Disease. When you hear (or, in this case, read) this word, what comes to mind?
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| Ok, besides that. |
Perhaps you think of the grim, cold confines of the terminal ward in a hospital. How about the debilitating, trouser-shitting convulsions of a grand mal seizure? Maybe you envision pox-ridden peasants being carted away by the wagonload during the Black Plague. I know that's my favorite. Regardless, the associations probably aren't all that great, and being sick is not something you aspire to. To put it bluntly (my forte), disease is a bitch, just another way for God, Mother Nature, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, depending on your preferred delusion, to remind you, "Hey, bitch, you're mortal. How do you like dem apples?" So, why do so many people, Americans in particular, want to be diagnosed as ill?
What am I talking about? Don't act like you don't know. We have become a
hypochondriac nation, obsessed with the idea that we simply
must be suffering from a dozen-odd diseases and syndromes, despite the fact that we are one of the most medically advanced societies on the planet. The average hour-long block of television programming contains roughly umpteen-million ads for various prescription medications, some for diseases so heinous the commercials actually refuse to say anything about those diseases. I'm not kidding, I have literally seen ads that only say, "Ask your doctor about Fecalodin." That's it. No laundry list of symptoms, no mention of the malady itself, no clues in the ridiculously-sunny imagery of the advertisement. Just the nagging seed of a fearful suspicion -
Shit, what if I need Fecalodin, and don't even know it? I don't want to have . . . whatever Fecalodin is meant to treat. I'd better ask Dr. Chaparaka, he'll know, he comes from one of those brown countries where they have an ass-load of diseases.
The morbid fear/desire to be sick in the United States could probably be classified as a condition in its own right. Hell, some Americans invent a new kind of crazy to be every day.
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| Yeah, you're a heat-seeking titanium cyclone of truth on a dinosaur. That's what it is. |
But those without enough celebrity clout to pull this off are forced to adopt
real diseases, whether they have them or not. Why does it itch behind your left ear? What is that vague ache inside your head? Why do you feel inferior and socially awkward when surrounded by prettier, more successful people? There
has to be a medically-valid reason, right? Luckily, the pharmaceutical-media complex has an easy answer: you're
all diseased! It's pill-popping time! However, I cannot blame the placebo peddlers, who are mostly just taking advantage of a situation, namely our society's fixation on its imagined illness. I have read some serious research - which I will not cite here, because who the fuck are you, a special Senate commission? - which suggests that in First World Nations almost all real fears have evaporated as a result of us technologically eliminating the innumerable dangers we puny, soft, slow, weak
homo sapiens once faced in the very scary prehistoric world.
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| Behold the pinnacle of evolution. Good thing we killed off saber-toothed tigers a while ago. |
Because we are hardwired to live in constant fear for our lives (that's called survival instinct), our uber-sized brains are having a hard time adapting to the cushy, Cheeto-fueled lifestyle we presently enjoy. We actually seek out other things to fear, bogeymen our neurotic collective unconscious creates to fill the void once occupied by floods, woolly mammoths, thunderstorms, famines, packs of wild dogs, predatory super-ostriches, and more or less every other goddamn thing on the planet, because, let's face it, we were the real-world equivalent of Scrat the saber-tooth squirrel from the
Ice Age movies, scurrying about frantically between a thousand and one things out to squash our very existence.
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| *Twitch* |
Don't believe me? Do you ever notice how these illnesses don't seem to affect Third World Nations? When was the last time you heard about an epidemic of restless thumb syndrome or acute carrot allergy or chronic sleep disorder in Africa? You know what they suffer from there? Starving to death. And AIDs. And hippo attacks. You know, real things.
On the other hand, we have our glittery, homogenized, sanitized world, where being diagnosed with a disease is actually becoming
trendy. It's part of what I call our culture of victimhood - a society-wide yearning to see ourselves as somehow disadvantaged, afflicted, or persecuted and thus special and deserving of others' attention and sympathy. Where people once went out of their way conceal ailments such as manic depression (politically-corrected to
bipolar disorder, then
affective disorder, and probably soon
basal alternating interemotive condition), they now proudly declare it to any and all who will listen, touting it like a badge of courage and endurance in a brutal, unfair world.
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| Hey, remember when Magic Johnson contracted HIV, and suddenly it was cool? No? |
I'm not knocking people who genuinely suffer from real diseases, mental or physical, but people who boast about it, or, worse yet,
don't actually have the fucking disease. And it's pretty hard to have a "disease" when it's basically made up.
Case in point? So-called gluten allergies. I have a sickness, too: I am sick to death of everybody and their inbred cousin claiming to be allergic to wheat gluten. For those who haven't read an Internet health column in the past five years, gluten is a protein composite found in virtually all food products processed from wheat, rye, oats, barley, and related species. You know, the staple crops on which human civilization is based, so, in other words, it's been part of our diet for a long time in one form or another. Little did we know, we were actually
eating poison the whole time.
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| Actually Satan's grist of death. |
Since I work at a restaurant, I am more aware of this fad than most. And, yes, it is a fad, I am calling it. It's oddly, perversely
popular to be gluten allergic/intolerant. Until approximately 2006, I had never heard of people having a serious problem with wheat gluten. Then, all of a sudden, it was the phobia
de jour, the buzzword in dietary science, the favorite subject of superficial "health blogs" on every quack-medical website. It is approaching the level of a public health scare as more and more people jump on the Gluten=Doom Bandwagon. On a regular basis, I now have
septuagenarians requesting the gluten-free menu. So, my question is, what did you do before gluten sensitivity was "discovered" a few years ago? Never eat out? Live in agonizing pain as your defective digestive system rebelled against the tiniest presence of gluten in your food? I have even had customers tell me which gluten products they can and cannot stomach. "Oh, your flour-rolled tortilla chips are just fine, I eat them all the time, but I
have to have the gluten-free menu for my meal." Really? Your allergy is that selective? It has reached the point that I am not sure people even understand why they are avoiding this shit. I suspect they think it's some new, healthier diet propounded by holistic, mind-crystal-wielding hippie healers or savvy, ultra-fit organic dietitians.
I am well-aware that there is a real illness called celiac disease, which renders the person incapable of properly digesting wheat gluten.
Sucks to your assmar, Piggy. Fact is, that ailment afflicts less than 5% of the population. So what are the odds I just happen to encounter three of those poor souls in the same restaurant, on the same day, during the same shift? Do the math. If you buy those numbers, I have a basement full of chimpanzees randomly cranking out
Hamlet on typewriters, and I'll sell them to you for a cool million. And as for gluten "intolerance," it is so vaguely defined scientifically that anyone who has ever had a slightly unpleasant experience sometime within 24 hours of eating gluten, including but not limited to poor judgement resulting in a regretted one-night stand, could conceivably claim it was an adverse reaction. In reality, this could just as easily be chalked up to a logical fallacy like
slippery slope,
cause/effect confusion,
questionable cause, or
being a total dumbfuck.
As per usual, I am going to blame TV and the Internet for this phenomenon, since they are the repeat offenders when it comes to virally spreading bullshit in its many and varied forms. Softcore medical dramas like
Grey's Anatomy,
House, or
Royal Pains and the digital vector for rumor and pseudoscience that is the Worldwide Web have combined to convince every Tom, Dick, and retard Harry that he is professionally qualified to diagnose medical conditions with flair and cocksure confidence, typically within an hour-long time slot.
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| Pretty much the same as a PhD. |
Though these outlets regularly take potshots at each other for instilling laymen (read: morons) with a false sense of intelligence, the TV shows scoffing at WebMD while online doctor-pundits deride and warn against primetime programming, the truth is they both achieve the same effect: your average civil servant or gas station clerk thinks s/he can claim to know they are bipolar, ADHD, gluten intolerant, etc. The surrounding miasma of media coverage reaffirms this as TV stations, websites, and newspapers, hungry for viewership in a vapid atmosphere of consumers with a fruit fly's attention-span, rush to cash in on the latest thing, giving the public exactly what they want: another reason to piss and moan, "Woe is me!" Well, get over it. I may not be Greg House, but I can flippantly diagnose a dipshit with all the alacrity and caustic wit he displays, no PhD required.
