Counting Your Blessings, Counting Your Pills

November 25th, 2010. By Hunter West

Can we talk?

Today is Thanksgiving—a time to count your blessings, in spite of an economic climate that may have left us with fewer blessings overall to count. And tomorrow may be a blacker Black Friday than normal, because we may not have the financial wherewithal to hit the stores and take advantage of all the deals. 

Be that as it may, on this day we count our blessings nonetheless—in between counting the various pills designed to keep us comfortable, to keep us alive. 

And to keep the drug companies not only in business, but thriving. 

Here’s the question… 

Do we really need to take all these drugs we are using? Have we become soft? Always looking towards the path of least resistance? 

We all learned from a young age that shortcuts often get us into trouble. “Do it right, do it once, measure it twice, cut it once, take no short-cuts,” Daddy always told us. 

You can’t take a short cut to a university education. Some do—by applying for those spiffy, legitimate-looking online diplomas that are worth nothing more than the paper they’re printed on. Taking a short cut to the corner office at work often means stabbing others in the back, or worse… 

My point is, you can’t take a short cut to your health. A person can’t expect to exude health by eating crap, drinking excessively and sitting on the couch all day (Thanksgiving aside, of course…). 

You can’t lose weight and keep it off without changing your lifestyle and getting regular exercise. 

You can’t put your faith in a pill and trust it will fix everything—particularly when the likes of Meridia, Avandia or Paxil are what’s in the pill bottle. 

But that’s what appears to be happening… 

There are pills for everything. Having to get up to pee in the night. Having heartburn. Having erectile dysfunction. Anxiety. Depression. Insomnia. Low urine production. Cholesterol. 

True, there are pills that keep us alive—and for the chronically ill they are a godsend and a source of life. 

But for the rest of us, it’s simply convenience. It’s the path of least resistance. So instead of dropping some weight and exercising more, we pop a pill to control our heartburn or diabetes symptoms. Instead of accepting the natural process of aging, we take Viagra. Instead of changing our diet, we pop cholesterol pills like water. 

And when these medications give us side effects, we take other pills to control those side effects. And then more pills to control the side effects of the pills we are taking to control the side effects of the original pills. 

No wonder the drug companies are rich and powerful. 

My dad, who will be enjoying his Thanksgiving turkey today, is 79. The only pill he takes is an aspirin a day. He’s as healthy as a horse. Retired, but he hasn’t stopped. Built his own house, he restores classic wood boats, the works. Aches and pains? Sure. But hell, he’s 79. 

Is he healthy and 79 because of good genes? Perhaps. He also never smoked. Maybe he’s just lucky. But he also has not had to, or more correctly has not chosen to take the kind of medicinal potpourri that a lot of folks are gobbling down today in between bites of turkey. 

My dad has never taken short cuts, either in life or via medicinal drugs. He’s never popped the pill just because it would be easier. 

He has never chosen the path of least resistance. And he’s giving thanks for that today. 

What about the rest of us? Is it now time to place our health within our own control? Or will we forever allow our doctors to prescribe just one more pill, for one more thing—and one more foreign chemical in our bodies. 

At the end of the day, short cuts sometimes make the journey even longer…

Tags: Drugs

This was posted on Thursday, November 25th, 2010 at 11:08 am and is filed under Drugs/Medical . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.