Performance Enhancing Drugs - not just for Olympians anymore

In 2006, I took a slow boat to China. A 7 month trip aboard the Disney Wonder, where I performed 2-3 shows a day, 6 days a week. It was a fun, although sometimes demanding job. And when a singer would lose his or her voice, he or she would go to the ship's doctor and 7 or 8 times out of 10,
the singer would get a little baggie of steroids.
1 time out of 10, he/she would get a steroid inhaler. So, yeah. Like ONE time out of ten, we would NOT walk out of the office with steroids.

Steroids were the ship's remedy for (among other things) vocal fatigue. And I'm not gonna lie. They kinda worked. But our vocal captain said they were bad for us in the long run, so I didn't partake... except once...

After my contract on the ship ended, I immediately entered a contract for Disney in Hong Kong, China. In H.K, you can get steroids over the counter at the drugstores in the malls. But I didn't. When in Rome.... I decided to treat my simultaneous bronchitis, laryngitis, and severe sinusitis with Chinese remedies.

I walked into work with almost no voice and my stage manager gave me some Chinese medicine.
Yay :)

"Try this," Winnie said. "Is very good for voice. Put in your tea or keep little pieces in your mouth and chew."

"What is it?" I asked, breaking off a piece of the tough, brown substance and pressing it between my teeth.

"Is snake bladder ...soaked in snake bladder juice,"

was Winnie's straight-faced reply.

Ummm... It was already in my mouth. "Pee?" I asked. "What is bladder juice? Is it pee? Snake pee?"

Winnie looked at me as if she had no idea what i was asking.

Shoot! Do they not call it 'pee' here? As I did on the streets of H.K. when asking directions: I rephrased and rephrased until someone knew what I was talking about.

"Pee? Peepee??? Toilet. Urine? Yellow? Juice from inside the bladder?? ......Um... Psssst??" I asked, feighning a squat and wiggling my index finger like a stream from between my legs. "Pssssssssst???"

Winnie laughed.
"I dunno...
Soaked
in
bladder
juice."
She said, reading the hieroglyphs on the label. Why this mysterious stuff was in her desk drawer, I still don't know, because when I asked her if it worked, she handed me the rest of the snake bladder peices and said,

"I don't know.
I never try.
We see today if work,"

I readied myself for my first show that day chewing on snake bladder and sipping tea w/ snake bladder chunks in it.

And no. ...It did not work.

East Germans: 1, Chinese: 0