Gamblex: A Prelude

[nvb2]

This is something that's been rolling around in my head for quite some time. It's a concept that I think will allow for writing many short stories, some might connect, perhaps not. It also allows for trying to cater to many different tastes. One particular story might not hit one person's buttons, but maybe the next one will, or the one after that. Who knows.

I'm not very patient when it comes to working on a story until there's a lot to post. This kind of sets the idea and will let me see if there is much interest in continuing. I had planned to write the next part as this one, but I want to get something posted tonight, so I'm dividing it in two for now. Comments are welcome. I hope you enjoy it. At the least, I got it out of my head...partially.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ever since I was twelve I?ve known what I wanted to be when I grew up: a bodybuilder. Those ads you see on the Internet? You know the ones that say things like ?Build muscle fast? and ?Trainers hate him? or ?Secrets to gaining muscle? and they have those crazy bodies that everyone knows were photoshopped. Those absurd morphs that you see in various corners of the net?they did their job. They did their job. Even though I knew it wouldn?t be as easy as they make it out to be I also knew there was nothing I wanted more.


I grew up on a farm in the mid-west, so I knew hard work. That and puberty were a great combination; probably some good genetics too. Baling hay is great exercise as is carrying sick or hurt livestock when there?s no other way to get them to help. Some nights I?d sneak out and attach a chain to the farm equipment just to move them a few feet. Needless to say by the time I got to high school all of the sports teams wanted me to play for them. I didn?t though; not really. The only sport I wanted to do was bodybuilding, but that wasn?t an option, so I tried the next best thing: wrestling.


At 6? 3? and 280 pounds (it kept me just under the weight class limit) I intimidated a lot of people?on the mat of course. I have that ?All-American? ?boy-next-door? look that keeps me pretty popular I guess. The girls all wanted to date me and the guys liked that I improved their chances of getting a girl to notice them. I mean, go where the girls are, right? So anyway, yeah, I?ve got blonde hair and brown eyes. What? You thought I was going to say blue? No, you read it right, they?re brown. A guy can?t have everything, right?


I was seventeen when I heard about it. It was the end of my junior year and I heard that there was some new miracle drug that a supplement company was developing. It was supposed to be some line of pills that a guy could take that would increase his size and strength. Like one of those magic instant muscle pills. Well, first off, I thought it was too good to be true. But, even if it was true, I wanted to wait until at least after high school because I wanted to maintain my undefeated record at wrestling, and if I got any bigger I wouldn?t be able to wrestle anymore because of the maximum weight. I was having a hard enough time not going over as it was. That?s right. I wasn?t having any problem gaining more size.


By the time of my senior year I knew I was probably going to have to get some of those pills at some point if I ever hoped to compete in bodybuilding competitions. Hope as I might that I could do it all-natural?hey, I told you: great genetics. I wasn?t doing any of that chemical stuff. Some natural supplements, sure, but no steroids or HGH or anything like that. Anyway, I wanted to keep maintaining my natural lifestyle, but it was at this point I realized it would be almost impossible, unless they made a separate division of bodybuilding for the non-enhanced.


You see, the first Mr. Olympia after the new drug was a 120 pound media guy. No, he wasn?t 120 pounds when he won, let me get to that. He was one of the first to try it, and luckiest, I might add, and by the time he quit the drug he weighed in at 370 pounds. No roid-gut, no stretch marks, virtually no body-fat. A little bizarre looking, well, to those who think the human body shouldn?t look like most of the morphs out there. You know, the REAL ?V? shape chest to waist with the absurd arms bigger than the poor guy?s head with tree-trunk thighs you wonder how a waist that small can support. I mean, everything is pretty symmetrical don?t get me wrong, but it still seems physiologically impossible. Somehow this drug allowed for it to happen.


You might be wondering why I said luckiest and said when he stopped. There are several things you should know about this new drug. You take it one pill at a time. Sure you could take more than one at a time, but it?s riskier. You see, once you?ve taken it, you?ve got about fifteen minutes to decide whether or not you?re going to take another one. You?ll get an immediate bit of growth and the first one always works, but every pill thereafter you?re risking a lot. With every pill beyond the first there is a chance you?ll lose everything and be back to how you were before you started. No one really knows how to predict or determine how many pills each person can take. Some unfortunate guys lost the effects of the first pill from their second pill. Some have made it as far as sixty or more. That?s what happens to a lot of guys. They get caught up in the growth and how inhumanly big they?re getting that they forget they?re risking all of that size with each pill.


That 120 pound guy I was telling you about probably wouldn?t have won if the guy I heard who had made it past 640 had known to quit while he was ahead. I mean, he?s still a big guy at 320, but he could have been top dog for a while if he?d known when to stop. I could have only hoped to compete with him one day. The drug is called Gamblex, and once you?ve used it, that?s it. It won?t affect you anymore. You get one shot to pretty much gamble how much size you can gain and that?s it. You either stop while you?ve made some gains or you go until you?re back to the way you were.


As I was saying there isn?t really any way to tell how it will affect a person. Well, I should say a man. It doesn?t affect women, that much has been proven. For instance, there were some identical twins that got a bottle of the pills. They started at 190 pounds and I mean they were identical. I?ve seen the Youtube video. They tried an experiment and flipped a coin to see who would go first. The older (by about a minute) twin won the toss and chose to go second. They delayed the pill taking by about a minute. The plan was, if the younger twin lost his size, the older twin could stop and retain what he had. First pill down, no problem, the scale read 195. That?s the only pill they took together. Seven pills later and the twins had spent about eight minutes discussing whether to continue. By now they were in the 290 pound range?there seems to be a bit of a cumulative effect. Again, it?s not really a predicable thing. They decide to go for another. And another. And another. Finally, the older twin says he?s had enough, but his younger-by-a-minute sibling pops another anyway. He?s up to 345 pounds. Well, since they can?t become ?fraternal? twins, the older twin takes his too. To his great dismay, the pills didn?t care that his brother was able to make more gains with the same amount of pills. Back down to 190 ponds he went. That scared his brother enough to stop taking his pills. I can?t blame the older brother for what he did next. For the next twenty minutes he kept trying to get his brother to take another pill, but of course 190 pounds couldn?t force 345 pounds to take what he didn?t want. He did manage to get a pill into his brother?s protein powder a little while later, but by that time it was too late.


You might be wondering how all of these people are affording these pills. Well, I have to tell you, they?re cheap. It?s about thirty dollars for a bottle of 100 pills. The company that makes them gets their money back from all of the food and supplements that these enhanced guys eat. At the rate most guys are going there?s still going to be a lot of normal guys around, but I?m sure in a few generations people will have gotten their ?going for broke? mentality under control, and there won?t be many guys under four or five hundred pounds. That?s a lot of food and supplements.


I had decided at this point that I still wanted to see how big I could get on my own, and I still hadn?t had the opportunity to try bodybuilding. I figured the pills weren?t going anywhere so I shouldn?t be in a hurry to try. Besides, the bigger you get before the pills, the less work the pills have to do, right? So maybe I?d have a better chance of getting bigger than other guys. I?d probably try after college?sometime in my early or mid-twenties. My name is Brad, and this next part is my experience with Gamblex.

[nnnrg]

Thirty dollars for a bottle of 100 pills. That IS cheap.

(I can't afford a med I require, without insurance, and it's NASTY what it costs the insurance company, but f'em, they spent millions to bribe congressbeasts to reduce the effectiveness and value of Obama's health-care law, so they deserve to suffer from their foolishness. See, one of the measures they stripped would have yanked the rug out from under companies (like the one who 'invented' the drug I need) regularly spend about 30c to make a small pill that they sell for almost $10.00 - and I take two a day. So effing special.

[tekuno]

Oh, but don't forget, they need all that money for research and development! (Except that a lot of them do that overseas, where they don't make as much, and it turns out that R&D is seldom more than 10% of the investment of any drug company -- most of the profits go into advertising, lobbying, and executive salaries.)

[nnnrg]

Actually, the R&D was done on Adrafinil (the predecessor drug) in France in the 1970s, and the primary metabolate (modafinil) was identified in the mid-80s and it went on sale in the mid-90s, armodafinil being developed AT THE SAME TIME but held back as a 'next' drug by Cephalon. They were clearing 2 billion a year on this drug; remember, it's not allowed for uses other than treating sleep disorders and trial treatment for fatigue disorders (for which it proves not terribly helpful for long term use); I'd say perhaps 2% of the population could use it and of them, fewer than 1/3 ever get it. Since the generic (by manufacturer Teva) sold in Canada for $2/200mg pill, before Cephalon bribed and sued them, rather than $9.75/200mg... feh. They also patented it on a particle size patent since the chemical can't be patented. The argument is that this allows the drug to have a 'timed release' effect, but there's other ways to do that; the only excuse is profiteering.

When the Modafinil patent expired, Cephalon blatantly paid the generic makers the equivalent of three years profits from selling their generic to NOT make the drug for a year. Then they raised the price on Modafinil to $9.75/tablet from $8.25/tablet, and introduced armodafinil with a "first one's free" promotion, and Armodafinil was introduced at $8.50/tablet for the same size, but note, armodafinil is less effective, as it has to be turned into modafinil in the liver. (which loads the liver, increases biological stress, and generally makes life less fun for people with metabolic syndrome.)

They were sued by the US Attorney General's office because enough people demanded it. But somehow, 3-4 months before the court date, Cephalon was purchased by ... guess who? TEVA! Yay! Now they're selling the drug they used to make available for $2/100mg at $9.75/100mg.

And they're now a co-defendant.

And the final fun? Adrafinil was only being made in France, and that's no longer happening because the French government regulated it a little harder and the manufacturer (another generic, by someone familiar... Teva I think it was?) decided that not enough people were buying the drug to keep it on the books?!!! Or something.

Can you say "kill them all, nobody would miss them?"