Drugs

In a rare burst of mindless television watching today (while waiting for the oven to heat up) I actually paid attention to the commercial advertisements that aired while our set happened to be tuned to ABC news.  I was astonished by what I saw and heard.  For some naïve reason I supposed that there would, of course, be a few brief commercials because this was, ostensibly, a news program, but I thought that the half-hour would be mostly news. 

I was wrong.  What I did see was only a few very brief snippets of actual news embedded in a  barrage of advertisements for drugs that promised to take care of practically every kind of human ailment that could be imagined—from digestive issues to pain relief, to dry mouth, to heart medication, to diabetes, to dentifrices, to foot fungus medications, to alcoholic beverages that would bring on pleasant social involvement, to sleep aides.  All in one half-hour of ‘news.’

It seems that America is totally hooked on the notion that drugs of one kind or another can resolve any kind of physical or psychological issue that a person could experience. If people weren’t, why would the drug companies advertise so heavily?

All these legal drug enticements lead me to consider why people can also be persuaded to use dangerous illegal drugs.  These substances promise relief or distraction, I guess-- from psychic pain, from inadequacy, from a ‘boring life,’ an escape from the challenges of reality, and can give, so they suppose, thrills, happiness, social acceptance, and who knows what else. 

 

The Mexican (and American) drug wars, the violence and crime from ‘turf’ battles among gangs in our cities stem from the same notion: 'customers' think they can find anything they are looking for or need in a bottle or a smoke, or a syringe; and rogue 'chemists' and pushers find this to be the best/easiest/only way they can make a living. 

The reality is that social problems in schools, in families, in neighborhoods—the reason so many people are involved in crime and are incarcerated, why so many traffic accidents occur, the homelessness problem—the list goes on,  can almost always be traced to an association with drugs (we must not forget that alcohol is a drug).

I was taught and warned about these things in school health classes and later in college psychology and sociology classes—as were almost everyone literate enough to read this essay.  So why do so many people fall for these beguilements? 

  

I submit they just don’t listen or pay attention to facts or they think that ‘it won’t happen to me’—that addictions or deleterious consequences only happen to the other guy.  How wrong they are. 

As folk singers Peter, Paul, and Mary sang a half-century ago, in a different context but with the same result, “When will they ever learn?” 

Or as Pogo so famously said, “I met the enemy. . . and he is us.”  We are our own worst enemy.

Wake up America! Unless drugs are prescribed and monitored by a responsible physician  and taken as prescribed and only when truly needed for as short a time as possible should we consider taking them.  And even then, consider carefully the always present possibility of addiction being a side-effect.