Wednesday, October 4, 2000

By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

I failed my drug examination today.

You can't get a fast food meal at McDonald's anymore without taking a "banned substance" test first. They took away my Happy Meal. All I had consumed was Sudafed, chased with some anabolic steroid-coated amphetamines. Boy, everyone is so picky right now.

I was just glad they didn't give me one of those humongous cups as a specimen jar and tell me to "Supersize it." It was all embarrassing enough, but did the guy have to say, "Would you like fries with that?"

It has been crazy with the Olympics. Can no one stay straight anymore? Of course, I think I might take drugs, too, if I was an Olympian and had to face the prospect of Katie Couric doing one of those "Special Profiles" on me, digging up (not literally, thank goodness) every deceased relative or friend I have ever had.

VH1 should sue NBC for stealing their popular format. The Peacock Network might as well just call it, "Behind the Muscles." Somebody needs to test perky Katie for saccharin abuse.

But, back to the drugs. The thing that is shocking to me is, how so many over-the-counter products can supposedly enhance or alter your performance.

Sudafed is a stimulant... an upper? I know from experience that Benadryl makes me drowsy, so it must be a downer. Throw in some caffeine from your Coke or coffee and we are talking major league tripping here. No wonder people seem so high nowadays.

While Tiger Woods gets 100 million for Nike tie-ins, it is nothing compared to the Darrell Strawberry Robatussin endorsement. This could also explain my theory that NyQuil is the reason so many people invested in technology stocks for so long. Amazon-dot-com-ers have been drinking some serious Vicks Formula 44.

Employers for years have been testing for drug abuse among workers, but maybe they are looking in the wrong place. Can you imagine if the typical company tested for drug abuse to the extreme of the Olympics? The traffic jams back home would start 30 minutes after employees arrived. Everyone I know has a drug of choice. Whether Tylenol or Excedrin or aspirin or Allerest or Dimetapp, everybody is taking something all the time.

My drug of choice is Advil. When my back starts hurting me, I can take megadoses that rival the analgesic qualities of an elephant tranquilizer. I once lost a leg in a farm-equipment accident and sewed it back on by myself after six gel caps took affect. Marion Jones could have her reputation tainted by just shopping at the same grocery store as I do. There are large swarms of mosquitoes right now in rehab because of their contact with me.

I have never abused an illegal substance, much less inhaled (though I once did walk through a smoke cloud at a Rolling Stones concert in the old Fulton County Stadium and proceeded to chip a tooth trying to give the Hank Aaron statue a hickey). It is strange that the two largest issues in the news today concern drugs. Elderly people are skipping their drugs so they can eat because medicine is so expensive and athletes seem to live off the pharmaceuticals. Can't we get these two groups together?

I want to close by saying that I am not a doctor and any advice I offer is merely anecdotal and based on studies of no more than one man, myself, and maybe, time to time, a few stray cats. I would never encourage anyone to misuse any mind-altering narcotic, unless of course, you wanted to understand just what the heck Dennis Miller is saying on Monday Night Football.

[Visit Billy Murphy on the Internet at http://ebilly.net.]

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