Being a Human Guinea Pig Changed My Life

Another one of those big what-if moments

The Gross Clinic, Thomas Eakins, 1875–76, The Met (public domain)

Things could have been oh-so different.

May 2005

Decision time. I’d just completed my English teacher training and had two job offers to weigh up: Lviv, Ukraine and Moscow.

There was no question I wanted to go to Lviv. I just didn’t know if I could afford it.

Even though most English teachers don’t do it for the money, we do have to eat and get by after all.

I had a lot of university debt to pay off and with the paltry salary in western Ukraine – around $300/month compared to $1500 in Moscow – I wouldn’t be able to cover my monthly loan payments.

There was one solution – I could volunteer for another clinical trial. This would be my third and by far the most lucrative.

October 2003

After finishing my master’s at Edinburgh, I was living in Belfast trying to figure out what to do next. While working at Waterstone’s bookshop, I heard about a promising opportunity to take part in voluntary clinical trials. The money seemed too good to be true.

It wasn’t.

I did my first trial in October. It involved a 24-hour stint every Monday morning for 10 weeks. Doing it in Belfast was part of the unique, fascinating experience – it was me and 11 other guys from different walks of life, among them a former Protestant paramilitary and an Irish Catholic Republican. Let me tell you, we had some interesting…conversations.

(Many readers will know about the situation in Northern Ireland, and I won’t get into it here. You can do your own research to get an idea as to why having people with those backgrounds together in a confined space might lead to some…Troubles.)

The hardest part of the trial was the coffee and alcohol sacrifice. For 72 hours before the trial, I couldn’t drink alcohol, and with a friendly, social bunch of Waterstone’s colleagues who went out on Saturday evenings, this was tough. But even worse was the coffee rule – none for 24 hours before the trial. That meant I couldn’t properly enjoy my Sundays, where I used to spend all day with my granny drinking endless cups of coffee and reading newspapers.

I’d get up at 5.30 just to have my coffee before the 24-hour rule kicked in, otherwise I would’ve suffered through severe caffeine withdrawal. I couldn’t have my Sunday ruined like that and instead dealt with the agonising headache in the lab. As soon as I was released on Tuesday morning, I went straight to a local café called Clements and got the Hammerhead: a triple shot half litre monstrosity that had me buzzing all day.

clementscoffee, Instagram

My second trial, in the spring of 2004, was a short 48-hour stint that didn’t pay much, but along with my Waterstone’s job it gave me enough cushion to be able to afford to work for an NGO in Nigeria in 2004.

In May 2005, the timing was impeccable. There was another medical trial going, and this meant I’d be able to take the Lviv job, as long as I got accepted (there was a lot of demand to get on these trials).

I did. And this time spent nearly two weeks straight in the facility, with another cast of motley characters, but no former paramilitaries, to keep me entertained. We had FIFA tournaments on the PlayStation, we watched films, I read loads of books, and the staff brought in daily newspapers. The caffeine withdrawal headaches only affected me for the first couple of days and I was fine after that.

(Snob alert: I was the only read who read the Guardian. The others all fought over the tabloids: Daily Mail, Sun, Express. After a few days, the person responsible for buying the newspapers asked, ‘Do I still need to get the Guardian every day?” and about six or seven of my fellow guinea pigs all said at once, “Ach, aye, sure the Yank reads it, doesn’t he?”)

I made more money in those two weeks than in my entire time – nine months – in Ukraine.

And that would be enough to keep the student loan companies happy.

And it meant that I could go to Lviv.

So it was all worth it.

As I used to tell my students, if I hadn’t done that clinical trial, then there’s a decent chance that I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you boring you with yet another one of my stories (and writing a post like this on something called Substack).

Or, if I hadn’t been a human lab rat, I probably would’ve gone to Moscow.

Instead, I ended up spending 13 years of my life in Ukraine.

Anyway, it wasn’t quite as bad as this:

Early Xenotransfusion from Lamb to Man, Matthias Gottfried Purmann, 1705, Wellcome Collection (public domain)

Side effects? What side effects?

Yeah, right, uh…fair question.

So far, so good (I think – fingers crossed).

These were Phase 1 clinical trials, which means they were done on healthy volunteers to figure out how safe the drug is and what side effects it might have – basically how it’s absorbed, distributed, and processed by the body. Phase 3 trials, on the other hand, involve people who actually have the condition the drug is meant to treat, and they’re all about testing how well the drug works. In Phase 1, it doesn’t really matter what the drug is for – it’s more about how the body handles it. My first trial was for a cholesterol-lowering drug (which, to be honest, would probably come in handy now), the second was for schizophrenia, and the third was for testosterone.

Luck played a massive role in that final two-week trial. I knew within the first couple of days that I was one of three lucky ones (out of eighteen) that had been given the placebo and not actual testosterone. The others were bouncing off the walls, overly energetic and jumpy while I and a couple of fellow participants sat back and counted our lucky stars.

And the pound signs.

Ka-ching £££!!!

History repeats

Fast forward 20 years later and here I am in a similar [financial] boat. Funny how this all goes in circles.

While I wait for my book sales to slowly trickle in, I’ve been making ends meet in part by weekly plasma donations. Not quite as lucrative as those medical trials, but it puts a few extra meals on the table.

Speaking of pound signs, I have three books for sale. This post is adapted from a chapter in my first book, A Classroom in Kyiv: Life Lessons for English Learners. You can find that one on my site and from various retailers worldwide (just click on the lovely image at the bottom of the email) or go here or here.

My second book, No More Boring Worksheet(s): Spicing Up English with Chaos, Creativity, and (some) Grammar, is also available on my site or here:

And my third book, Diary of a Restless Mind: A Month of Musings, is available from Amazon or you can pay what you want or take it for free (seriously, I insist!) here at Gumroad.

If you’re not interested in any of those, I have three more books on the way (I clearly have way too much time on my hands), including my first novel, to be serialised on Substack within the next fortnight.

What about you? Have you ever volunteered for a medical trial? Would you? Have you done anything else reckless with your body? Has desperation ever driven you to such lengths?

Not only do they pay me, but I even get to read.