Drug Talk

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Maskital.

I like this cartoon for what it says about pharmaceuticals and western medicine. I'm not against all prescription drugs, I take a crazy pill to keep me level (antidepressant) and in spite of my several attempts to switch to natural alternatives and live without it, I've had to resign myself to the synthetic.

But the biggest downfall of western medicine is that it tends to treat symptoms more than root causes. This reflects human nature in general, of course – most people would rather take drugs to deal with their cholesterol than change their diet and get some exercise. (One of the popular cholesterol-reducing drugs says on their ads: "When diet and exercise aren't enough." That would account for such a small fraction of the public that I can't help but believe the slogan is there just to give people the excuse to take the drug instead of changing their diet.) Same with erectile dsyfunction, diabetes, heart disease etc. In fact, tens of thousands of Americans each year opt for heart surgery over changing their lifestyle. Wow.

I've said many times here before, veganism (as opposed to vegetarianism) cures so many of these ills that if everyone ate that way it would put big pharm nearly out of business. But to suggest such a radical, "fringe" diet to the public would be absurd! It's much less extreme to ask people to fill their bodies with chemicals than with plants. Makes perfect sense.

As for myself, I try my best to keep the root causes at bay and take as few drugs as possible. I haven't taken an antibiotic for more than ten years, I think, and the only Rx I've taken in that amount of time has been my crazy pills. Part of that is luck, of course, but a lot is lifestyle. Still, I'm not immune to the concept of masking the symptom rather than attacking the cause. I suffer from allergies and opt to take over-the-counter drugs rather than clear the city of the offending plants, for instance. I also suffer from an occasional lack of whooziness, so I sniff glue. But it's prescription glue, so it's totally safe.

Note to readers, especially kids: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SAFE GLUE TO SNIFF. DO NOT SNIFF GLUE. SNIFFING GLUE WITH KILL YOU. WHAT YOU SAW ABOVE WAS HUMOR BY A PROFESSIONAL HUMORIST. DO NOT ATTEMPT WITHOUT CONSULTING YOUR PHYSICIAN.