My Days as a Human Pincushion

In the right light you can see scars on the veins in my arms.

I was never a junkie; I was a subject in medical studies. Lots of them.

***

Back when I was working on my undergraduate degree at UT in the early 90s, I was a regular at this place called Pharmaco. They’d offer a wad of cash to people who were willing to participate in their studies. These were the sorts of trials used to gather data to present to the FDA to get approval for new medicines. And lots of studies were for already-approved drugs for whatever reason. When you think of medical studies you may think of genuine experiments, where subjects are given drugs and guys in white coats stand around to see whether the drugged person gets better, gets worse, springs an erection or turns into Mr. Hyde (or the dreaded Mr. Hyde with an erection).

That wasn’t the case, at least not with me. Mostly I participated in studies regarding topics such as how fast ibuprofen was absorbed into the bloodstream on an empty stomach, or on a stomach full of greasy breakfast foods (seriously).

***

You had to meet some criteria, of course. You got a physical and had some blood work done.

You also had to be at peace with the idea of phlebotomists sticking needles into your veins over and over.

***

Everything was done at their facility off of Ben White Blvd. Studies lasted for any number of days. I was typically in there from two to four days I’d say.

I’ve never been in a prison for any reason, thankfully, but some of the rules and procedures certainly made me think about life behind bars. There was no departing the building until checkout time. And I remember being strip-searched upon check-in once. It seems some folks snuck contraband into the facility.

The man with the clipboard told me to remove my shirt, my pants, and then my underwear.

“Whoa! This is going to be one thorough search!” I sputtered as I imagined him snapping on latex gloves.

“I just need to see that nothing’s tucked into the waistband of your underwear,” he replied.

Phew.

***

Once inside we were assigned bunks and given a schedule of doses, blood draws and meals. They controlled exactly how much and what types of food we consumed. If they served something you didn’t like you had to eat it anyway. I was fortunate enough to be able to at least tolerate the grade C cafeteria fare we got there. More than anything I hated the studies where we had to skip meals. That was a one-way trip to Headache City.

In our free time we could lounge around, nap, watch TV, play pool or read two-year-old copies of Time and Sports Illustrated.

I napped a lot.

***

The blood draws, of course, were no fun, even for a guy like me who has no unreasonable fear of needles. For some studies they drew blood four times an hour, and folks, that just meant jabbing the needles into the same wounds over and over.

Some phlebotomists were better than others, of course. There was this Indian (native) guy who wore a long ponytail and some cool-looking jewelry and seemed like he’d be interesting to talk to. He was sullen, and lousy with a needle though, a real butcher. It got to where we hated seeing the phleb we called “The Chief.”

Others could be absolutely painless.

***

Once in a while we’d get a heplock, a valve gizmo that they’d affix to a vein for quick access that cut down on the needle sticks. But to get a heplock going they had to inject a saline solution each time, and the sensation of cold fluid traveling up the arm always made me feel like I was being embalmed. It wasn’t much better than multiple sticks.

***

I think the closest I came to receiving an interesting drug was when they put us on gurneys and gave us female hormones via IV. Our faces all turned beet red as some sort of reaction.

I felt dizzy and loopy, and I serenaded my phlebotomist with a spontaneous Springsteen/Soundgarden hybrid featuring the lyric “Black hole sun, born to run.” He wasn’t amused.

I narrowly missed being in a morphine study at one point. I heard it made some folks sick, but mostly it made them lie around and watch TV.

(What could they possibly have needed to know about morphine in ’93?)

I heard a couple of rumors that a study was coming in which they’d pay ten grand if you’d agree to have a pinky toe chopped off. Pharmaco always denied it.

***

Study participants were mostly male, by the way. It was explained to me that males are “biologically simpler” for study purposes. The few women we saw were kept in another quadrant of the building, and were usually participating in something specifically related to menstrual or reproductive issues.

When women were there we didn’t see much of each other. There was one little lounge area we shared, and sure enough guys would head over there to try to chat them up.

Now, picture how this looked, okay. We were a bunch of guys with nothing to do. We didn’t shave or shower often, and mostly we sat around in our pajamas. I often remarked that any straight woman who had a look at us would be tempted to switch teams. We were a gross looking lot.

***

We were occasionally given a piece of paper to explain our track marks upon being dismissed. That is, if a police officer started asking about all the needle marks in our arms, we were supposed to present the paperwork to clear things right up. I’m glad I never had to.

***

Eventually I got too busy (that is, gainfully employed) to do any more studies there.

I was grateful for the cash I got. It always seemed that getting about a grand for three or four days of lying around, even with the needle sticks, was pretty damn sweet. It’s how Kelli and I funded our trip to London, heck.

I think Pharmaco is long gone, but I’d do it again if I could. These breasts and my third arm come in handy sometimes.