With all the crises besetting us these days the last thing we need is another one, but apparently there is rising concern over yet another dangerous drug which is finding increasing popularity all over the country but particularly here in Valle de Silicon.
Will it never end? Will irresponsible thrill seekers never cease to conduct experiments on themselves, risking mind and body in a futile attempt to achieve the ultimately satisfying high? Marijuana, hashish, LSD, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, Valium, glue, aerosol paint, poison toads - the list goes on and on, and now we have the looming specter of an army of our fellow citizens careening about the landscape stoned to the gills on - get ready to learn a new word to fear - monafidil.
That's the generic moniker, in case you're on a fixed income; if you want to pay extra for the fancy label it's called Provigil and it's the nastiest stuff to come down the pike since somebody got the bright idea of sprinkling PCP in a joint. To make the scenario even more sinister, its devotees are among the upper echelon of the Valley's movers and shakers, the people on the fast track to top management, the lifestyle trend setters.
Why? Because this pellet from the Dark Side, this harbinger of doom in a prescription bottle enables you to work. And work and work. For twenty hours at a time if you choose, focused and alert yet calm - no caffeine/meth jitters. As steroids allow you to pump iron longer and heal faster than you could without them, monafidil allows you to stay creative and productive far past your normal abilities, cranking out work product, giving you that crucial leg up on the other guys who waste valuable career-building time with things like sleeping and seeing their families. It's easy to see why here in the Valley of the Shadow of Overachievement this would be as highly sought as Orlando Bloom at a groupie convention.
Of course there can be side effects; any drug worthy of the categorization must have side effects. They include (in addition to developing a dependence on it to keep your inner warrior sharp) headaches, dizziness, nausea, anxiety, back pain, etc. -nothing a hard-charging ladder-climber can't shrug off as a cost of doing business; after all, no pain no capital gain.
But this very same drug is banned from sports; in fact, a track star recently lost two world championship medals when it was found in her blood. So don't we owe it to our principles of fair play to maintain a single standard? I mean, not all young Turks willing to give up having lives for the sake of corporate success can easily find an ethically-challenged Doctor Feelgood willing to dispense work-juice on request. And what about long-term effects? What if these guys make it to the top and find that they can't stop working, that they can no longer remember the rules of football, the names of their spouses (assuming they got married in a spare moment sometime in between power point presentations), the difference between Sunday and Wednesday? When you come right down to it, along with potentially hurting themselves and becoming a burden on the company health plan aren't they cheating by doping with a business performance-enhancing drug? Isn't this just using a pharmaceutical creation to gain an unfair advantage over the clean business world where people sleep at night and take vacations? If all the sales records are held by juiced executives what kind of message does it send to the kids just starting out in the corporate jungle? I'll tell you what message it sends: "Work hard, keep your nose clean, don't spend more than 16 hours a day at the office and the best you'll do is night-manager at a Carls Jr."
Something needs to be done, now, before this gets worse. I say we need a Congressionally-appointed commission to look into it; we need a comprehensive random drug-testing program for everybody whose car is found in the company parking lot after 8 p.m. more than once a week. We need to put an asterisk on the resumes of employees who juice, take away their keys to the executive washroom, and deny them all frequent flier miles on their American Express cards.
We need to set an example while we still can, before a horde of zombified work-addicts makes a mockery of reasonable standards of productivity and sets the bar so high that "relaxation" is banned from the lexicon. Talk about a drug-free work environment - this stuff makes a little weed on the weekends look positively harmless.
Robert Mitchell
Robert Mitchell Robert Mitchell is an eccentric attorney who has been practicing general law in Morgan Hill for more than 30 years. Reach him at r.mchl@verizon.net.
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