When
I was in college, circa 1980, I lived down the hall
from some guys who had devised a unique form of Friday night recreation. After each had consumed about 10 beers,
they would gather around a huge fishbowl that had been filled about half-full
with many types of prescription pills, mostly psychoactive drugs. The idea was to reach into the bowl and
randomly grab two pills, make note of their color and shape and then swallow
them immediately. Then, while
waiting for the pills to kick in, they would open the huge reference book next to
the fishbowl (the Physician’s Desk Reference which listed all the pills produced by
drug companies in the USA and Europe) to learn about what they had just
ingested. I have a strong memory
of a huge blond kid with a shark-tooth necklace reading about potential
side-effects and mumbling in his surfer-stoner monotone, “Whoa…cerebral hemorrhaging…cool.”