I was recently speaking to a friend who told me that her sister is trying to give up smoking. Her sister went to the doctor and told him of her ambition to quit the nic at which point he prescribed her xanax to help her with the anxiety.
Wait. What?
How the hell does that even make sense? She is stressed out because she is quitting smoking so let’s add another addictive substance to her system. So now she gets stressed out, smokes a cigarette AND pops a xanax. Doctors orders, right?
The problem with doctors – and I find this particularly in the States – are they are way too quick to prescribe pills to people to get them out of their offices. We are all programmed to take tons of drugs to fix this and fix that and pop antibiotics at the first sign of sore throats. Television commercials run constantly (again, only in the States) to let me know that that pesky anal leakage problem (that I didn’t even know existed) can be fixed if I “ask my doctor” for a prescription.
What ends up happening are freaky germ mutations that create superbugs that we can’t get rid of and drug addicted, pill popping whores that end up on television shows like Intervention — all because the doctor prescribed it and we trust doctors. The paranoia germphobia of antibacterialising everything leads to these weird little kids with peanut allergies that go into anaphylactic shock if they come with a square mile radius of anything that may have touched a nut. Seriously. WTF. When I was in grade school there was the occassional kid who was allergic to bees. Now there are a variety of little freaks that can’t digest milk, touch fish, eat peanuts, wear latex….
Moms, let your kids eat dirt and develop some damned immunities!
And the rest of you? Just because your doctor prescribes something to you doesn’t mean that it is a) good for you b) you should take it. Use some damned common sense.
