This photo represents something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and that is the over-drugging of our culture. This all began with Aaron's trip to the emergency room on Saturday, due to an adverse anxious reaction to the Claritin D he was taking for his allergies. Immediately the doctor came in a prescribed more medicine to help Aaron sleep, a controlled substance called lorazapam. This is some pretty intense stuff, which has been causing Aaron to sleep for the last three days straight, and has also been making him see double and feel really weird right after he takes it.
In addition to our emergency room adventures, I've been watching several intriguing documentaries on Netflix, including The Business of Being Born and Frontline: The Medicated Child. These shows have made me realize the horrors of what overmedication is doing to our culture. We use one drug to fix whatever problems we have, and then we use another drug to fix the problems that the first drug caused.
I have come to realize that part of being alive is feeling pain. For example, many women do not wish to feel the pain of childbirth. So they ask for drugs to help take the pain away, and in the process make a normal delivery very dangerous for their child and themselves. Those who undergo the pain and endure labor come out of it much more aware of their own humanity. We were made to endure pain and to heal naturally. We should also not use medicine to get rid of every inconvenience or minor annoyance. Just because our children are annoying to us at age two, doesn't mean they have serious behavioral problems. Maybe it just means that you suck at discipline. Just a thought...
Anyways, I guess I will have to read more about all this, since eventually I want to have children. Even in my own life and while making decisions with Aaron, it is interesting to think about whether or not overmedication is a good idea. Should I take tylenol or advil for a slight headache or the monthly cramps I must endure? Or should I learn to suck it up and endure the pain? Maybe the latter will help me to understand the reality of humanity and will in some way help me to reduce the selfishness and sensitivity of our culture at large. In any case, it is a very interesting discussion.
That's interesting Andrie. I hope Aaron feels better soon.
ReplyDeleteBeen there, done that with the emergency room visit for a drug reaction. In fact I am up now because I am itchy with hives from some eye drops I'm taking (presumably). I'm all for unmedicated births, though my last one was a scheduled c-section and blissfully pain-free. I suppose I earned it after 120 plus hours of cumulative labor from the first six. I must be very, very in touch with my humanity.
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts, Andrea.
I watched "The Business of Being Born"... it was certainly thought-provoking and held my interest. This whole idea of overmedicating ourselves is something that plays into the culture's ideal of forgetting our bodies (and thus consequences). Video games, movies, fantasy novels, television... maybe these could also be medicating us?
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