Morford: Multivitamins

Hear here, Mark. But my real question, like his, is "Where, WHERE?!"

One big multivitamin orgasm
One to make you larger, and one to make you small, one to do everything, and all
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 15, 2009

It cannot be too much to ask.

It cannot be too much to require, in this damnable godless hellstorm wide-open eat-you-alive multitasking firebreathing global culture, that some brilliant mad scientist/entrepreneur invent a tiny water-soluble, easily digestible life-enhancing soul-fellating capsule which I can place into my mouth and swallow whole every single damnable teeth-grinding morning, which will then quietly transform my reality and improve my bone integrity and help me perform just a little bit better at everything I wish to do in life, along with many things I didn't even realize I wanted to do, because that's just the sort of impossibly devilish magic it contains.

I ask you right here and now: Why the hell not?

This is what happened: Like any good, alt medicine-loving person of sharp intuition and selective gullibility, I was regularly imbibing this one rather expensive men's multivitamin product for a good long while, years even, not thinking much of it and pretty much believing at least a fraction of its various miraculous multinourishing claims.

I appreciated, for example, how it said it would help subtly balance various energies and sturdify my masculine functionings, healthify my blood, beautify my eyesight, provide essential reinforcers and strengtheners and clarifiers I wasn't even all that aware I was supposed to be looking after, until the package thoughtfully informed me.

It all seemed reasonably effective. Felt OK. All systems functioned. Didn't go blind. Didn't die. Pretty much all you can ask for, these days.

Or is it? Despite how this particular vitamin product seemed well made, despite how it was apparently packed like a tiny nuclear warhead with an impossibly long list of "raw" food-based vitamins and all sorts of cool-sounding plant derivatives and homeopathic twigs and barks and berries and vegetables I totally believe in, at least in theory, because really, who doesn't want to believe in that sort of thing, even if the reality is that there's only something like .0000001 percent of a given piece of exotic-sounding vegetation in there, which, given the size of an average capsule, must equate to something like a half speck of, say, Apocynum Venetum L. Leaf extract or Saw Palmetto or Bacopa leaf extract -- despite all of that, I also just so happened to stumble across a few articles criticizing this particular vitamin company's founder and his shady dealings and entirely bogus medical credentials, and I won't name names but it certainly turned me off of Garden of Life products for the time being -- because like any good American I believe everything I read on the Interweb -- and I so I thought, well, maybe it's time I started looking for something else, a new product to entertain and enhance my many manly structures. You follow me? Excellent.

So, I begin poking around. I began looking for a top-notch men's multis for my highly specific demographic, which is somewhere between 25 and 75 years old and somewhere prior to regular prostate exams but long after I've started cringing in phantom pain whenever I see young extreme sports dudes perform some sort of insane, body-crunching free-fall stunt, thinking oh holy hell my friend, what are you doing to your poor spine, and do you have any idea what you're going to feel like when you turn 40?

Calibration is, apparently, imperative. This is what I learned. You must choose your vitamins very carefully, according to your age, body type, magnetic orientation, hair texture, penile length, desirable goals. Me, I am somewhere between 5'5" and 7'0", somewhere between 160 and 200 pounds, size 10 shoe, green eyes, occasional night sweats, a bit too Pitta in the dosha, reasonably certain I have low-level psychic abilities, can see into the future but don't always want to, love sex in the morning, also afternoon and evening, have high tartar buildup, talk too fast, dress pretty well, emote too little, have seen God, many many times, and She is gorgeous and terrifying and wonderful indeed. These things are important.

But as I'm scanning the aisles for my new wonder pill to address all these criteria, it hits me. Today's capsules, they don't do nearly enough. In fact, they all fall far, far short.

This is 2009, honey child. We have insane technology. We have all sorts of insights and wisdoms and wanton abilities we are barely beginning to parse and recognize and dial into. What's more, 2012 is almost here. Is it not time to step things up? Is it not time to go all in? Damn right it is.
Firstly, I would like my vitamin to contain, say, a healthy dose of Adderall. I keep reading that Adderall and other "neuroenhancers" like it are actually terrific for writers like me, who would really love to produce huge, impressive volumes of super-focused material every day and yet who are far too easily distracted by email and metaphysics articles and delicious, completely NSFW blogs like this and this and this and this and this and this and oh yes, this. And this. And this. Don't click on any of those. They are naughty and distracting and you might never come back.

See?

Ginkgo? Saw Palmetto? Taurine? Whatever. I'd like appreciable amounts of straight-out Ecstasy and cocaine and Viagra in my pill, please, just a little, intermixed with some ayuesca and LSD and ketamine, just a tiny bit, just enough to feel some sort of delightful low-level onrush of "whoa there I am" 20 minutes after you take it and lasting well after yoga class and well into my first rye manhattan, but not so much that you feel "oh my god I am going to peel off my skin with a pair of tweezers and die right here in this bathtub" for the next four days.

Do we not already have sufficient technology on hand? Damn right we do.

What's more, are we not already imbibing a million various synthetic compounds every day, just by existing, walking, breathing? Are there not trace amounts of a hundred different major pharmaceuticals right there in the water supply and hovering in the very air, from birth control pills to muscle relaxants to anti-inflamatories? I'm just asking for a bit more calculation, a little more measurable control, is all.

Why not toss in some betelnut? Wormwood? Hemp oil? Holy water? Where is the rum extract? What are we waiting for? I am right here calling out to some enterprising young drug dealer/health nut/alchemy wizard to combine his/her loves into one sure-fire multi-billion dollar enterprise. I am ready to invest.

This is the age of hybrid technology, gene splicing, DNA scrambling, meta-consciousness, better living through chemistry and organic free-range meats and solar-powered backpacks that charge an iPhone that runs an app to keep track of it all. There is simply no excuse for my glorious vitamin's total ungodly lack of existence at this point in time. I await ordering instructions.

If we can put a man on the moon.....