Weird Personified Pills

🌟💊-Welcome!-💊🌟

Heyo, I’m Mouthy (@mouthydraws), welcome to my funny pill blog! I’m an autistic artist with a special interest in pharmacology, specially psychiatric medications, more specifically antidepressants, even more specifically SSRIs. A lot of the stuff I post here will be older until I’m able to catch up, but that hopefully won’t take too long!

New blog for my medication personifications? First post obviously has to be the SSRI lineup from 2022, here come the white-tailed deer ready to fight for your mental health!

From left to right: Zelmid (zimelidine), Luvox (fluvoxamine), Prozac (fluoxetine), Zoloft (sertraline), Paxil (paroxetine), Celexa (citalopram), and Lexapro (escitalopram)

SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) are a class of antidepressants used to treat a variety of mental illnesses, most notably anxiety disorders and depression. They’re my absolute favorite class and the reason I’m currently in college for pharmacology. Prozac’s history in particular is my favorite to read about, so expect plenty of him and his history lol.

F.A.Q.

What are personified pills?

Personified pills are, as the name suggests, personifications of medications. Each aspect of the character, from their design to their personality, is carefully chosen based on historical, chemical, and pharmacological aspects of the actual medication. I enjoy drawing the characters in scenes that reference the real-life history of said drug.

Are these your OCs?

Yes. While I don’t own the idea of personifying medications, the designs and characters themselves do belong to me. You’re welcome to design your own personifications, or use mine with credit!

Why are they animals/furries?

Each class of drugs is a different animal species, I think it adds a lot to the characters, and specific animals are chosen in the same way every other aspect of the characters are chosen. Having the characters be animals also allows for clear distinctions between drug classes. I don’t enjoy drawing humans, but even if I did, I’d still keep them as animals.

Do you have a personification for *insert medication here*

All of my personifications are on my Toyhouse (@mouthydraws) under the ‘Medications’ folder. It can take some background knowledge on the class of the drug/possible subclasses or categories to find some of them, so I’ll also be uploading all of them here and using tags to make them easier to locate. If you have a specific medication you want to see, feel free to let me know!

Will you personify illegal drugs?

Given that most illegal drugs either didn’t start out as illegal or are only illegal in certain forms/circumstances, yes. I’ve started on the opioid personifications, and diacetylmorphine (her0in) is definitely going to be a part of that, as well as ADHD medications, which means m3thamphetamine hydrochloride (crystal m3th) is also on the horizon.

Are real people/names included in character lore?

No, I try to keep real people out of the personified pill lore, as it is fiction that’s simply based on actual events. A lot of the history behind these medications can be upsetting, and I do my best to treat these events with the respect they deserve. I’ll talk a lot about drug companies (Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, etc. etc.) but I won’t mention anyone specific lore-wise. I enjoy talking about drug history OUTSIDE of these characters, and will probably do that here too (with appropriate tags of course).

And with that, the methylphenidate family is finally complete!

Ritalin’s younger twin brother (D-isomer), Focalin! Developed much later than Ritalin himself. Given Focalin is far more potent than Ritalin, I’d imagine it’s one of those “my younger sibling can beat me up now and that pisses me off” situations with them. He’s got a sleeper-build thing going on, tho his arms are larger than Ritalins. Ritalin may have gotten the tennis player body, but Focalin can overpower him pretty easily (everywhere except the tennis court, where Ritalin kicks his ass).

Personality wise, he’s more similar to Concerta, much to Ritalins chagrin. Ritalin got his hyperactive clone handed to him in the late 90s/2000s, and then his hyperactive twin the next year. Poor guy couldn’t catch a break. Focalin definitely mirrored some of Ritalins mannerisms tho, as he looked up to him greatly. He keeps his fur well-kept (as much as he can) and makes strong efforts to practice the same quieter maturity that Ritalin does, although it doesn’t seem to suit him as well as it does his brother.

Despite being a clone of his twin brother, Focalin considers Concerta his sister, just like Ritalin does. It’s like having another twin basically. They refer to themselves as triplets, even if Ritalin tends to harp on the specifics of “extended release formulation” and “enantiomers and isomers.”

Ritalin essentially raised these two extensions of himself. He was a fully matured adult when they came into his life, having spent the previous 60 or so years mostly alone. Ritalin was quiet and withdrawn, throwing himself into his work before anything else. He spent far more time in his own head than expressing his thoughts and emotions outwardly, so when these two came along, it was like looking in one of those weird circus mirrors. Two versions of yourself that are technically you, but not quite. I’d like to explore that more later.

Focalin is a ‘best of both worlds’ situation. Applying the same ideas from my previous post, with Ritalin’s personality being based off traits of inattentive ADHD and Concerta’s personality being based off traits of hyperactive ADHD, Focalin takes inspiration from both; combined type. I actually based his personality on my own experiences with ADHD, specifically how I am while on my meds vs off of them (I take Ritalin lol). With combined type ADHD myself, the Ritalin is calming. It quiets some of the noise, the yelling, the singing, the urge to move and keep moving, while also making it so that I can start and finish my tasks without getting distracted by anything and everything out the window or simply forgetting what I’m doing. Once the meds wear off, I get spacey, hyper, and impulsive. The noise that usually stays confined to my own head starts leaking out of my mouth. Anything I pick up and put down disappears. I get confused and frustrated at that point. I’d imagine Focalin gets a combination of these traits. He can lock in when necessary, but has a tendency to forget things and misplace stuff, much like Ritalin. If something excites him, he can do it for hours, with seemingly endless amounts of energy, enough that calming down can seem impossible, much like Concerta.

The original methylphenidate, Ritalin. Named for its creators wife, ‘Rita,’ she was the first to try the drug and took it hoping to help her low blood pressure. She relayed its effects to her husband, and continued using Ritalin to improve her tennis game (hence why Ritalins personification takes inspiration from common builds of tennis players).

He’s far older than many of his family members, and I wanted his personality to reflect that. Coincidentally, Concerta ended up with the hyperactive, always on-the-go, extroverted personality that mirrors that stereotypical hyperactive adhd subtype, and Ritalin ended up with a much ‘calmer on the outside’ type personality that feels more akin to the ‘inattentive’ adhd subtype. It’s less like they represent the subtypes themselves and more like they represent the kind of force someone with the opposite subtype might need. Obviously meds aren’t assigned based on what ADHD subtype a patient has, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to represent some of the disorders patterns in the meds themselves. Ritalin is calm, level-headed, and looks before he leaps, while Concerta is excitable, optimistic, and willing to take risks without fear. They compliment each other.

Much like someone with ADHD, Ritalin has worn many hats for lack of a better term over the years, jumping from specialty to specialty. I’ve talked about it before for an ask, but starting out as a simple drug being tested on your inventors wife to treating depression in the elderly and broken down housewife exhausted with their work, to then supporting people locked away in asylums, then suddenly being approved for hyperactivity and being sent to help children for a change is a hell of a list.

I cannot believe I’m going to have to sit through four years of the most incorrect, disproven, nonsense clownery that’s already been rehashed like four times over the past 40-50 years about my special interest. Autism hell.

Anyway despite the fact that a lot of these drugs are off patent, I’d still bet that a lot of the larger pharmaceutical companies will fight hard to keep these drugs on the market. Nobody fights a legal battle like a pharmaceutical company. We’re about to see an unstoppable force meet an immovable object; the US governments love of power vs the pharmaceutical industry’s love of money.

Ritalin has been a hard one for me since Concerta and Ritalin are technically the same medication, but I feel like they need separate characters. They’re names for the same medication, methylphenidate, but they’re different in doses and release. I switched from Concerta to Ritalin when I needed to up my dose since the next dose up of Concerta was too high for me. The stimulant meds are squirrels!

(Pardon the old art and older art here)

Ritalin came first name-wise. Methylphenidate was synthesized in 1944 in Germany, and the man who synthesized it named it after his wife, Rita (full name Marguerite). She used the drug for her low blood pressure. It was sold by Novartis, which was known as CIBA (Company for Chemical Industry Basel) at the time (Novartis came about in 1996 after two Swiss companies, Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz Laboratories). An extended release form of methylphenidate was approved by the FDA in 2000, known as Concerta, marketed by Alza Corporation. I almost feel like, lore wise, this would mean that the chemical got a second personification. This older medication, marketed with similar tactics to big names like Valium and Miltown (that being the “Mothers Little Helper” flavor of advertisement), has been used for so many different things. Ritalin was only approved for hyperactivity in 1961, and I love this ad from that time:

Very similar to what happened with Valium and the benzos, Ritalin became controversial despite the newfound blockbuster status thanks to treating hyperactivity. Both Ritalin and ADHD as a disorder were placed on the chopping block as people compared it to illegal amphetamines (we’ve all seen someone make that “well it’s basically meth they’re selling meth!” claim, it’s been around forever). Of course, Ritalin was being used a street drug as well. Ciba was against reclassifying Ritalin, worried about stigmatizing their patients. Ritalin ended up getting banned in its parent company’s home county of Sweden in the 1970s. Even back then, ADHD was criticized for being “overdiagnosed” and stimulants for being “overprescribed.” Jump to the 2000s and now here comes Concerta, a new, young, hip take on Ritalin, now with a fun new shape and a longer duration. Look at these pills!! Fun shape!!

Give it two years and now here comes Focalin, DEXmethylphenidate. Ritalin has a sibling, a twin. Just like Celexa and Lexapro (Citalopram and escitalopram), where Celexa is a racemic mixture of its two isomers and Lexapro is a pure formulation of the active isomer only (the s enantiomer), Ritalin is a racemic mixture of its two isomers, and Focalin is a pure formulation of the active isomer only (the d isomer). It was developed to try and reduce side effects and adverse drug interactions. Focalin ALSO got super fun shapes for its pills, going the benzo route and getting a letter shape, with a D for D-(dex)methylphenidate

How cute is that?? Hell, Novartis was even gonna name it Ritadex, but the FDA was like, “come on guys that’s too similar to the other one” and they went with Focalin instead (side note but I love how all of the ADHD drugs got funny names. Adderall, like ADD, what ADHD used to be called. Concerta, like concentrate. Focalin, like focus. Speaking of which, can we tell that MY Ritalin has worn off for the night?).

So imagine you’re Ritalin. You spent your life jumping from career to career, treating depression in the elderly, exhausted housewives, helping those locked away in asylums for YEARS, then transitioned to helping children with hyperactivity issues. You become a blockbuster, huge new responsibilities are placed on your shoulders, but you’re getting recognition finally. Then, people start to criticize you, your parent company, they want you rescheduled, but even when you’re made schedule III in 1970, and then schedule II in 1971, predictions continue to rise. The movement against you expands in the mid 1970s, spreading to the diagnosis you now mainly treat, ADHD, resulting in the American Academy of Pediatrics coming to your aid, basically saying “hey guys cool it, you can use non-medication therapies if you’d like, but there’s a place for stimulant drugs in this treatment.” 1980 rolls around, the DSM-III comes out, and ADD is finally included. The text revision in 1987 changes this to ADHD in 1987. Finally it seems like things are calming down, but then another company decides to basically release a new version of you ‘toy animatronic from FNAF’ style in 2000. Hello Concerta. Then in 2002, your parent company hops on this and now you’ve got a twin. Hello Focalin. On top of that, the first non-stimulant ADHD treatment is approved that same year, and here comes Strattera.

Happy fluoxetine day!!

Something I drew up last year for the anniversary but never posted here. 49 years ago today, compound LY-110140 was given the name fluoxetine. After that, it would be 12 more years before it was finally FDA approved in December of 1987 and subsequently sold on US shelves in January of 1988 (that long ass time span is a whole other can of incredibly interesting worms).

I chose film imagery for this piece as a reference to Prozac’s ‘blockbuster drug’ status, of which nearly everyone was taken off guard by it achieving. No one had high expectations for fluoxetine, even those who developed it in the first place. An antidepressant that acted specifically on the serotonin system could never survive in a world where the current antidepressants, like MAOIs and TCAs, acted on multiple systems, and yet Prozac became a national sensation.

What followed massive success was an outcry that only seemed to get louder as time went on, as the potential dangers of the drug were not being properly communicated or warned about. People were dying, committing suicide. Data was covered up, falsified, never released. The court cases lasted years as people fought pharmaceutical giants in search of retribution. I could talk forever about how interesting Prozac’s history is in particular, and how every other SSRI ties so closely into its story (which, if you want to read, I highly reccomend Let Them Eat Prozac by David Healy, my absolutely favorite book ever I read it over and over).