Is that a drug in your water, or are you just happy?

Are you suffering from drowsiness, excitability, lack of appetite, vision problems, dizziness, anxiety, constipation, diarrhea, dry mouth, increased sweating, pain, rashes, tingling, vomiting, agitation, irritability memory impairment, decreased libido, weight loss, weight gain, nausea, hair loss, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, palpitations, heat intolerance, fluid retention, flu symptoms, indigestion, tremors, fever, flushing, muscle weakness, insomnia, joint pain, excessive gas or an erection that lasts more than four hours?

You probably don't have swine flu. Maybe it's just something you drank. Like water.

The symptoms above are just some of the side-effects of drugs that have been detected in our drinking water. Many of those drugs probably are expelled from human bodies in the normal way and just don't get filtered out by sewage plants. A few may be the result of farm animals. Some people toss unwanted prescriptions into the toilet.

But before the fear can begin, we need to know what to fear, and even if we have anything to fear.

"How do you screen for it and filter it out if you don't know what to get rid of?" says Congresswoman Melissa Bean, a Barrington Democrat. "Until we really know what's there and what harm there is, we don't know what the next step would be."

A proposal sponsored by Bean and passed in the House by a 413-10 vote last week aims to push the government to study our drinking water, identify the trace amounts of drugs and chemicals in it, determine if they cause problems, and figure out what to do about it.

"As a suburban mom, I think a lot of suburbanites are concerned," Bean says.

"Something's in the water," agrees Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the not-for-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, who testified last year before a U.S. Senate committee hearing entitled "Pharmaceuticals in the Nation's Water." Sass cited an Associated Press investigation that said pharmaceutical residues were detected in the drinking water of 24 major metropolitan areas, including Chicago.

"We know it's in everybody's water and it's biologically active," Sass says. "We don't track it very well, so we don't know what's in there. It's possible what we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact it's probable. What we do know is that it's really pervasive. It's not just aspirin and birth-control pills. It's everything."

Mood-altering drugs, antibiotics, prescription painkillers, household cleaners, agricultural products, growth hormones and a host of other chemicals enter the water system.

"People used to flush everything down the toilet," Bean notes. "That's really bad."

If drugs get into our water, they must also get into our fish and all the animals that use our ponds and lakes. Years ago, the Fox, the mysterious environmental crusader from the Fox Valley who put pressure on polluters, told me that he was concerned about a lack of suburban frogs, which he considered the canaries in the mine shaft. If frogs in our water sources were mutating and dying, that should be a warning for humans, the Fox argued. Scientists agree.

Bean, whose home has a well, uses a carbon-filter system. Sass says that's a good option, but still might not catch everything.

"We don't know everything it's taking out because we're not looking for everything," Sass says. "It's a bit of a nightmare. We definitely know enough to want to take this seriously."

Bean's proposal is a good first step.

After all, when we swallow a prescription, we want to make sure the drugs are in the pills, not in the water used to wash them down.