This is predictable. Yesterday morning, a Walgreens’ in Santa Monica had 12 boxes of Alli. Four hours later, one box was left. “I have never in my life experienced anything like this,” store manager Roe Love, a pharmacist for 20 years, tells The Los Angeles Times. Who’s paying $59.99 for each box of 90 capsules? Mostly women, she says, “and they’re not fat.”

The fact that the product is kept with the rest of the diet drugs under locked glass on the shelf — to prevent theft — didn’t deter people from requesting it, the paper notes. The only comparable phenomenon Love could think of was the frenzy over the Cipro antibiotic during anthrax scare after 9/11. “You couldn’t fill those prescriptions fast enough,” says Love.

The Times notes that this is Los Angeles, ‘where thinness is the Holy Grail’ and people will do just about anything to get there - including risking some rather unfortunate intestinal distress - buyers didn’t flinch at possible side effects. Such as? Oily leakages, which prompts Glaxo to warn consumers to bring extra undies to work and Pharmalot to speculate about underwear stock.

“I’ve tried so many other things,” says Monique Brown, a legal secretary who says she’s been through Metabolife, CortiSlim and various products, some of which made her jittery. “I’m just willing to give it a try. There are side effects to a lot of things,” she says of her quest to lose 30 pounds. “I work in an office and I sit all day. There’s a bathroom right there. We’ve all worked together a long time. If you have to go, you have to go.”

So true.