,” while the ad for Prempro promises that it is “as effective as taking Premarin and a progestin separately.”
    When you realize that these are meaningful statements for thousands and thousands of people, the idea of your bowling buddy carrying a tube of hemorrhoid unguent in his shirt pocket perhaps doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous.
    I don’t know whether this national obsession with health is actually worth it. What I do know is that there is a much more agreeable way to achieve perfect inner harmony. Drink six pints of beer and watch
Open University
for ninety minutes before retiring. It has never failed me.

Going to a restaurant is generally a discouraging experience for me because I always manage somehow to antagonize the waitress. This, of course, is something you never want to do because waitresses are among the relatively small group of people who have the opportunity to sabotage items that you will shortly be putting into your mouth.
    My particular problem is being unable to take in all the food options that are presented to me. If you order, say, a salad, the waitress reels off sixteen dressings, and I am not quick enough to take in that many concepts at once.
    “Can you run those past me again?” I say with a simpleton smile of the sort that I hope will inspire compassion.
    So the waitress sighs lightly and rolls her eyes a trifle, the way you would if you had to recite sixteen salad dressings over and over all day long for a succession of halfwits, and reels off the list again. This time I listen with the greatest gravity and attentiveness, nodding at each, and then unfailingly I choose one that she didn’t mention.
    “We don’t do Thousand Island,” she says flatly.
    I can’t possibly ask her to recite