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"facebook dialogPinterest\n\nRuss Kelly hadn't felt this good in years. Which was strange, because to any casual observer the guy's life was falling apart.\n\nHe had just begun a three-pills-a-day regimen of Mirapex to alleviate some early symptoms of Parkinson's disease, and almost overnight, he remembers, \"there was a clear change in my actions. In the cartoon there'd be the good angel on your right shoulder and the Devil on your left shoulder, arguing with each other. 'Do it!' 'Don't do it!' Usually the angel wins out. But the Devil takes over sometimes.\" In the case of Russ Kelly\u2014a loyal husband, dutiful father, and stalwart employee in the technology sector\u2014the Devil started riding shotgun in his subconscious.\n\nInstead of having one or two beers after a round of golf with friends, the man would suck down six or seven. Instead of engaging in polite chitchat with comrades, he became antagonistic\u2014\"just arguing for the sake of arguing,\" as he puts it. When evening fell, Kelly would get itchy to bolt from his condo in New Jersey; he'd drive to Atlantic City and gamble away tens of thousands of dollars in a single night. Meanwhile, his libido went off the charts. The urge to bed women became overwhelming. \"I was driven by need,\" he says. \"That was a big part of it. It was like: Go for it.\" Eventually his marriage started to give way and all the signs seemed to indicate that his life was in a downward spiral, except for one crucial detail: He was relishing the ride. \"It was exhilarating,\" he says. \"Like in Top Gun, when Tom Cruise says 'I feel the need\u2014the need for speed,' and he gets into his jet fighter and he's strapped to an engine\u2014that's what it's like. You're rocketing through the air. It's that excitement we all want in our lives, but we realize as responsible human beings that we need to reel that feeling back.\"\n\nWhat Kelly didn't know\u2014years later, a doctor figured it out and immediately took him off Mirapex\u2014was that he was among the 15 to 20 percent of the population that's susceptible to the more sordid side effects of dopamine agonists. These prescription drugs, which restore the brain's natural neurotransmitter wash of dopamine, can improve motor functions in people struggling with Parkinson's (and the mystery of restless leg syndrome). But in certain patients, the dopamine bath appears to affect something else\u2014the part of the brain that tends to hold a few of our feral impulses in check. \"We've had patients with gambling problems who have essentially gone bankrupt,\" says Daniel Weintraub, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. For some, drugs like Mirapex and Requip seem to zoom in on a hidden vice\u2014compulsive eating, porn viewing, skirt chasing, Web surfing, or shopping, for instance\u2014and magnify it. \"Patients compare it to losing the superego,\" says Melissa Nirenberg, a neurologist at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. \"People still often feel like they shouldn't be doing these things, but they can't stop.\"\n\nAnd, well, should they? Perhaps it's inevitable that some seekers of chemical transformation have, over the past few years, begun experimenting with the fate-tempting notion of taking dopamine agonists as a way to achieve the orgasm of the gods. On muscle-building sites such as Testosterone Nation and sex-oriented ones like Love-Scent.com, it's not uncommon to find debates and amateur advice (\"Combine with Cialis for a fun weekend\" or \"the orgasm was powerful . . . I felt it 'further inside'\") regarding the recreational use of cabergoline, a dopamine agonist (usually marketed as Dostinex) that's prescribed in tiny doses to help people with endocrine problems, including high levels of prolactin. Prolactin is the hormone that facilitates breastfeeding when a woman has given birth, but men have the stuff coursing through their veins, too\u2014in fact, prolactin is responsible for the wave of automatic drowsiness that washes over a man seconds after he has ejaculated. Take away the prolactin and, according to some medical trials, a guy's libido can spring right back to life in a matter of seconds. In other words, gentlemen: Meet the male Holy Grail, the possibility of multiple orgasms. Which explains why a dude might be tempted to pop a couple of Dostinex toward the end of a promising date. \"Viagra will just increase the blood flow in the penis causing an erection,\" crows an online ad for under-the-table Dostinex. \"Dostinex improves libido, orgasm and ejaculation.\" Much less is known about the recreational benefits of dopamine agonists like Mirapex and Requip, which are prescribed in higher doses, but clearly they have the power to take an otherwise regular guy like Russ Kelly and make him as rapacious as Tiger Woods. But Kelly's saga also illustrates that there's a downside to turning yourself into a top-gunning, pill-popping Mr. Hyde. \"Some people crash,\" Nirenberg says. \"They crash when you try to stop it, and the symptoms are just like when cocaine abusers try to stop. They start having panic attacks\u2014crying and fatigue, they can't get out of bed, they're miserable, they're sweating. It's withdrawal.\" Sure, doctors concede that there might be something invigorating about a brief lapse into bad behavior, but it can take years to clean up the wreckage. Not long after Russ Kelly's misadventures led to a DUI, he switched to Simenet, which is not a dopamine agonist. He went into therapy to learn how to manage his unleashed cravings and sought counseling to try to repair the damage to his marriage. \"These people are not enjoying it,\" Nirenberg says. Once the Devil has jump-started an endless bender in your brain, it can be very, very hard to kick him out.\n\nREAD MORE:\n\n Do You Have a Case of Recovery Envy?\n\n Dope With a Doctor's Note\n\n David Duchovny on Sex Addiction\n\n The Orgasm to Die For?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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