Monads

How are monads different than side effects?

I've never done any serious Haskell programming, but I learned what monads would be useful for from Erlang:

{Token1, Rest1} = parseShit(Input),
{Token2, Rest2} = parseShit(Rest1),
{Token3, Rest3} = parseShit(Rest2),
% do shit with Tokens, return {Result, Rest3}

I presume monads are for converting that into

Token1 = parseShit(Monad),
Token2 = parseShit(Monad),
Token3 = parseShit(Monad),
% do shit with Tokens, return Result

But every buttfucking, shiteating, micropenised Haskellite always waxes philosophically and orgasmically about endless academic BULLSHIT about monads instead of actually telling what the fuck they're for!  Just like this >>4 dickhead.

Fuck Haskellers.  Cool language, though.