Letters to the Editor
alarajrogers
Published Letters: 447 Editor's Choice: 87
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Single Man, you're an idiot
[Read the article: Think your birth control will always be covered? Think again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A woman's birth control is a man's freedom to have sex with her without getting her pregnant. It's a lot more reliable than condoms. And married men who don't want to support another child would *much* rather pay for their wife's BC than their own condoms, most of the time. Men should want insurance to cover BC so that married men can provide it to their wives cheaply. You're single, and likely to remain so, but a lot of men aren't.
Condoms are not free because they are over-the-counter. When they come up with the Male Pill, that will be prescription-only and covered by insurance (most likely...) You want women to have to pay for the Pill the way men pay for condoms, get the Pill to go over-the-counter. The price will drop dramatically but it won't be covered by insurance any more. I don't think you want prescription-only condoms, do you? (Now, if you want to fight for insurance to cover OTC meds and treatments, feel free; I'd love to get my cold medicine covered, and I'd be happy to subsidize men's condoms if they'll subsidize my NyQuil.)
BTW, gay men have just as much need for condoms as straight men. Condoms aren't just for preventing pregnancy, they also prevent disease. So you are not subsidizing women's lifestyles, you are subsidizing not getting hepatitis or AIDS.
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Who cares about the morality, or money, of the writer?
[Read the article: My Ambien lover]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So many people are missing the point of this story.
I don't care if the writer was a selfish bitch or a trust fund baby or whatever. The interesting thing here is that, under the influence of a drug, her boyfriend turned into a completely different person -- *and she couldn't tell* except by comparing it to his usual behavior. Normally, drugs that affect our personalities so dramatically, in such a short period of time, and which generate amnesia, are obvious. If someone's drunk enough that they won't remember what they did in the morning, you know it from talking to them. If someone's done enough pot that it affects their personality and behavior, you can tell. Drugs that have a long-term slow effect on personality like the SSRI's don't cause amnesia. But apparently Ambien and alcohol radically alter who someone is, in a way that records the memories so the later self can't get at them -- very similar, in fact, to the experiences of people diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as "multiple personalities" -- and those closest to them *can't tell* just from the behavior. They have to observe over time that it happens in response to a drug and that then there's amnesia -- it isn't obvious the way alcohol is.
This is fascinating and frightening. It implies that who we are, our personalities, the self we think we are, is nothing more than a collection of chemicals, and altering that balance can actually turn us into someone else. I wonder if Sam could remember, under the influence of Ambien, the other incidents that had occurred under Ambien. I wonder how consistent his "Ambien-and-booze" identity was, and whether his amnesia really was so thorough or whether embarrassment made it convenient for him to forget (if he was naturally a cold, prickly person, turning into a snugglebunny would probably be a bit humiliating.) I wonder if the writer really could see signs that the guy was drugged up and just pretended to herself that she couldn't, or whether she was truly incapable of seeing any effect from the Ambien cocktail except for the more affectionate behavior.
Yes, it's insanely stupid to take any sleeping pill with alcohol, but traditionally the effect, with barbituate (sp?) sleeping pills, is that you don't wake up in the morning. Ambien doesn't seem to kill you (well, unless you get in a car accident) -- it turns you into someone else, it makes you sleepwalk or hallucinate, it lets you dream without actually turning off your motor cortex, but these are much, much more interesting effects than just putting you in a coma. What this tells us about sleep, and about the true nature of the human psyche, is what fascinates me, and I wouldn't mind seeing more stories like this. Even if they happen to be written by and about self-centered rich people. Self-centered rich people have the same brain wiring the rest of us do, and *that's* what I care about in this anecdote.