I have little faith in doctors or pharmaceuticals. I see as many pharmaceutical representatives in doctors waiting rooms as patients sometimes. It’s a sales driven market with know nothing salesmen pitching a line to Docs. Then they pitch the drugs to patients via TV commercials with a litany of cautions at the commercials end (discontinue if your penis falls off and you have suicidal thoughts).
I think there is a dichotomy between real miracles that the medical field has performed and shamanism as mediocre docs throw under tested, potentially damaging drugs at people.
I have been a patient of a chronic illness for 15 years with little or no relief except to mask.... I also worked in pharmaceutical production (biologics) for 30 years.
I hope the stuff works, but I honestly don’t see treating symptoms as fixing the addiction problem-people who become addicted to something-a substance, sex-anything-have emotional issues that need to be addressed and worked through in therapy.
I grew up on a ranch in a family that embraces a natural lifestyle-as kids, we were also taught that alcohol and tobacco-along with sweets like cake and candy-were okay in moderation, but pigging out/overindulging was what people who had no self control did, and it led to addiction-and in the case of food, being fat-we were alxso discouraged from overeating.
I weigh the same 110 lbs I weighed at 17-still eat only fresh food-preferably from my garden, and only free range local meat. I never developed a taste for sugar, have never done drugs-prescription or illicit, and I seldom even take aspirin-I do drink beer or some wine sometimes and might even smoke 8 cigarettes per week, treating that like dessert.
Before I went into business for myself, I was a workers comp case manager-I’ve seen my share of addiction among injured clients-most of it to prescription painkillers and antidepressants. That meant in addition to a work-related injury, that person now had a secondary disability of substance abuse-and that made the insurance carrier very unhappy because it would cost big bucks-and made my job more difficult.
The company I worked for was contracted to make certain that rehab produced results, whether vocational or otherwise. We did not refer clients to AA, NA or other self-help groups, so I’m not a big fan of those-we made them an appointment with a psychotherapist for evaluation, and it went from there-usually they went to therapy once per week until they were able to deal with the issues they had-if they refused therapy, the insurance carrier cut off their workers comp.
If they were heavily addicted to painkillers or psychotropic drugs, they were required to voluntarily commit themselves to 30-60 days inpatient therapy at a rehab facility, period-and that really worked.
One of my neighbors was a rep for a big pharma company until he found a job he liked better, and he lives a drug free life-uses the same natural remedies that most of us do too...