Upsetting Day: The Focus Drug Review 🌭 (Patreon)

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to build a robot that would be our friend, instead of yet another enemy. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…

My earlier forays into the field of professional drug abuse were full of mistakes, I understand that now. My chief error was buying all of my prescriptions in baggie form from a man named “The Hungary Hungary Hippo” whose office was "the stank spot beneath the pier." I’ve tested drugs for boosts to intelligence, creativity, and the enjoyment of colors. But I already understand crosswalks and once caught a squirrel with my bare hands; I'm as smart and alert as any human being needs to be, practically speaking. Plus colors rip ass. They don’t need a boost. No, what I really need is more focus. And, as with all things, I assume that stealing prescriptions is the best way to get it.

Test

To measure for a potential increase in concentration, I will be repeatedly watching a 10-minute loop of a sheep chewing grass to techno music. I will measure the efficacy of each drug by seeing how long I can go before clicking away and Googling He-Man mashups. Our baseline is 0 seconds, because I didn't even manage to hit play the first time. Instead, I watched this three times and then chased my dogs for a while.

Natural Solutions

Mother Earth was the first and maddest scientist. So if we're trying to trick our brains into productivity, why not abuse nature first? This article insists that concentration is really a simple matter of adjusting the amount of lubricated fish in your life, and that makes a strange kind of sense to me. Do I have problems focusing? Yes. Am I eating lots of greasy sea life? No.

The problem is clear.

Don't Take If:

Really, the only risks from natural medication are allergies. And as everybody knows, it's impossible to be allergic to something you've never had before. So I've gone ahead and stocked up on the most exotic, oily sea life I can find (for less than 10 dollars): Whatever is in these abandoned Russian fish tins.

There's some kind of half-fish, half-man skull on the back with a giant cross through it, so it’s either NOT made from mermaids, or it’s made from ONLY mermaids, and either way seems like a good start.

Side Effects:

The complete absence of human companionship. They make your breath and skin smell like an old fisherman’s wet longjohns.

Also some minor blindness.

Video Test Results:

I made it 35 seconds into the sheep clip this time before I wandered away to watch a He-Man/DMX mashup. I am but a man, with all of that creature's weaknesses.

Ritalin

Sometimes it's best to start with the obvious. If you're looking to buy a car, you go to a car dealership; if you want a Big Mac, you go to McDonald's; if you want a mattress, you go to Mad Matt's Mattress Mattorium. So if you find your priorities constantly shifting from work to shiny objects, you go with the big name first: Ritalin.

Don't Take If:

According to their website, one should not ingest Ritalin if you have "a fructose intolerance, glucose-galactose malabsorption or sucrase-isomaltase deficiency." I don't understand what any of those words mean, so I have to assume that they don't apply to me.

Side Effects:

This is weird: Ritalin lists its side effects as "fast, pounding or uneven heartbeats, feeling like you might pass out and aggression." But what if you're always on the verge of passing out (it's called having a good time, officer), you're aggressive because people are stupid and constantly in your way, and your heart only beats that way because you're so fucking fast?

Video Test Results:

I managed to get a full two minutes into sheep trance before wondering if the Internet might have Skeletor doing some Queen covers and it fucking totally did.

Concerta

I actually started taking this one because I thought it was called Concentra, named for the Greek god of paying attention. But upon closer inspection, it seems to be called Concerta. So it's like a music drug? That seems a bit redundant. We already have a music drug; it's called "all of them."

Don't Take If:

You have a family history of Tourette's syndrome. Oh man. Will this increase my ability to tell people to fuck off?! That’s not a side effect, it’s a stat boost! This is how you get yourself a customer, Big Pharma.

Side Effects:

Nothing too bad. I've stopped sleeping and started swearing (more), and I now have to snap my fingers every time I use a comma, like there, or here, or hey, did anybody else notice that this paragraph is punctuated to the tune of John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane"? No, just me? (,,)

Video Test Results:

Holy shit! I watched the whole sheep thing twice. This is amazing! I'm not sure if it's due to increased concentration, or if it's just that I have more uninterrupted time to focus on my tasks since I started calling everybody Captain Cocksipper and stinking of the fruits of the Baltic Sea, but I am really getting some shit done now. I mean, so far that "shit" has just been staring at this sheep, but I am doing it. I'm really doing the ASS out of it!

Focalin

It's called Focalin because it helps you focus. Get it? God, drug names are so cool. I wish I had a drug name. I wish I was named Robertine or Brocolux. My side effects would be "belligerence and sleep racing," and my label art would be a field of flowers with one furious naked man standing in the middle yelling at the sun. Fuck you, the sun, I did not give you permission to touch my skin!

Don't Take If:

It says I shouldn't take this stuff if I've also taken MAOI-inhibitors in the past two weeks. Google tells me that's some kind of antidepressant. But it's impossible to say for certain what drugs I have and haven't taken because nobody leaves me unattended in their bathrooms long enough to read the labels of their prescriptions.

Side Effects:

Eyesight changes.

Wait ... ha ha, what? What kind of "eyesight changes"? Will I go blind? Will I get Predator vision? Will I be able to see lies? That's some worryingly vague shit to drop on a fella, Captain Cocksipper. Captain Cocksipper and his first mate, Mr. Dongdrinker. Captain Cocksipper and his first mate, Mr. Dongdrinker, and their loyal companion Bosun Ballchug.

What were we doing?

Video Test Results:

Okay. Do you still see the sheep in this video? Is it… is it just me who sees this fresh lunacy? Is this what they meant by "eyesight changes"? Fuck you, Focalin, this isn't an "eyesight change," this is a madness infusion. And the real tragedy is I'm so goddamn focused that I watched every second of it. I couldn't help myself. And now, as a direct consequence, I can understand the language that shadows speak.

They have nothing interesting to say.

Vyvanse

Vyvanse.

Vyvanse. VYVANSE. Look at all of those crazy dips and valleys. Vyvyvyv. That word just looks fun, doesn't it? So I took a handful of them.

Turns out it was a focus drug, too!

Small world.

Don't Take If:

I can't take this if I have "agitated states" and a "history of drug use"? Ha ha, shit. You might as well have just put "no comedians" on the bottle. Whatever, Vyvanse. Thanks to Focalin and the screaming war babies, I can already see death's reflection in the pupils of every man I pass on the street. Really, what are you going to do to me that I haven’t already done to every man foolish enough to look upon me with their cursed death-eyes?

Side Effects:

Vyvanse lists possible side effects as "new or worse behavior and thought problems, aggressive behavior or hostility, hearing voices, believing things that are not true and extreme suspicion."

Worse behavior than what? My previous behavior? My neighbor's behavior? Society's stifling rules of normality? There's no measure! And "believing things that are not true"? What do you mean, exactly? Are we talking outright fiction here, like the existence of elves, or just erroneous misconceptions, like thinking that concept albums are a good idea? You're fucking with me, Vyvanse.

Shadowfriends, this medication is fucking with me, and I do not appreciate it.

Attack.

No, attack.

I don’t know, the bottle.

What do you mean, that won’t do anything?

Class action lawsuit? Fuck! You’re so fucking basic, shadowpeople.

Video Test Results:

I was mistaken earlier. This isn't the wrong video at all. It was the wrong clip before, but it's right now. It's all right now. I've watched all 10 minutes of it, 15 times, back to back. I do that, instead of dreaming. And I understand now, I do. I understand everything: I know what has to be done, and why, and who has to do it, and that this paragraph is punctuated to Hall and Oates' "Private Eyes." (,,)

Yay, that's fun. That's a fun thing.

Pardon me. I have a mission.

Arresting Officer's Notes:

Mr. Brockway tried to burn down a CVS and had to be submerged in an ice bath due to his body temperature of 119 degrees Fahrenheit.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been "stacking" his tests. He did not stop taking one drug before starting another. Also all of his “test material” used the same active ingredient -- some form of methylphenidate -- except for the expired can of fish. But apparently the latter, when combined with certain psychostimulants, causes a blood toxicity condition called Spratsblud.

The medical examiner says Mr. Brockway's plasma is still too explosive to legally allow for an interrogation, but I have drawn some conclusions from my investigation so far:

This was stupid, and somebody is going to be extremely in jail the very second that "upsetting their blood" stops being considered an act of public endangerment.