Other morning, I awoke with a headache, rubbed my noggin, trudged into the bathroom and, just like Sammy Sosa, took a “job-performance enhancing drug.”

Yes, I popped an Aleve.

Few hours later, I could see the positive effects.

I was typing with the best of ’em.

I was hitting adverbs and adjec-tives with incredible ease.

I was spraying subjects and predicates all over the computer screen.

At one point, I took a low sentence clause and then a high fragment — they were both in my wheelhouse — and crafted an amazingly nice paragraph.

Yup, I’m a drug user.

I use them openly to improve my job performance.

If they ask me to testify before Congress, I will. And the room will surely be filled with millions of others. I mean, aren’t we all drug reliant for better performances any more?

Are baseball players new-age drug freaks? Or are they simply a reflection of what we have all
become?

Take last Wednesday’s paper, the edition that on the front page of the sports section used the black-ink-heavy headline to scream, “SAMMY SO-SAD,” and tell the story about the baseball star and former Cub, along with 104 other players, testing positive for “performance-enhancing drugs” as early as 2003.

 Page One that day?

There was a story about a cold remedy that can damage your sense of smell.

 The front page of the business section that day?

There was a story that one of the nation’s leading insurers — our own State Farm — is asking its smoking employees to quit getting their nicotine fix on company property.

 The news-at-a-glance section that day?

There was a story about a new H1N1 flu shot.

 The advertising inserts that day?

Wal-Mart had a deal on Zyrtec (allergy relief), CVS had a nice price on Omeprazole (acid re-ducer), Walgreen’s had a special on Advanced Move Free (sore joints).

It was the special drug-use edi-tion!

Keep in mind, I’m not standing behind baseball players for their use of pharmaceuticals to better sail a tightly wound sphere in exchange for a million-dollar contract.

But take today’s average life.

Caffeine? It starts the day.

Then grab an Allegra or Claritin to clear away the post-nasal clog.

Reach for a baby aspirin to keep your heart pumping.

Pop an appetite suppressant to give your diet a little nudge.

Got a cough? Do Vicks.

Got an incessant nighttime hack? Try Nyquil.

Stomach upset? “Pepto!”

Depressed? Where’s my Zoloft?

Beat indigestion? Have a Tums.

Quit smoking? Is there not humor that we now quit smoking by being prescribed a drug that feeds the very drug we’re trying to quit?

As George Carlin once said: “Only in America do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people get to buy cigarettes at the front.”

And so it goes, too, with a drug-fighting culture that’s become a drug over-the-counter culture along the way.

Baseball?

It’s timelessly famous for being the “American pastime” but the game now is allegedly under assault because of all its drug use.

Or has it simply, subtly become part of a new American pastime?

Pardon me — I need another Aleve.

Contact Bill Flick at flick@pantagraph.com.