Prescription drug abuse in the US is so wide spread that certain areas set up police inside pharmacies to catch those who are attempting to get fake or altered prescriptions filled. My concern with this ever increasing problem has been the same from the start (when it began to increase years ago). We — the healthcare community — have created this monster. Our leaders and those who regulate the industry — namely organizations like the Joint Commission — have told us people should have the “right” to be pain free and that controlling pain and sadness — to the point of over-prescribing highly addictive drugs and putting preadolescent children on mood control medications was the “best practice” solution. And now we begin to reap the “rewards” of our labors. Scores of people are addicts to their prescriptions and legions of children live in a pharmaceutically induced haze. Depression is diagnosed at the drop of a hat and people of all ages are told they need medications “just to deal with the stress of daily life”.

While I agree pain should be managed, it should be managed, not in all cases taken away at any cost. Have we ever stopped to think that some of this pain we are attempting to rid the world of is necessary? The human body gives us pain for a reason. When you sprain your ankle, it swells and hurts SO YOU WILL NOT USE IT. Why? Because we are too dumb NOT to get off of it and put it up and take care of it like we should. So our bodies, being the smarter one in this relationship, make it hurt when we keep it dependent to the rest of our body, make it swell to the size of a small tree, and make us stay off of it. Pain is the body’s way of telling us something is not right. It is not something to be masked or managed away. It should be dealt with, but not eradicated like a disease.

And the same goes for depression and mood disorders. Why should they be masked and treated only with pharmaceuticals? Has anyone stopped to think that depression is a natural emotional response to many situations? It is not, as I said above, a public health concern that needs to be wiped out. It is something that needs managed in a certain SMALL subset of the population, but not in the vast majority of it. How many people do you see on a daily basis when they come to your practice area who are on some type of antidepressant? And why? Why are they prescribed these medications? Because they “can’t deal with life”? Maybe, just MAYBE, we should be teaching people how to make better decisions in their lives and how to deal with loss (loss of a loved one, loss of a job, etc.) and how to be better parents and role models to our children instead of jumping to a diagnosis of depression or ADHD and giving a person medications that are highly addictive, mood altering, and life changing.

Life is hard…….it was never meant to be a “garden of Eden” where everything is rosy and sweet and there are no problems and no one dies or hurts or grieves. Isn’t it time we stood up to big pharma and those who would medicate away the adversities of life and say enough is enough? Isn’t the FACT that was are arresting lawyers, grandmothers, and many others on drug trafficking charges a big enough sign that it’s time we changed how we look at what we are doing?

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President Obama, on Sunday, invited both Democratic and Republican leaders to a meeting at the White House on February 25th to discuss possible compromises on health care reform. President Obama has that he and the leaders of both parties will “go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”

Isn’t this what SHOULD have been done in the first place? Shouldn’t the White House and President Obama have taken a lead in the debates from day one (since it was HIS initiative to begin with)? During his campaign, now President Obama spoke of change in how things were done in Washington. He spoke of working with, not against, Republicans and others in government to make it better and more open to the public — more transparent I think were the words he used. But until now — until the Democratic super majority was lost in Congress — it has been business as usual. The Democrats have made the rules, changed the rules when they saw fit, and forced through legislation that both the Republicans and many US citizens thought might be less than beneficial. Even the Government Accounting Office has had concerns about the health care reform legislation that has been proposed.

It’s a shame that it took the Democrats losing their majority rule for their leadership to (finally) do what he said they wanted to do from the start. If change if what he (Mr. Obama) truly wants in the way things are done in Washington, then maybe HE needs to change how the Presidency operates and lead the way.

NPR article on health reform summit

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