Here, Take This. It’ll Do the Trick.

I remember sitting in the lounge area during my program at Narconon Suncoast and winding down and watching a movie on TV. Most of my TV watching leading up to that relied on DVR streaming, so I hadn’t been up to date on my commercials. The first thing that immediately jumped out was the number of pharmaceutical ads—one after the other. The ads showed happy people and rays of sunshine to distract the consumer while all of the potentially horrible side effects were read aloud on what seemed like an endless list.

It became clear to me that our society is so dependent on a fix-it pill for everything, that people have become willing to subject themselves as test dummies on the off-chance the prescription does something beneficial and with the blind hope that it does what it says it will do without all the crazy side-effects. It sounds insane just to write that, so why has this become so normalized?

Here’s a newsflash. Drugs have side effects. The problem with side effects is that now we need another prescription to deal with the side effects of the first prescription. Before you know it, there are 20 prescription bottles in a medicine cabinet that started with one, for one problem.

This makes sense from a business perspective. It’s the classic package deal. Like the new smartphone that requires countless accessories, side effects create the need for more products, which means more money to repeat business for the pharmaceutical companies. For every problem out there, there is a drug marketed to help “solve” it, and for every problem that it creates, there is another drug right behind it to help with that. The focus of attention is on drugs solving the problem, which in turn, takes all of the attention away from the numerous problems the drugs create.

It’s no wonder why that has become the focal point of the medical field to treat addiction. That’s how our society is used to handling problems these days, and since addiction is definitely a problem, the solution must be more drugs. This not only ignores the fact that a person can’t get off drugs if they are taking replacement drugs but it’s also the same concept as one prescription turning into 20. It creates more problems than it solves, and it bypasses the reason a person wants to overcome addiction in the first place—which is to be free of drugs and live a healthier, happier, and more productive life.

The drug crisis has already begun hitting people where it hurts the most—at home—at an alarming rate. I’m not sure how much worse it has to get and how many more families need to get destroyed in order for our society to realize that drugs are not the solution for every problem out there and, more often than not, they can and should be avoided for a more practical and healthier, long-term solution.

Justin P—Narconon Suncoast Graduate