{"id":1735,"date":"2013-06-23T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.barbdahlgren.com\/?p=1735"},"modified":"2013-06-22T17:37:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T22:37:18","slug":"your-drug-of-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/?p=1735","title":{"rendered":"Your Drug of Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Drug<\/a>\u00a0The 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\u2019t satisfied to let our bodies rest and replenish when ill. We\u2019d rather pump them full of some concoction that will keep us going. After all, we are important. We simply can\u2019t miss that appointment, cancel that date, or postpone that meeting.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite commercials shows a happy fellow enjoying life. The voice over says, \u201cBe sure to ask your doctor about this blah, blah, blah, blah life changing drug.\u201d 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\u2019s marketing, folks. And it works.\"Perscription<\/a><\/p>\n

We can\u2019t blame the medical industry for offering us a quick fix. Many times that is exactly what we want. We\u2019re too busy to take advantage of the information age even though knowledge about health is plentiful. It\u2019s much simpler to let the doctor give us an antibiotic for our sniffle and a dose of Ritalin for our active kid. We\u2019ve deified doctors and we\u2019ve decided if we can\u2019t pronounce it, it must be good for us. It\u2019s quicker and easier to accept things than do the research and find out for ourselves.<\/p>\n

Now, don\u2019t get me wrong. I know that drugs can save lives and I\u2019m thankful for them. But we need to be informed consumers. When Jesus sent his disciples out into the world he gave them this advice: \u201cI am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16).\u201d In other words, use your head.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cquick fix\u201d may not be the answer to all our problems. Although it\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019ll know what we are taking, the side effects, and why we think it\u2019s worth the risk. Let\u2019s not be guilty of having our drug of choice being too lazy to do our part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0The 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}