What Are You, On Drugs?

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What Are You, On Drugs?

With so many Americans popping prescription meds, who needs nature and

sex and exercise?

 

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

 

Wednesday, December 8, 2004

 

The odds are very good that you are on drugs.

 

Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as

false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad

bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a

nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical

manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is

coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and

molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and

chattering the teeth of your very bones.

 

Maybe it's regulating your blood pressure. Maybe it's keeping your

cholesterol in check. Maybe it's helping you sleep. Maybe it's helping

you wake the hell up. Maybe it's opening your bronchial tubes. Maybe

it's brightening your terminally bleak outlook.

 

Maybe it's adjusting your hormone levels or controlling your urge to

weep every minute or relaxing the blood vessels in your penis or

cranking the serotonin to your brain or pumping carefully measured

slugs of alprazolam or fluoxetine or sertraline or atorvastatin or

esomeprazole or buspirone or venlafaxine or any number of substances

with Latin-rooted jawbreaker names through your flesh in a bizarre

dance of miraculous vaguely disturbing death-defying scientific wonder.

 

Forty-four percent of all Americans. That's the latest number. Almost

half us are popping at least one prescription drug and fully one in

six are popping three or more, and the numbers are only increasing and

this of course doesn't count alcohol or cigarettes or bad porn and it

doesn't count the mad megadoses of jingoistic flag-waving God-slappin'

fear -- which is, as evidenced by the last election, a stupendously

popular FDA-approved drug in its own right. But that's another column.

 

Have a teenager? She's probably on drugs, too. One in four of all

teens are, according to new research. And we ain't talking pot or

ecstasy or meth or fine cocaine or Bud Light or any of those

oh-my-God-not-my-baby devil drugs that are so demonized by the

government, but that by and large are no more (and are often far less)

toxic and addictive and caustic than any of your average 8-buck-a-pop

silver-bullet chemical bombs shot forth from the likes of Eli Lilly

and Glaxo and Pfizer, et al. Ahh, irony. It's the American way.

 

All of which means one of two things: either it's the goddamn finest

time in history to be an American, living as we are in the age of

incredible technology and miracle medicines and longer life

expectancies and $5 coffee drinks and a happy synthetic chemical to

match any sort of ache or pain or lump or rash or spiritual crisis you

might be facing.

 

Or it's the absolute worst, what with so many of us heavily drugged

and over half of us massively obese and IQs dropping like stones and

our overall quality of life deteriorating right under our noses and

shockingly huge numbers of us actually finding Shania Twain somehow

interesting. Which perspective is right for you? Ask your doctor.

 

It's become so you can't crack a joke about Prozac or Xanax at a party

without at least three or four faces suddenly going still and

unsmiling and you're like, whoops, as you suddenly realize that you

can, as you walk the streets of this fine and heavily narcotized

nation, imagine at least one very expensive drug pumping through the

time-ravaged body of nearly every other person you pass. It's a bit

like knowing their secret fetish or favoritest dream or on which

nether part they want to get a tattoo. Except totally different.

 

And you might say, well, so what? So what if pharmaceuticals help us

cope, relieve the pressure, help us survive this ugly and irritating

world? Better living through chemistry, baby, so long as you don't

mind the numbness and the glazed eyeballs and the heart palpitations

and the lack of true feeling in your fingertips and the nightmares

about snakes. Right?

 

So long as you don't mind the slightly nauseating sense that you have

lost some sort of vital and perhaps irreplaceable link to the animal

world and the luminous organic planet. But, as Dubya says, who the

hell cares about that crap when you got baseball and war and apple pie?

 

Because here's the nasty truth: it's a highly toxic BushCo world right

now and we've set it up so it's only getting worse, darker, more

poisonous and unsettled and unsanitary. Maybe all our meds just help

us maintain some sort of jittery and numbed balance, some sort of sad

equilibrium. The BushCo doctrine dictates detachment, exploitation,

abuse of every known ecological resource and profiteering from every

known loophole and caring not a whit for nature and organic systems

and balance? Hey, like nation, like body.

 

But let's be fair. It must be said right here that many of these drugs

indeed help an enormous number of people and restore lives and bring

light where only darkness once reigned and far be it from me to

begrudge anyone his or her chemical-assisted reprieve from genuine

suffering.

 

But here's the thing: it's still only a fraction. Only a small number

of people whose doctors prescribe these meds like candy actually need

them, and as for the rest there are these things called lifestyle

change and dietary change and perspective change and even spiritual

shift that can affect the overall health of your life like a goddamn

miracle, like a thousand drugs combined, changes that millions simply

refuse to undertake because, well, it's just too damn hard.

 

We don't want to know. We don't want to understand deeper, complex

natural systems. We want pills, not awareness. We want magic bullets,

not true magic. We want to eat what we want and exercise not at all

and pay no attention to our bodies and our quality of life and expect

it all to work sufficiently well until we die at 90 and they forklift

us into our refrigerator-size coffins. After all, we're Americans.

We're not supposed to care.

 

Nevertheless, it bears repeating: maybe what's lacking most in this

society is a true and thoughtful and nuanced connection to and

understanding of the natural systems, soil and sunlight and

sustainability, lunar rhythms and whole food and maybe knowing where

the hell your water really comes from. You think?

 

Because the truth is, it's not all that hard to get informed. It's not

all that hard to affect serious change in your life and eat better and

kiss better and require less chemical crap in your bloodstream and

slowly but surely reduce the need for medication in your life. It is

far from impossible to clear out the toxins and flush the

BushCo-endorsed crap and defy the demonic corporate pharmaceutical PR

and reevaluate just how you tread this life. They just want you to

think it is.

# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

# Mark's column archives are here

 

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and

Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which

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