Your Drug of Choice

 The American people have a love affair with drugs…. all kinds of drugs. Some love the illegal variety, guaranteed to help us forget our troubles and get happy. Some of us love the legal variety, guaranteed to help us forget our troubles and get happy. We are a feel good society and we want to feel good all the time. Therefore we have drugs to wake us up and drugs to put us to sleep. We have steroids to buff us up and diet pills to reduce the buff. We aren’t satisfied to let our bodies rest and replenish when ill. We’d rather pump them full of some concoction that will keep us going. After all, we are important. We simply can’t miss that appointment, cancel that date, or postpone that meeting.

And to answer the public need to keep us dancing as fast as we can is the drug company coupled with the medical profession, working hand in hand to supply our demand. It’s a marriage made, not in heaven, but at the bank. They learned a long time ago how to keep us happy. They just tell us what we want to hear and have us pay for the privilege. This drug will lower your cholesterol. This drug will lower your blood pressure. This pill will help prevent heart attacks. Are they lying? No. These drugs will do what they claim, and so much more if you consider the side effects. In fact, sometimes one of the side effects of a drug is the very symptom it is supposed to treat.

One of my favorite commercials shows a happy fellow enjoying life. The voice over says, “Be sure to ask your doctor about this blah, blah, blah, blah life changing drug.” The implication being that your doctor is far too busy to know about this drug himself so you, the patient, being fully educated through this media propaganda blitz, should tell him. Then the voice over lists the side effects, which run the gambit from a to z, so quickly he sounds like Alvin the Chipmunk. Magazine ads are the same. Our eyes soak in the bold printed claims and skip the small printed side effects. It’s marketing, folks. And it works.

We can’t blame the medical industry for offering us a quick fix. Many times that is exactly what we want. We’re too busy to take advantage of the information age even though knowledge about health is plentiful. It’s much simpler to let the doctor give us an antibiotic for our sniffle and a dose of Ritalin for our active kid. We’ve deified doctors and we’ve decided if we can’t pronounce it, it must be good for us. It’s quicker and easier to accept things than do the research and find out for ourselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that drugs can save lives and I’m thankful for them. But we need to be informed consumers. When Jesus sent his disciples out into the world he gave them this advice: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16).” In other words, use your head.

The same advice can apply to us when it comes to living a healthy life. We are like sheep among media and propaganda wolves. Therefore, we need to do our research. We need to ask medical professionals questions. We need to realize a “quick fix” may not be the answer to all our problems. Although it’s a hard pill to swallow, we may actually have to change how we live. We may need to get some exercise, eat healthy, and sleep more. This won’t prevent us from having to take drugs when appropriate, but it will probably help us take less of them. In addition, if we do our research at least we’ll know what we are taking, the side effects, and why we think it’s worth the risk. Let’s not be guilty of having our drug of choice being too lazy to do our part.