Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Nation That Embraces Pills

A commercial started with a statement that "75% of people who are on anti-depressant drugs are still depressed." (I'll be damned if I remember what that commercial was selling.) I suppose the intent of that statement at the beginning of the commercial is the shock effect; I was, however, more shocked by the fact that they made a point of pointing that out. Depressions that are purely hormonal based are probably quite rare; so unless prescriptions drugs can make a person's financial, emotional, or other issues disappear, how would it be beneficial? If anything, there are probably potential side-effects that are yet to be discovered. (And already discovered side effect includes loss in sexual drive. But why would that matter when you can pop a little blue pill?)

Americans' love for prescription drugs are arguably unparalleled with any other nations in the world; we try to solve every possible issues with a pill -- depression, take a pill; sexual incompetency, take a pill; want to have sex but don't want to have kids, take a pill (okay, that is still better than having lots of unwanted children); pills for weight loss has been in research for a while now and the chemical cause for hair to turn gray with aging has been recently isolated and a pill to "cure" that may not be far away. Do people not realize that any form of chemical ingested to alter your body's natural function will probably cause more harm than good? (Speaking of gay acts being "unnatural"!) The jury is still hung on the long term effect of taking multivitamins on a regular basis!

And the most oxymoron drugs of it all? People who prefer herbs over western medicine taking ginseng and/or garlic pills. Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

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