Drug dependence?


https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pills+images&rlz=1C1ARAB_enGB463GB464&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=A23GIBY4IPfygM%253A%252CDeuC4GJF1JE43M%252C_&usg=__xH6SFFLzwEfhUy8ZiEiyXOSzr5E%3D&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwxOWF-svcAhUNXsAKHZVBB5MQ9QEwB3oECAYQEg#imgrc=A23GIBY4IPfygM:

Somewhere along the line something has gone badly wrong with the NHS system in which drugs are prescribed and either subsidised or paid for. This runs in parallel with a subterranean and illegal drugs economy. The two run into BILLIONS of pounds and both positively PROMOTE greater use.

This may be good for the drug companies and drug dealers but it is definitely NOT good for the tax-payer, the country or to a great extent, the consumer of these chemicals.

The extent to which they are used gives the lie to a physically, psychologically and socially 'healthy' society. Both individuals seeking 'magic bullets' for much more complex issues and those that prescribe are at fault.

Patients want pills and doctors or pushers prescribe them for either financial gain or because it is the easiest course. At root it is and educational and philosophical problem.

We have been conditioned to believe and expect that pain can be removed and illness cured by medical intervention when clearly this is not the case: That environmentally and personally we can abuse the natural order, only to be cure later if the need arises.

It now transpires that one in six are prescribed anti-depressant drugs even if they have been proved to be ineffective. Even children are now medicated as the norm - no less than 70 000 in Britain alone!

Not only is this crazy, it also points to the underlying problem with the society we have created and seem unable to modify.

Despite being aware of many of the social and environmental causes of ill health we continue on the same path. Why then should we expect things to get better?

I have a number of acquaintances who use illness to avoid employment and who use their bi-weekly bag of pills as barter for beer. Valium, Prozac and Viagra (to name but three) have a ready street value apparently.

We definitely need to wean doctors off drugs. We need to rationalise and cash in on the cannabis and other illegal drugs market which could at least support our schools and hospitals.

We need to differentiate between true disease (such as the MS referred to) and psycho-somatic conditions and the drugs that are prescribed prophylactically without justification and in turn create other complications requiring yet more intervention.

Our whole approach to health, disease and treatment in fact requires radical overhaul if we are not to slip into a drug induced comatosed state, into which increasing numbers have already, it would seem, have slipped.