A few weeks ago I visited London for the first time in my life. The other Americans and I took a trip to the British Museum and spent two hours wondering around the galleries filled with artefacts, taxidermy animals, and paintings. I was awed by the size of the Rosetta Stone and, admittedly, a bit frightened by the petrified mummies but the display that remains the most salient in my mind was called “Cradle to Grave.”
When I first looked at this work of art, I thought it was just long line of netting with little coloured dots entangled in it. Only after a second glance and a peek at the description, did I realize that “Cradle to Grave” told the entire medical history of one real woman and one real man. Each received general immunizations and painkillers. Each was also treated for specific illnesses, including asthma, high blood pressure, and hormone replacement. And each length of fabric contains over 14,000 drugs and stretches thirteen metres.
I found the sight of all those pills neatly lined up in rows of five a bit unsettling when I thought of all the medication I have consumed over my twenty-one years. Unfortunately, the two strips of cloth filled with so many multi-coloured tablets do not show the entirety of drugs we expose our bodies to. The display does not include over-the-counter medication, of which the average person takes about 40,000 over his/her lifetime.
Examining the lines of pills and thinking about the effects all of them must have on a body got me thinking – how many pills that I swallow are really necessary for my survival? Is our reliance on medication damaging our bodies and/or our state of mind? I’m not denying the fact that a lot of medication is absolutely vital for a person’s health but when I look over the span of my life I start to question my own dependence on the little tablets that “make me feel better.”
Who doesn’t want to be “relaxed” or feel “happy” or sleep “well” or be “pain free?” Just look at the section labelled “Self-Help” (aka the “Quick Fix”) in a bookstore or count the number of anti-depressants prescribed to people or watch the all the adverts for sleep medication and you’ll have your answer – everyone.
But what does being “relaxed” or “happy” or “well” or “pain free” really mean and what are the causes for not experience these feelings? Can’t being “stressed” or “hyper” or “sad” or “sleepless” or “in pain” have countless sources and can’t these feelings be a good thing sometimes? “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” right? And what about “no pain no gain”? Isn’t there some truth behind these sayings?
Sadness is seen as an enemy that must be beaten by whatever means necessary but sadness can also be a very powerful emotion. It is an emotion that people experience when they are experiencing some form of pain and, often times, this pain just needs time to heal or work itself out. Hyperactivity can also be seen as a vicious ailment. Children are expected to pay attention at school and behave calmly at home or they are often diagnosed with ADHD or hyperactivity and are prescribed Ritalin or some other form of stimulant.
The ease with which people can receive drugs and with which doctors prescribe them frightens me. There are even online pharmacists now so you can order online without a prescription. Everyone wants a quick fix with immediate results. Sleep now. Happy now. Relaxed now. Pain free now. People see anything but happy, middle-of-the-road behaviour as a problem that must be fixed. How far will we go to become what society has deemed a “normal” person? And what parts of ourselves are losing to become this defined “normal” person?
Julie is a student at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and is working with the Welsh Liberal Democrats at the National Assembly for Wales until Christmas.
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Have to say, I think you’re right – it’s an almost natural consequence of Pharmacy companies being able to advertise direct to end consumers.
Prescribing is a subtle science, diagnosing the root cause of a problem and working through complex webs of interactions, first to find whether there is a suitable medical treatment and then to work out whether it’s applicable in someone’s specific circumstances.
If you have drugs advertised all the complexity and subtlety is lost, and you’re left with the pharmaceutical equivalent of “Persil washes whiter”, making a solution to your problem seem simple, risk-free and effortless. And who wouldn’t want their problems sorted without having to break a sweat or having to try too hard?
It’s difficult enough for doctors and pharmacists, who are constantly bombarded by drug adverts. But at least they spend their working hours dedicated to keeping up to date with practice, and reading through the clinical evidence and license to understand the risks and shortcomings of treatments.
Put simply, it’s a specialist job. I’d no more choose my own complex medication than I’d try surgery on myself.
There was a book called “Listening to Prozac” that touched on the subject of drugging yourself into sameness. Where would all the struggling, tortured artists come from if they all drugged themselves into complacency??
Very interesting post Julie.
One thing medical professionals, Sighkollogists (!) and other thinkers miss is the nature of humankind in a cotemporary social situation.
For 30,000 years or so we have lived in small groups with only the need for sustenance, procreation, defending territory and so on. Only the last 2,000 years has civilisation begun and only the last 300 or so we have embraced an industrial state of life. The last 50 years have been extremely dynamic in mans development. What I am trying to get at is that we (you and me and everyone else) are not too dissimilar from the ‘we’ of 30,000 years ago. Yet we are faced with living in a state of affairs which is entirely different from what humanity has been used too. On the one hand life is more complex with no large grouping. Yet life is much easier from a physical point of view. We are not going to starve and we have clean water. Those were not certainties for people living 30,000 years ago.
Shallow thinkers such as psychologists and pill givers do not realise this and assume that is the individual who is estranged from wider society. In fact it is wider society and contemporary culture that is estranging many people.
http://welshcartoons.blogspot.com/