The Show Tampa

In her memoir out this week, actress Pam Grier says she and Richard Pryor broke up in part because his cocaine use had led to a dangerous buildup of the drug in her vagina. Is that even possible?

Here’s how Grier recounts the conversation with her doctor:

He said, “Pam, I want to tell you about an epidemic that’s prevalent in Beverly Hills right now. It’s a buildup of cocaine residue around the cervix and in the vagina. You have it. Are you doing drugs?”

“No,” I said, astonished.

“Well, it’s really dangerous,” he went on. “Is your partner putting cocaine on his penis to sustain his erection?”

“No,” I said, “not that I know of. It’s not like he has a pile of cocaine next to the bed and he dips his penis in it before we have sex.” I had a nauseating flash of one of Richard’s famous lines: Even my dick has a cocaine jones.

“Are you sure he isn’t doing it in the bathroom before he comes to bed?” the doctor asked. “That’s a possibility,” I said. “You know, I am dating Richard Pryor.”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “We have a serious problem here. If he’s not putting it on his skin directly, then it’s worse because the coke is in his seminal fluid.”

The doctor then asks her if her mouth went numb while performing oral sex on Pryor, which she says it did, and which he links to the Novocaine-like effects of cocaine.
1970s icons aside, is this a real phenomenon? At least one doctor is highly skeptical. We checked in with Dr. Jan Gurley, a physician who works at a public-health clinic for the homeless in San Francisco and, in her spare time, blogs for SFGate.com. The phenomenon was news to her, but she gamely called the San Francisco Forensic Office, where the first medical examiner she spoke to also had never heard of it. A request is in to the San Francisco Forensic Office’s Chief Toxicologist and an Ob-Gyn.
But here’s why it’s unlikely from a physiological standpoint: Cocaine is a form of adrenaline, and your body processes it on a temporary basis, Doc Gurley explained. The speed with which your body processes it depends on the blood flow to the area; toxicologists testing for cocaine often check the eyeballs or the nose, because those are low blood-flow areas. The vagina, however, is a high blood-flow zone — Doc Gurley says the Ob-Gyn surgeons’ term of art is that the vagina is “very forgiving.” (It really is, if you think about it.)
Bottom line: “It’s extremely unlikely that there could be any toxic vagina effect of cocaine,” Gurley says.
The one outstanding question is whether ejaculate can store cocaine, and how fast a woman could “heal” from that after sex.
“All in all, having any doctor tell any patient something like that smacks of either misremembered recall on the patient’s part, or, possibly more likely, a sleazy attempt by a vaguely irresponsible doc to scare someone into making a major life change,” Gurley says. But, she adds, “This whole topic is yet another morality tale showing yet another reason why it’s so important to insist on a condom.”

Famed physicist Stephen Hawkingdelivered a chilling warning on a recent television special, “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.”

Aliens are out there… and we need to stop trying to talk to them, he says.

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” the award-winning British scientist said in the series for the Discovery Channel.

To drive the point home, Hawking argued that aliens visiting Earth would likely be the same as when explorers first arrived in the New World.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed inAmerica, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

If aliens in space ships did come to Earth, Hawking suggests, they may be more “V” than “E.T.”

“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach,” he said, arguing that they may have taken to the stars because they depleted resources on their home world.

However, if humans were to encounter aliens, Hawking believes they would likely be animals or even just microbes.

The Discovery series, which begins airing tonight, will address issues such as space exploration, alien life, as well as time travel.

“Into the Universe” took three years to complete, and was spearheaded by Hawking, who suffers from neuro-muscular dystrophy.

Sullivan and the student met last January when he was in eighth grade at Lauderhill Middle School. She was a computer teacher at the school who gave him a permission form for boxing — and her cellphone number, the boy told police.
Sullivan later had the boy transferred into her computer class. She would have him help her with computer repairs and technology deliveries, sometimes getting him out of other classes, the boy told police.
At the end of last school year, the boy said, the computer teacher changed his science grade from a “C” to a “B.”
One day, after school, she kissed him on the cheek. In May, he called her to ask if she would have sex with him.
“We’ll talk about it,” was her reply, he told police.
The next morning, according to the boy, Sullivan picked him up at home in her black, four-door Honda, drove him to school and took him inside a storage room, where they had sex. They next day, the two again had sex in the storage room.
Sullivan confessed to the relationship, police spokesman Capt. Rick Rocco said, but she didn’t acknowledge having sex at the school.
The two sometimes used condoms. Twice, Sullivan told the boy she might be pregnant, according to the arrest affidavit.
There also were gifts.
The boy told police that Sullivan gave him a new cellphone for his 14th birthday, Air Jordan sneakers, a gold chain, football gloves, a Wii video gaming system and games for a Sony PlayStation.
She also gave him marijuana about 15 times, he told police, although no drug charges were filed.
In return, he gave her a gold chain with the letter “J” on it, the affidavit said.

The boy’s mother knew the two were spending time together, including rides home from school in Sullivan’s car, phone communication and a trip to a dog park.

Growing suspicious, she confronted Sullivan.
“Sullivan responded by saying `No’ and claimed she was trying to be a mentor for her son,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Later, when the mother asked about the cellphone and extra cash on her son, he replied that he found them, the affidavit said.
The end of the affair began March 24, when the boy began dating a new girlfriend.

On April 3, while at a movie, the new girlfriend saw text messages between Sullivan and the boy.
He told her about the relationship, and he later told his mother, the police said.

Sullivan and the boy had their last tryst Sunday in the back of her car, parked in front of the boy’s home, he told investigators.
She wore a black nightgown. He wore boxer shorts.
The next day, the boy’s mother went to police.
After interviewing the boy, police monitored a call between Sullivan and the 14-year-old discussing their sexual relationship, according to the affidavit.
“Where are we gonna do it tonight?” he asked Sullivan, the affidavit said.

“Does it matter?” she replied. “Wherever you want.”
Sullivan was arrested at her Plantation home at 4:35 a.m. Tuesday and released on bail Wednesday.
She was first hired at the age of 16 in 2000 as a temporary clerical worker at Silver Trail Middle in Pembroke Pines, according to the school district.
Sullivan worked her way up, moving into the classroom in Lauderhill Middle in 2007.
She left the school in November 2009 when she was moved to the districtwide instructional technology department.

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