Let me start off by giving some background information:

I quit my job last month due to going nowhere and becoming burnt out. I have some money saved up so I have been taking a bit of an extended vacation. I also enrolled in college for the 2017 fall semester so that I can finally finish school, better myself, and find something more meaningful than a dead end job. My plan is to finish my general education, with emphasis on transferring to a radiology program to eventually complete a bachelor's degree in that field. I want to specialize as an MRI tech, but that could change. The most important thing to me right now is to make sure I have a solid plan in place for the upcoming years. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time, so it is time to get some of that back which will in turn provide a brighter future for me and my loved ones.

Putting all that aside, I'm starting to look for a job again to make some money until school starts (plus we plan to move to a cheaper place when our lease is up in the summer). In the meantime, I've always had an application in at the research clinic here in my town, which pays pretty good money for clinical trials of various things. There is a current study paying $2000 for 7 outpatient visits (6am-8pm, every 3 days) testing some sort of "anti-aging" medicine. I've never been able to participate because it would interfere with my work schedule, but now that I'm free, I'm considering it as a supplement to whatever job I find in the upcoming weeks.

It is a legitimate clinic, so I am not worried about that. I was wondering if anyone here has participated in clinical research trials and if I should be worried about ingesting these new "medicines." I'm sure there is always some sort of risk involved but it seems like a simple way to make some extra money while I search for a new job. If I fit the criteria, I'll be enrolling today.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated!

As you may be aware, Robert Rodriguez funded his second film El Mariachi largely from money he made from being a lab rat.

About half the money I made while going to college was from medical studies. I lost track of how many I participated in after about twenty. There were a lot of simple meds for treating things like high blood pressure, but plenty of weird shit too. There was even a nasal spray for treating erectile dysfunction and we had to report every 30minutes if an erection had occured. Of course it had not because it was an all male study, the phlebotomists were not entirely attractive, and the place was cold and clinical.

For the money, the inpatient studies are where it's at if you don't mind sharing living space with a bunch of really weird people. The worst part for me was all the blood draws. Some of the studies I was in had blood draws spaced as little as 10 minutes apart and some of the phlebotomists are absolutely horrid at their job. I still have scars from it and haven't participated in a study in over 12 years.

They generally don't want you to exercise during the study. The food for the inpatient studies is generally god awful. Some of the high blood pressure med studies I did had some ridiculously high fat content meals that required us to eat everything as a requirement to stay in the study. I witnessed a guy get kicked out of a study for not finishing all his butter. He finished everything except 3 pats of butter. One of the coordinators reminded him that he had to finish everything. He had nothing left to put the butter on and gagged every time he tried to eat straight butter so it was all over. That was on day three and he got nothing for those 3 days.

If none of this scares you off, then I would say go for it. It's an excellent way of making money when you have the time and it is absolutely necessary to bring new drugs/treatments to the market.

Thank you for your detailed response, this was the kind of answer I was hoping for. I think it will definitely be worth the time invested and potential awkwardness, I just wanted to get some experienced insight on the matter.

I am not sure if you have done the math but 7 outpatient visits will equate to 98 hours of participation which will be pretty much equivolent to getting 20-25 dollars an hour pay.

So my only question is, wouldn't I rather just be working rather than sitting in a hospital bed all day not knowing what the heck could go wrong?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6hWLiGfCGI

Of the many studies that I did, I never had any perceivable effects from the drugs with the exception of feeling just slightly light headed from a blood thinner for about 30 minutes and just the single time.

And yes, the pay for outpatient studies is not all that impressive. That's why I suggest going for the inpatient studies. They are much more lucrative. They usually require a 30-90 day break in between studies, so make it count and go for the higher paying studies. It's pretty easy to fudge the 30-90 day thing if there are multiple clinics in your' area but this is not entirely ethical since it has the real potential of skewing their results. But at the same time, it is common practice. From conversations I had with some of the participants, I would estimate that at least 25% of them were walking out the door of one study and starting another within a week. There were faces I would see repeatedly in these studies. Career Lab Rats...

Apparently this study filled up the day it was released so I was about 12 hours too late. But being a lab rat as a supplement to regular income for sitting around testing the absorption of fish oil, a new anti-aging medicine, or medicated lotion to treat skin ailments etc etc seems like a worthwhile investment to me.

So I'm curious-if one was interested in doing this, where do they find out about studies on their area? Are they done by research hospitals-theres a big one in my area-or by private companies, or ???

I found out about the one (and only one in my city?) through word of mouth by a couple friends at my last job. If you google "paid clinical (or paid research) trials in my area" it should bring up some options. That's how I found the website because by the time I got home, I forgot the name of the clinic and had to look it up.

The one I'm going to participate in is a private company I believe and is not located in a hospital. I live in a city of about 160k, btw. I'm sure the bigger cities have plenty of options and like Syberdelic mentioned, some people make a career out of it.

Well, today I was informed that my study got cancelled and I don't fit the criteria for any other current studies. Oh well, I'll just wait for another one to come out and go back to donating plasma in the meantime.