Posted on 03/21/2018 2:10:20 PM PDT by Kaslin
Is tonight’s dinner giving you heartburn? You’re in luck; there is a pill for that. Do you have high blood pressure? There’s a pill for that, too. How about going bald? Restless legs? Help in bed? Thinning eye lashes? Yes, yes, yes, and…yes – all maladies solved with the help of prescription drugs. In modern medicine today, there seems to be nothing that cannot be cured with prescription or over-the-counter remedies. Simply turn on television during a big game or an evening news program, and you’ll catch the latest drug ad from Astrazeneca, Merck, or Pfizer, hawking a treatment for whatever ails you.
While the expansiveness of today’s treatment options is good for clinical care, we as a society have been conditioned to expect that all of life’s problems are solved with a small pill and a sip of water.
Is it any wonder then, that we have an opioid epidemic?
The Rolling Stones presaged America’s obsession with pharmaceutical “therapy” in songs such as “19th Nervous Breakdown” and “Mother’s Little Helper,” recorded in the mid-1960s; decades before today’s crisis. “Mother needs something today to calm her down,” the song goes; “and though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill; she goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper.” The pill referenced in the song is thought to be Miltown (meprobamate), a precursor to Valium and Xanax; a psychotropic drug with properties of a tranquilizer, and once used to treat everything from alcoholics to stressed-out housewives and Hollywood’s elite. According to Andrea Tone, a pharmacology historian, Miltown “normalized the notion that people who didn't have serious illnesses, who are just riding the roller coaster of the vagaries of life could pop a pill,” and be cured; a cultural mindset Tone says has become “enduring.”
Enduring, indeed. Today, the pharmaceutical industry spends an estimated $6 billion a year marketing its products; with roughly two-thirds of that on television advertisements. As a society, we have gone far beyond simply accepting prescription drug treatment as normal; it is now relentlessly pounded into our heads everywhere we turn. Paired with today’s cultural demand for instantaneous gratification and impatience with even momentary delay, the opioid epidemic was a perfect storm just waiting to finally break.
Clinically speaking, opioids are a popular treatment option because of their low cost and effectiveness in pain management; decreasing pain transmission along nerve fibers, while providing patients a relaxed feeling. Unfortunately, the very reasons that make the drugs a legitimate treatment option for pain management, have given rise to its illegitimate use as an escape mechanism for people not suffering from physical pain but rather, as Tone mused, from “the vagaries of life.”
This psychological dependency on opioids to take a break from life’s problems, coupled with the physical changes to the brain’s chemistry that makes them so potentially addictive, means opioids do represent a dangerous recipe for chronic addiction if not carefully monitored by a physician. As a result of the government’s recent crackdown on opioid abuse, they have become both harder to obtain legally and more expensive on the black market; thereby causing addicts to turn to a far more dangerous substance -- heroin.
Enduring, indeed. Today, the pharmaceutical industry spends an estimated $6 billion a year marketing its products; with roughly two-thirds of that on television advertisements. As a society, we have gone far beyond simply accepting prescription drug treatment as normal; it is now relentlessly pounded into our heads everywhere we turn. Paired with today’s cultural demand for instantaneous gratification and impatience with even momentary delay, the opioid epidemic was a perfect storm just waiting to finally break.
Clinically speaking, opioids are a popular treatment option because of their low cost and effectiveness in pain management; decreasing pain transmission along nerve fibers, while providing patients a relaxed feeling. Unfortunately, the very reasons that make the drugs a legitimate treatment option for pain management, have given rise to its illegitimate use as an escape mechanism for people not suffering from physical pain but rather, as Tone mused, from “the vagaries of life.”
This psychological dependency on opioids to take a break from life’s problems, coupled with the physical changes to the brain’s chemistry that makes them so potentially addictive, means opioids do represent a dangerous recipe for chronic addiction if not carefully monitored by a physician. As a result of the government’s recent crackdown on opioid abuse, they have become both harder to obtain legally and more expensive on the black market; thereby causing addicts to turn to a far more dangerous substance -- heroin.
Ultimately, however, America’s drug crisis – with opioids and drugs more generally – will continue so long as we as a society believe popping a “little helper,” is a normal response to the non-medical problems in our lives.
Really? Pills for conditions like high blood pressure? Many prescription drugs have saved thousands of lives and made other lives better. Just because there are people who abuse drugs doesn’t mean that the pharmaceutical industry is evil. Yeah, let’s go back to the good old days when people died at the ripe old age of 50.
“Better Living Through Chemistry”...my favorite ad!
I feel like I read that twice.
I feel like I read that twice.
Pretty sure Townhall has been wiping their finger around inside that jar...
+1
Ya, we know that correlation /= causation.
I suspect that particular phrase though, discounts what is going on a little too heavily. We know that psychotropic drugs can have some rather drastic effects on some folks. Everyone's brain chemistry is different, and the prescribing of drugs that seriously affect brain chemistry is more art than science, at best. Also, it's not necessarily the daily use that affects folks the most. The most dangerous time for folks on these drugs is if you have to suddenly stop taking them in a non-controlled manner for whatever reason. We know that this messes with people in some really unpredictable ways.
Therefore, their use of these drugs is worth looking at closely. It may not be causative, but then again, it could very well be a major contributing factor. Just to wave the concern away does no one any favors.
Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Joh 14:7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Cannabis has about 80 components that are beneficial. They are not psychoactive - they don't get you "high".
I am learning about them now, or rather, am learning MORE about them. The class of chemicals is called Terpenes, and they have the potential to help a lot of suffering folks.
Thanks for the info. I did not know about that.
I really didn’t mean to make it sound like there ate no legitimate uses for these drugs. Obviously,there are. My problem is with those who, instead of dealing with their issues cop out and start slamming drugs. I’m happy the medication works for you. I too have sleep issues. Fortunately I have found that benadryl works fantastically for me as a sleep aid. Others, like you are not as fortunate. I disagree with the demonization of pharma as well. I hope this makes sense.
CC
Great song!
I woke up and can’t get back to sleep. Now where are those
pills? ;)
I managed to give myself a bleeding ulcer from ibuprofen. Slipped on the ice, hurt my elbow badly, took ibuprofen every day for a year. I vomited black, my dr was shocked I took so much.
He sent me to a physiotherapist and the pain is gone! Never would have believed it.
We just have become used to taking pills.
“In modern medicine today, there seems to be nothing that cannot be cured with prescription or over-the-counter remedies.” (from the article)
I think we have a problem with misuse of language. In reality there is nothing that CAN be cured with pills, at least not that I am aware of. Temporary relief from symptoms is far from a cure, to call it a cure is like giving someone ten dollars and claiming to have made him rich.
’ I’ve always been a very light sleeper and gotten worse in my 60’s.’
‘Once I got a legal script for Ativan (a benso) I sleep
through the night and wake up refreshed.’
‘I’m 68 and if not for my blood pressure medication, I probably would have had a stroke by now...it was that high.’
you know, it’s very strange...if I didn’t know you aren’t myself, from the above quotes I’d have thought for sure you were...
‘Cannabis has about 80 components that are beneficial. They are not psychoactive - they don’t get you “high”.’
if you are ingesting them through burning (aka smoking), they are hurting you...Pa’s new medical cannabis law permits capsule form only; and the pyschoactivity is minimal, if it exists at all...
I think cannabis could be beneficial to lousy sleeper such as myself, but then what do I know about it...?
40mg/day for, uh, about 13 years now. I check the obituaries every day, but so far, I'm still not listed there.
The media are not about truth or information anyway, they are there to "make you look." For that purpose, lies work just as well as truth, and are easier for them to make up, especially when they can deflect the blame for them onto their "sources".
And it’s true! People who babble on about chemicals don’t seem to realize that chemicals of one kind or another make up everything. Personally, if I have a choice between a product with preservatives or one without, I gladly choose the one with preservatives. Give me the fresh bread with a miniscule amount of chemical preservatives rather than the one with mold on it after 2 days. After all, we humans are basically big walking hunks of meat, and we can use all the preserving we can get. ;-)
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