From the Starting Gate

Don’t Go in if You Don’t Know the Way Out cowboy wisdom The number of people who are spending their lives taking prescription drugs is alarming. As a matter of fact, prescription drug us in America is at an all-time high. According to an article published by The Hill (O’Connell-Domenech, 2023), girls born in 2019 will spend 60% of their lives taking at least one prescription drug. Boys born in 2019 will spend 48% of their lives on meds. This information was taken from a study conducted by Pennsylvania State University which states that drugs have ascended to “first-line treatments for an increasing array of medical conditions”. Here is an actual excerpt from the study: Society has come to expect and demand “a pill for every ill” (Busfield 2010:934) . Prescription drugs thus moved from the periphery to the core of medicine. Drugs have become the go-to treatment, a shift reinforced by factors relating to the culture of medicine, changing institutional constraints in health care, and health policy. Increased prescribing is spurred by physicians' curative orientation and factors that became increasingly salient during the managed care era, including increased time constraints, the tying of physician pay to patient satisfaction, and uncertainty in clinical practice. This should be eye-popping. Drugs should be the last line of defense, not the first. Once someone begins a prescription regimen to battle their daily symptoms, they are very unlikely to terminate their reliance on the drug. People generally accept and even prefer the drug route in lieu of a method which might take a bit of work, yet actually has been shown to eradicate the symptoms permanently. The quick fix is almost always selected. Side-effects and consequences be damned. The world of medicine has brought forth a great number of important and even lifesaving procedures and treatments. There are times when drugs are extremely important. Mostly, those times are during acute injury or illness – the situations that need quick intervention. Unfortunately, medical science has shifted in recent decades to keep the money train rolling for the ever-expanding network of scientists, drug companies, laboratories, chemists, device makers, surgeons, and hospitals. And, these days it is so blatantly influenced by the need for pharmaceutical companies to meet their earnings estimates, that we are better off steering clear of most of the so-called “research” being published by medical journals. The editor in chief of The Lancet, a well-respected medical journal, claims that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. ” Arnold S. Relman, a former professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School wrote a lengthy article titled, “America’s other drug problem: how the drug industry distorts medicine and politics.” In it he describes how drug companies benefit by aligning themselves with our lawmakers to get favorable approvals for new drugs, limit liability, receive wide leniency in drug advertising and limit competition which would lead to better pricing . Drug companies use the term “Blockbuster” to describe a drug with the potential to earn more than $500 million in annual sales. Creating a drug that will reach the Blockbuster level is what all researchers at biotech companies get out of bed for every morning. They want recognition and they want profits. They are not necessarily focused on what is beneficial long term for the people taking the drug. And they most certainly don’t want to talk about the idea that a person can permanently heal from their condition without drugs. Imagine the profits lost if that information were to get out! Many millions of people here in the United States fall prey to the pharmaceutical industry every single year, and quite often multiple times per year. This is a multi-billion-dollar industry which has grown very rapidly since the late 1990’s, promoting drugs that in many or even most cases, we do not need. In a journal article published by Harvard Health Publishing, a case was made that many people in our country opt for drugs to treat symptoms based on nothing more than hearing about the particular drug during a television ad (Harvard Medical School, 2017). The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world where drug makers are allowed to market prescription drugs directly to consumers. What we have accepted as normal is in fact an anomaly, globally. This U.S. consumer drug advertising boom on television began in 1997, when the FDA relaxed its guidelines relating to broadcast media. The profit motive of the companies able to afford TV advertising is a clear conflict of interest that abounds in American healthcare. But what can we do to get well and stay well? According to the University of California, Berkeley, happiness is instrumental in promoting six different areas of health. 1) Protection from heart disease, 2) strengthening the immune system, 3) reducing stress, 4) minimizing aches and pains, 5) combating disease and disability, and 6) lengthening life (Newman, 2015). I lived with severe chronic pain for several years of my life. I was seen by dozens of so-called experts in my excruciating quest to heal. Chiropractors, physical therapists, specialists, internists, neurologists, acupuncturists, dieticians, and surgeons all took their turn examining my body and scouring over my medical charts. Each prescribed something different, from medications to physical protocols to surgeries. I took countless blood tests, MRIs, saliva tests, and x-rays. I was scanned, probed, prodded, manipulated, rolled, poked, restricted, braced, iced, shocked, frozen, creamed, gelled, cupped, wanded, purified, magnetized, cleansed, supplemented, starved, and injected. Not once during all of this extensive activity did any of these specialists ask me about my emotional state – that is, until I met with Dr. David Schechter. For the very first time in my life, a doctor actually wanted to know what was going on with my state of mind. He wanted to know about what issues I was dealing with around the time my symptoms started. He asked how I was dealing with the various traumas in my life – a novel concept that caught me off guard. He was interested in understanding my thought patterns, rather than simply ordering more blood tests or MRIs. This was different. What was he looking for? Where could this information possibly lead? What was going on in my life just prior to the onset of my chronic back pain experience? Starting in early 2008, about two years prior to the back pain taking over my life, I was taking steps to open my own financial services business, a very stressful period of time. The two advisors who worked under me at PaineWebber reneged on our agreement to move to Raymond James and left me alone just two weeks before our scheduled departure. On the day I left PaineWebber, they joined with other advisors and began calling my clients, attempting to prevent them from transferring their accounts to me at Raymond James. Then in mid-2008 I found out my wife was having an affair. I filed for divorce, and was extremely worried about how my kids would handle it. I was also afraid for their safety as my ex-wife had started associating with a number of addicts and felons. Then my younger brother Brody committed suicide in October 2009. The strain of that experience was profound. By then I had also remarried, and was struggling to help our kids adjust into a new blended family. In the spring of 2010, we found out that we were expecting a new baby in late December. It had been a very tumultuous couple of years. What else could be packed into this lock box of emotions? All of my life I had been taught to be strong. Don’t show weakness. Overcome.