I was enjoying the broadcast of the Padres game when a depressing commercial appeared about an anti-depression medication.
What made it so gloomy was the long list they itemized referencing the side effects that accompanied that remedy, including fever, stiff muscles, confusion, falls, seizures, trouble swallowing, diabetes, heart disease, and worsening depression.
Worsening depression? By taking depression medicine? That’s like getting a headache from aspirin.
I’m not suggesting depression, or the many complications listed above, aren’t serious. But it turns out, they’re only a small part of the long list of still more alarming disorders that can result from taking that drug.
Checking the internet, I found more than 70 additional warnings associated with that medicine, including dizziness, shaking, chest pain, fever, loss of bladder control, and ulcers.
Also death.
I suggest there’s other less risky, death-free remedies to combat depression.
Like cheesecake.
It’s my go to antidote to counter such a condition, and I can attest to its effectiveness.
Take the other day when I was watching the ballgame and experienced a case of depression from that depression medication commercial.
I quickly took a bite of cheesecake and immediately felt better.
It’s also a lot cheaper.
That medicine costs about $1,500 for a 30-day supply. I looked it up. It means that a single pill costs about $50, while you can buy an entire cheesecake at Costco for under $20. And that includes 14 huge slices, so roughly $1.50 apiece.
The other difference is that the cheesecake has no side effects versus that death gamble.
So weighing the two options, you can either risk death, depression, or 100 other serious possible side effects with a $50 pill, or have a slice of risk-free, $1.50 cheesecake.
Doing the math, I figured out you can have 1,000 slices of that death-free delight for the price of a 30-day supply of that medication, the one that comes with two definitions for the word “expiration.”
Yes, excessive consumption of cheesecake can cause weight gain, but it turns out that’s yet another side effect of the medication.
Along with that death prospect.
And while the drug lists any number of multi-syllabic chemical ingredients, most of which I never heard of, the main component of cheesecake is cream cheese.
Unfortunately, if you seek advice from professionals regarding depression, regardless of how many degrees they may have, they never seem to suggest that smooth and creamy sweetness laced with whipped cream and seated on a bed of graham cracker crumbs.
Maybe the cheesecake weight gain can cause one’s early demise. But when I say early, I’m talking about 40 or 50 years in the future versus the later-in-the-day possibility of that depression medicine.
It questions why you would seek counsel from an expensive physician with advanced degrees who suggests a medication that can kill you, when it makes more sense to get free advice proposing a low-cost, delicious, safe, and instant remedy offered by your favorite newspaper columnist.
Erdos is a freelance humor columnist. Contact him at: [email protected].