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Shock therapy: It’s not just for treating your big head anymore.

Keeping in mind that it wasn’t that many years ago (well, at least at your age) that the medical profession was practiced by barbers, who frequently performed surgery, extracted teeth and engaged in bloodletting – in fact the red and white colors of the traditional barber pole symbolize blood and bandages – that such Frankensteinian procedures like lobotomies and electric shock therapy have been considered acceptable cures should come as no surprise. That in today’s world of advanced technology that procedures like electric shock therapy are not only still employed, but on the rise, may be surprising especially in light of the requirement of patient’s consent, but then perhaps not since all of those people are crazy anyway.

The idea of treating mental illness with electroshock therapy was the brainstorm of Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti, who while in 1938 was observing the barbaric act of slaughterhouse pigs being electrocuted into unconsciousness to make it less difficult for workers to slit their throats, naturally thought that was a wonderful idea that could be applied to the treatment of mental illnesses in human beings. It wasn’t long before doctors all over the world were zapping patients’ heads, often in regimens that required more than 100 treatments (electricity was much cheaper in those days). It was the go-to treatment for whatever ailed ya, including depression, mania, schizophrenia and even homosexuality and truancy. Because no one likes a depressed gay truant.

Electroshock therapy continued as a favorite medical pastime until the mid 1970s release of the iconic movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Jack Nicholson’s wide-eyed, crazy as a fucking loon face – which we later learned is Jack’s normal look – was a more convincing argument against the use of electroshock therapy to the American public than the medical profession’s argument for, and its use as an acceptable treatment therapy got a few jolts of 220 juice itself, almost disappearing from the field of quackery.

Jack Nicholson, the poster child for electroshock therapy for both the mentally ill and blatantly gay.

Jack’s appearance in The Shining several years later showed the effects of electroshock therapy were not long lasting as everyone had thought, and its use by medical scientists began to revive. Where once it was used to punish and subdue patients in psychiatric hospitals, it became to be viewed as being a kinder and more gentle approach to treating mental disorders and with the tremendous increase in treating mental illness with medication electroshock therapy was allowed to come out of the closet, and made a big comeback. By the late 1990s there were more electroshock therapy procedures being performed annually than tonsillectomies.

Break throughs in medical science have always been thanks to inquiring minds. The ponderable ‘what if?s’ when answered through trial and Dr. Moreau-like experiments have been responsible for modern day medical wonders like heart transplants, gastric by pass procedures, and Honey Boo Boo (I’m guessing on that one, but there has to be some rational explanation for that southern-baked phenomenon). If in fact electroshock therapy is a beneficial treatment for mental disorders, surely that science could be applied to other ailments. And as interesting as it may be to consider electroshock therapy treatment for, say, Tennis Elbow, the all more important question is: If your big head improves from electroshock therapy treatments, then what about the all more important little one? Can electroshock therapy be used to improve the performance of your best buddy? Or is that a fetish best left to the professionals?

Yup. Smells like science to me.

Now you too can plug in to erectile dysfunction relief.

Doctors outside of the psychiatric field were bummed out that they too couldn’t zap their patients and their disgruntlement came to a head when the fun and joy of coursing thousands of volts of electricity through a fellow human being became SOP for police departments around the world with the invention of the taser. Not satisfied with treating those who had been tasered, the medical profession began looking at new and innovative ways of using electricity to make their patients do the funky chicken. In retrospect, since electroshock therapy had been a favorite treatment for curing homosexuality for decades, it’s use on gay men’s favorite body part just seems a natural.

Thanks to Ilan Gruenwald, associate director of the neuro-urology unit at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, we now have proof that a few well-applied shocks to the penis may help those men who suffer from erectile dysfunction. Gruenwald and his team studied the effects of treatments on a pool of patients whose average age was 61 and who suffered from extreme erectile dysfunction (not that any erectile dysfunction isn’t extreme when it is your little friend who is involved). Participants underwent 12 shock treatments over nine weeks. On average, those receiving the shock therapy started to see a benefit three weeks after treatment and continued to see improvements two months after the treatment had stopped. Close to 30 percent of the patents achieved normal sexual function (i.e. a stiffy) and no longer required medications.

Now before you start thinking that applied just a few inches lower that little treatment has been a favorite of torturers and their battery clamps for decades, treatment for those who lack wood is done with soundwaves rather than electricity. It’s called extracorporeal shock wave therapy and it is a best buddy treatment spin-off from the traditional use of pulverizing kidney stones. Or as Dr. Andrew Kramer, a urologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center – who makes it clear he was not involved in the study – puts it, “It’s like saying, take your penis and hit it with a hammer a couple of times.”

Shock therapy could mean it’s not only your hair that will stand on end.

Gruenwald is quick to point out that his treatment is for men for whom other, more traditional boner treatments – like the little blue pill – don’t work. In fact, to achieve a state of lift off after receiving extracorporeal shock wave therapy, the use of standard erectile dysfunction medicines is still required. Which just goes to show you the lengths some men will go through to achieve length.

That Gruenwald chose to use sound waves in lieu of electricity in his novel treatment for lack of wood does not mean others have bypassed the more traditional use of voltage to cure problems of the penis. In light of presidential candidate Mitt For Brains Romney’s adherence to the Mormon gods (or if you are reading this after November 6th, ‘former presidential candidate Mitt For Brains Romney’s adherence to the Mormon gods’) it is interesting to note that his faith has placed great faith in the use of electroshock therapy to cure homosexuality among its membership.

John Cameron, who decided to become a former Mormon instead of a former gay, says he volunteered to be part of a study of “electric aversion therapy” at Utah’s Brigham Young University, which is owned by the Mormon Church. Twice a week for six months, he jolted himself with painful shocks to the penis to rid himself of his attraction to men.
Cameron enrolled with 13 other willing subjects, all Mormons who thought they might be gay, for a three- to six-month course of therapy during which a mercury-filled tube was placed around the base of his penis to measure the level of stimulation he experienced when viewing nude images of men and women. Shocks, given in three 10-second intervals, were then administered in conjunction with images of men. Participants set their own pain levels. Cameron said his shame was so deep, and his faith so great, that he selected the highest level.

The Mormon Church’s answer to homosexuality is not god’s love, but rather a few thousand volts of electricity.

“I was very, very religious and the Mormon church was the center of my life,” said Cameron, who had done missionary work in Guatemala and El Salvador. “As teens we were taught that homosexuality was second only to murder in the eyes of God,” he said.

The church deemed Cameron’s treatment a success; he says he was desperate enough to believe the therapy worked. But he said in reality it only pushed him deeper and deeper into his own closet. Cameron said he bought razor blades and contemplated suicide, but never had the courage to kill himself. He eventually left the church. Today, he says his demons and the dictates of his former religion have finally been purged; he lives a happy and well-adjusted life as an openly gay man.

Carri P. Jenkins, assistant to the president of BYU, confirmed that the university did study the effects of aversion therapy as an experiment that was an outgrowth of the behaviorist movement, which believed that any behavior could be modified. “Our understanding is that most behaviorists no longer believe this is an appropriate treatment for those who are seeking change,” she said.

Church officials say they no longer support aversion therapy, that their beliefs have evolved with time much in the same way the church no longer preaches that being black is the mark of Cain. However, today, the church still steadfastly opposes homosexuality, as witnessed by the millions of dollars in support it gave to pass California’s Proposition 8, which would amend the state’s constitution to outlaw gay marriage.

Do you really need to plug in your gaydar to know if this man is gay or not?

Note that neither the Romney family nor the church has commented on whether or not Romney’s youngest son Craig, who is widely rumored to be a sufferer of homosexuality, has received electroshock therapy or not.

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