Double Take Dept.: Side Effects Vary

Nick Paumgarten

TWO OLD FRIENDS met for coffee last week, after dropping the kids off at school. Were the other people in the café aware that the taller one was Opioid-Induced Constipation Man? Apparently not. No one snickered, or asked him to sign a bottle of Vicodin pills. This was four days after the Super Bowl—four days after Opioid-Induced Constipation Man had made his début in an advertisement, during the first half of the game, for a drug that supposedly alleviates opioid-induced constipation, or O.I.C. (Actually, the ad, paid for by the pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and Daiichi-Sankyo, didn’t mention the drug. It addressed the condition, not the cure. For the latter, you’ll have to have a conversation with your doctor.) Depending on your point of view, the ad was offensive, confusing, gross, or…

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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 22, 2016

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