These days, you can take a pill for almost anything.

    Afraid you might get pregnant? Take a pill. Worried about going bald? Take a pill. Feel like killing your boss? Take a pill.

    Pills can now be considered one of the three major food groups. The other two, of course, are candy and desserts.

    Without pills, we'd be walking around in constant pain. And you think people curse a lot now?

    Like many of our cave-dwelling ancestors who didn't take pills, our communication would be reduced to grunts, groans and four-letter words. Like "help" and "ouch."

    Lucky for us, modern doctors are fond of pills. Go to a doctor with a problem and she'll probably ask, "Have you taken any pills?" Even before she's had a chance to examine your rash. Talk about a rash diagnosis.

    The doctor will give you a prescription, a piece of paper doctors doodle on. You take the paper to a pharmacist, who spent several years in college just to become an expert on doodle.

    "What does it say?" you ask.

    "You need lots of pills," he says. "Small ones, big ones, white ones, yellow ones, round ones, long ones."

    He smiles. You know exactly what he's thinking: "Now I can buy new sneakers for my kids."

    You return home with six bottles of pills. One kind, you need to take three times a day, right after meals. Another kind, you need to take six times a day, on an empty stomach. A third kind, you need to take once a day, while completely naked.

    Just figuring out the pill rotation gives you a migraine. Which means you need a seventh pill.

    And you never know what side-effects you'll experience. That's because the pill makers, afraid of law suits, warn you against every possible reaction: "Taking this medication could result in sleeplessness, drowsiness, laziness, incontinence, impotence, intelligence, loss of appetite, loss of memory, loss of body parts ..."

    Even if you're in good health, you may need a lot of pills. Vitamins and minerals come in pills. So do nutritional supplements.

    Some bodybuilders spend half their days swallowing pills. And the other half looking in the mirror.

    One of the most popular supplements these days is creatine, which can turn almost anyone into Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's much cheaper than taking acting lessons.

    But there's one major problem with creatine and some other supplements: Their long-term effects have not been studied.

    This worries me. I'm afraid I'll wake up in a few years and find that I've grown breasts. The kind that would make Dolly Parton envious.

    Of course, the supplement makers would be thrilled. They'd find a whole new market in teenage girls.

    And maybe they'd ask me to appear in their advertisements. "If creatine did this for him," they'd say, "imagine what it'll do for you."

    They'd have to pay me a lot of money. I won't embarrass myself for nothing.

    Not without taking a pill.