I am sick to death of all these new medical conditions that the pharmaceutical companies are making up so they can sell us new drugs. They take some normal human condition and decide it’s an illness, create a drug to “cure” it and whammo, a whole new industry is born.My latest medical pet peeve? Restless Leg Syndrome. What the hell? Okay, maybe there are some people who aren’t sleeping at night somewhere and are busy flapping away in their beds. Well, guess what? I’ve been tapping and flapping and twitching my leg for years. When I sit, I twitch. When I go to bed I flap my leg for a while, I’ve been doing it for 47 years. And you know what happens when I flap my leg? It moves! Oh, the horror of it! And the sheets and covers move, too! Oh, the agony!

For pity’s sake, I’m just a twitchy person. Now they’re telling me I’m diseased. What crap. I got a cure for Restless Leg Syndrome, it’s called Ignoring It. So I twitch. So what? Now it’s a syndrome? Now I’m handicapped? What a load of crap.

Here’s the real story: a drug company manufactures some new blood pressure medication. They notice in the drug trials that the drug has a side effect that makes people stare at the wall. Dr. Scam Artist says to his lab flunky, “Hey, I got an idea. You know how the human eye works? It has to move a lot, right? To do its job. Let’s make it a disease. Restless Eye Syndrome. We give people this pill, they stare at a wall, they’re cured! We’ll make millions! Deploy the marketing team!” I can hear the radio ads now. Do you scan the shelves at a grocery store and have difficulty finding the product you’re searching for? You may have Restless Eye Syndrome. Try Eye-Z, the latest drug from Ripoff Labs. Ka-ching!

It’s clear that the drug companies are just capitalizing on this idiotic new trend of people labeling themselves by their conditions or diseases. I overheard some woman in the store the other day on her cellphone going on about being bi-polar, she’s a child of an alcoholic, she’s a food addict. Most of these syndromes were made up by doctors because stupid people came into their offices who didn’t want to take responsibility for their self-destructive behaviors, so they went in and got a label, got a jar of pills and suddenly they had an excuse to be self-centered, fat and abusive. I get to yell at you—I have anger issues. I get to eat a cake and feel sorry for myself— I’m a food addict. I got another name for these people: WHINERS.

Not that I don’t have sympathy for those suffering from true mental disorders and trauma. I’ve had many friends who used their diagnoses to stop their self-destructive behaviors. But mostly I know people who love to wallow in their made-up conditions and use them as an excuse to further destroy themselves and those around them. It’s these morons I have ZERO sympathy for.

I love the food addict BS. For cryin’ out loud, if you don’t eat, you die. Hello? We are all food “addicts”, for God’s sake, if we weren’t we’d be supermodels.

Problem is, if you don’t play the new game of identifying yourself by your conditions or syndromes, someone will come along and do the job for you. I like to walk. Oh, you’re a Walk Addict. I watched too much TV last night. You’re a TV Addict! Basically, anything we like too much is an addiction, anything we don’t like to do is a syndrome or a disorder. Yeah, I got a “syndrome”, it’s called “Sick of all the BS” syndrome.

I took some stupid medical questionnaire recently and they asked: do you drink daily? Well, of course, I do. I could hear the Beer Police revving up their engines and starting toward my house. Do you sometimes “binge” drink? (Three or more drinks at a sitting.) Of course. Why not? Oh, you are an alcoholic! You must be medicated! Who comes up with this crap? I’ll tell you who, someone who is trying to sell a pill or a week at some expensive rehab facility.

Okay, for sure there are people who drink too much, eat too much, smoke too much and hurt themselves and those closest to them. These are the idiots who are ruining it for the rest of us. Just because there are jerks out there who get tanked, get in their car and drive through their living room window, suddenly, I’m an alcoholic because I drank three beers? What crap!

I have had a parade of people in my life who keep trying to label me because I like to drink. My biggest offense seems to be that I enjoy it. Because I take responsibility for the fact that I like drinking and I admit it, that makes me a dangerous and out-of-control whacko in DENIAL. I must be stopped! Someone come medicate me! Because beer is EVIL. No, instead of drinking a couple beers to relax in the evenings, I’m supposed to take some stupid pharmaceutical drug that will make my ear hair grow and will make my vision blurry and will make rational thinking nearly impossible, but it will be the RIGHT way to medicate myself because we all know that anyone who drinks three beers is an alcoholic! Why? Because the drug companies say so! Just say yes to corporate drugs!

I got a new condition for ya. It’s called Stupidity. And this whole bloody planet suffers from it and guess what? There is no cure!

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a beer and watch my leg twitch. But I won’t be taking any pills for it. But I am going to label myself. Just call me Twitchy.

©2007, Janet Periat