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ScienceMeet the local taking gas station boner pills so you don’t have to
Grant Harting Credit: Courtesy of @Grant_Harting YouTube channel
Grant Harting may look like an unassuming pharmacist, but his popular YouTube channel proves he’s anything but.
I’m driving to meet Harting at a suburban Primanti Bros. franchise because I noticed his Steelers cup in a recent video. A quick Google search revealed what I’d hoped — Harting is a local. A Duquesne University alumnus, he previously worked at Rite Aid before that chain’s collapse last year.
“It was the worst experience,” Harting tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “I can’t even describe how awful it was.”
Since leaving Rite Aid, Harting’s career has taken several interesting turns, from working as a hospice consultant to starting a business called Crush Cost aimed at saving people money on prescribed medication. Tall and bespectacled, he seems mainly to wear Crush Cost-branded polos and zip-ups. He’s become a licensed pharmacist in four U.S. states.
And he’s built a following of millions on social media by trying extremely sketchy drugs.
Pharmacist Grant Harting Credit: Mars Johnson
“I thought that everybody’s concern with these gas station pills was unfounded, and that it was just a blend of random herbs,” Harting says.
Wrong.
It turns out supplements sold in gas stations, many of which purportedly help you relax, stay awake, or go “longer, harder, stronger,” often contain ingredients such as sildenafil (Viagra), tadalafil (Cialis), and psychiatric medications. Others even contain banned weight-loss drugs. “The worst thing I’ve ever experienced was completely legal stuff,” Harting explains. “It was called Black Spider 25.” Harting describes a “horrible, very uneasy feeling” after taking the gas station dietary supplement, which offers “wickedly potent thermogenic support.”
The video of Harting taking Black Spider 25, posted in early May, now has over half a million views.
Other videos, such as the video of Harting taking the Titanium 9000K “rhino pill” sexual performance supplement, also have hundreds of thousands of views. “It did nothing to me,” Harting says, though a mail-order test showed the pill contained “dangerous chemicals.”
Harting only began posting about a year ago, he says. Viewers have continued to inform what Harting takes and motivated his pursuit of a licensure in a fourth state (Idaho recently joined Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia). But Harting says exponential audience growth has its downsides.
“I really enjoyed the intimacy of having 50,000 people, and I could trust their opinion,” he says. “But since that, I mean, it’s blown up to the point where I can’t even trust the comments.”
Part of what’s fueled that growth is Harting’s natural comic timing. He’s performed at Pittsburgh venues including Scarpaci’s bar on Mt. Washington, though he says it’s been a while since he’s done stand-up. Admittedly, his self-effacing humor and unflinching willingness to try ridiculous drugs and report back to his viewers is what drew me in for more after the algorithm initially served up his videos on my feed.
Pharmacist Grant Harting sits for an interview at a Primanti Bros. franchise Credit: Mars Johnson
But Harting is serious about his work. On his YouTube account, he’s taken companies including Walmart to task for packaging he says is wasteful and shrinkflationary. The oddball videos ultimately feed back into his goal of empowering consumers and prescribers to make smarter choices about the medications they take, be they Royal Honey VIP, which the FDA says contains active ingredients found in Cialis, or commonly prescribed pills such as prednisone, a corticosteroid.
“I think a lot of people think because a drug exists, it’s effective; it’s worth the price. That’s not true,” Harting says. Prednisone is a real example — one delayed-release prescription variety was billed at a ridiculous markup when the pill can often be prescribed for $10 or less. “A lot of times, I see that get prescribed by mistake,” he says over a slice of Primanti’s pizza. “They don’t realize that there’s that much of a difference in just two little letters, the D.R. [for delayed release].”
Harting hopes his efforts make more prescribers aware of the arbitrary nature of drug pricing, which would in turn help the roughly 65% of Americans who take prescription medication each month. “The cost of a drug is however much the drug company thinks they can get from the insurance companies,” he says. “That’s it.”
In videos, Harting has also compared America’s healthcare to Mexico’s, tested medications for opioid use disorder, sampled powerful tranquilizers, and dug into the murky world of animal medications purchased at Tractor Supply Co. His YouTube presence even extends to ASMR videos with a more relaxing vibe. In many, he plugs his Crush Cost platform, sometimes next to a thumbed-through Holy Bible, a book he says he read cover to cover during a period of boredom. It becomes clear as we chat that he views his videos synergistically with the business side of his work.
Longer-term, he’s hoping to build Crush Cost into a more broadly accessible subscription service. The company’s website, “Now in Beta!”, touts savings for consumers and has lookup tools for medications and prescribers. Asked about policy changes, Harting says he’d like to see a nationwide medical database so people have better continuity of care. He continues to consult on hospice care part-time.
Grant Harting Credit: Courtesy of @Grant_Harting YouTube channel
His work, he says, is about transparency and trust. He encourages people to take the advice of medical professionals, including pharmacists, seriously. “We’re trained in pharmacy school as to what the best option is,” he tells me. He says supplements you buy from major retailers like Amazon and Walmart undergo sufficient quality control.
“I actually have a supplement myself. I went to the factory to inspect it. They were spot on with everything,” he says.
The problem is that, often, people in pain or looking for easy fixes want pharmacists to tell them what they want to hear — or go to convenience stores in search of workarounds.
“If you go to a gas station, they’re not verifying anything. So that appears to be the area that might be some guy in their basement just filling up things,” he says. He now sends the most extreme pills he acquires to a lab for testing but encourages viewers not to worry too much about his safety.
“When people watch the videos, they get a little bit scared for me, nervous, and I guess they forget what I do for a living,” he says. “I know what I’m doing.”
He looks like exactly the kind of guy that would take gas station boner pills. Only a matter of time before they find him dead on the floor of his house, with foam in his mouth and a gigantic several-days-old stiffie.
I saw this guy on YouTube a few times before this article. I wish him well, taking random shit you find at a gas station for the sake of science is crazy
He's the last person I'd think of being tatted up, much less with the Led Zep zoso era symbols, but he's very funny, informative and licensed and in good standing in FOUR states. Rekieta could never.
Dude is pretty informative and makes pharmaceutical stuff a little more digestible. I have enjoyed his content, he’s doesn’t shill his line of supplements all the time either. Crooked thumbs up
Anybody else had trouble with deciphering the title of this shit?
Here's how a non-confusing version should look like:
"Meet the local who is taking gas station boner pills so you don't have to".
IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING DIFFICULT!!!
LEARN YOU SOME FUCKING ENGLISH LANGUAGE, MOTHERFUCKER!!!
