Boomers And Drugs
Remember Grace Slick when she sang, “One Pill makes you taller and one pill makes you small, and the one your mother gives you, doesn’t do anything at all! Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall!”? The baby boomer generation will always be associate with drug use and as we age, we face drug abuse in another form. That of falling victim to being over-medicated by our doctors.
The sixties opened a Pandora’s Box on drug use and like it or not, boomers will forever be associated with the use of Marijuana, LSD, and other mind altering drugs. Many of us didn’t survive those days. Some baby boomers continue to abuse drugs and struggle with addiction but most of us found out that what drug use promised, a brave new world through chemical enlightenment, wasn’t what it delivered and chose sobriety. There are probably more baby boomers who never tried drugs than those of us who did but our generation will be remembered as the generation that, “Tuned in, dropped out, and turned on.” As boomers grow older, we face the threat of harm from drug use in the over-use and abuse of prescribed medications.
Everyone who wants to make a buck knows that in order to make big money, it is important to market to baby boomers. Those who manufacture and sell prescription drugs are no different and we are constantly bombarded with commercials for new drugs with promises of longevity and health. Almost every night on television news, there is a new breakthrough in modern medicine to report. Of course, there are also, the disclaimers with lists of side-effects and class action law suits that present the underbelly of what these drugs may deliver. Few drugs actually, heal. Instead, they create chemical dysfunction in the body that imitates wellness. It turns out that the vitamin pill that our mothers gave us was the pill that did something good for our bodies while chemicals are a mixture of good and bad. I think this is what Grace Slick’s door-mouse said, drugs promise great things and provide immediate relief but often, with side-effects that produce new illness. More often than not, side-effects are treated with another drug and it isn’t uncommon for a person to find themselves on a merry-go-round of new chronic illnesses treated with more and more medications. It is easy to become over-medicated and lose quality of life by those same drugs that promised to improve it.
Old boomers like me, who got caught up in drug abuse when we were young, know a drug dealer when we see one. They drive nice, new, shiny cars that are often, black with tinted windows. They wear dark sunglasses and may dress in black to match their fancy cars as they attempt to remain as unrecognizable as possible but also, as someone who is cool and confident. During those years when I was very sick and spent most of my free time in doctor’s waiting rooms, I often watched sales representatives for pharmaceuticals sauntering in, carrying their attaché’s, passing out free pens, and asking my doctor for a few minutes of the time that I was paying for. After spending years observing these folks and getting to know the health-care system more intimately, I began to see that they truly, were drug dealers not unlike the ones I knew when I was young. The bad part is that I also, began to see my doctors more as distributors of prescription drugs than people concerned with helping me get well. I know that isn’t true of all doctors and I know that even those of whom it is true, are just caught up in a system designed to make the people who run it rich more than with helping sick people get well. Greed is a common disease and doctors are after all, only human. They want to provide their families with the best and they like nice things, just like me. I want to think I would rise above if I were a doctor but in my heart, I know I’m susceptible to greed too. I also, know that helping people would be great if it weren’t for the people! Most of us aren’t that easy to deal with especially, when we’re sick. It is important to remember that docs are only human and not expect more of them than they are capable of delivering. Often, they simply can’t make it all better but we can hold them accountable to their oath of at least, not making things worse. They work for us and in reality, can’t do anything to us or sell us anything that we don’t allow them too. I know I’m not a medical expert but I’ve learned to be an expert on me and my health problems. I bear responsibility for the treatments I choose to undergo and I don’t undergo what I don’t fully, understand. I also, know that drugs promise much more than they actually, deliver. I’ve been burned already and it takes much more than slick television ads to fool this old boomer! I don’t trust drug dealers in any shape or form but I know that sometimes, drugs can be used with reason and improve my quality of life. The choice I make is my own. As long as I am able, I will remain in charge of my health-care.
Of course, I have not always been able to be in charge of my health-care and there will come a day when I’m no longer able to stay on top of it all. I hope I live the remainder of my life in a healthful state and pass away peacefully, in my sleep. However, that usually, isn’t the case. I know from experience not to be too prideful to ask my husband, another family member, or close friend to take charge of my health-care when I’m not able. I have signed forms that give my husband the authority to talk to doctors and health-care workers in my place if I am too sick to do so. It’s very easy to get things confused and make poor decisions when very ill or under the influence of powerful medications. When I’m that sick, my husband is good to visit the doctors with me,ask questions, and take notes. He also, helps me monitor medications so that I don’t take too much or forget to take something that I should. I may not always have someone in my life to do this for me but I will never let pride stand in my way of asking. I know what it is to be over-medicated and being too prideful to ask for help in making decisions when I was too sick to do so, is part of why I ended up in that situation.
The person I trust most with my health is my Heavenly Father and I know that He has numbered all of my days and will see to it that I live every one of them. I also, know that He allowed me to go through the experience of being over-medicated so I would turn back to depending upon Him, more than I depended upon myself, or doctors, and drugs. I am a living testimony to the harm caused by the over-use and abuse of drugs. Almost every serious problem I’ve had in my life can be traced back to the abuse of alcohol and drugs, either by me, someone important to me, or by doctors careless in the way they prescribed my medications. I hope by sharing my experiences that I can help others to see the true nature of drugs, both illegal and prescription and make my fellow boomers aware of the need to take responsibility for their own health. Dependence upon God and personal responsibility are the key for aging boomers to be able to create a safe relationship with drugs and keep ourselves from becoming over-medicated, as we grow older.
Pam what you write I agree with most, please look at the website the side effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy. In 1996 I set up the first Menopausal Help Line, on the side effects of H.R.T. within 2 years my data base was nearly 12.000 and in 1998 I hired the whole of the Brighton Conference Centre to stage the worlds first conference on how this drug was murdering women world wide, along with the side effects of H.R.T. the pill is identical, with the third highest rate of cancer in the world are children born to women on the pill, Martin Walker who wrote the best seller Dirty Medicine also wrote a book of my research on H.R.T. Licenced to Kill and Maim, so yes I was able to to tell the world, but women will mostley believe a doctor, If you send me your address I will send you a copy of the book. But what I find is that, people only have to pop wind and they run to a doctor for a pill, the 60s was for illegal drugs and the 21st centry is for goverment drugs to kill off the population, starting with the children and vaccinations. I spoke to many of those thousands of women who called the help line from around the world, it was shocking to hear what H.R.T. had done to their bodies, some women would cry on the phone saying they had grown some thing like a penis, it was the clitoris that had grown, many of these women were so embarrassed many committed suicide, they could not confide in their husbands and the doctors prescibed other drugs. We have the Jonel babies born to women on the pill, these babies are born with genitle defects they are born not a boy or a girl. I have never in my life taken any sort of illegal drugs, only what the doctor prescibed to me, but some one up there likes me, it is a fact that from H.R.T. and all of the other drugs they prescibed to me I should be dead long ago. I always remember a women many years ago, saying to me oh wonderful I am going to England I can have free medications, but people will only believe in the professionals. The world population are all being used to find the answers to cloning world population, and this I have years of research. But i agree with your writings. Have you ever read up on LEMONS, I and thousands of women got our health back with drinking pure lemon juice daily along with garlic for the blood, 2 of natures herbs and so cheap to buy.
Maggie,
You are such a fighter! I really appreciate your taking the time to comment here and add yout wealth of experience. I agree that people need to change their thinking about drugs and about doctors. We have lot all reason when it comes to health-care. In the U.S. there are those who believe having the government run it will make a difference but I can’t think of one single example of government running anything efficiently,without coruption. The corporations that run it now are corrupt enough already. We need to move toward more personal health-care not toward bigger and more impersonal care. People are less likely to hurt one another when they have to look each other in the eye. It also, takes work to stay on top of what our doctor is prescribing to us. I know some people who can’t even remember what they are taking or why but they take it anyway. In those cases, it certainly isn’t the doctor’s fault if something goes wrong.
Our culture is very sick right now. In fact, I believe it is crumbling and corruption in medicine is a sign of that crumbling. No matter how many laws we write, none of them have the power to govern properly without morality. Our culture is highly immoral and people have low regard for themselves and others. Simply put, people need God in their lives and without that guidance, we are the most vicious beast on the planet.
Write to me through “Contact” at the top of the page Maggie and I’ll send you my address. I would like to read you book and thank you. I agree that often, there is a much simpler answer to treating illness but in this present time, people go for the big guns first. I think it is better to save those big guns for when they are really needed and look to nature first.
Pam
Pam,
I have tried to send you an email from your contact page, it is not happening, but you have my email as here to send me the info so i can send you the book on H.R.T.
Maggie, Thanks for letting me know that my contact page isn’t working right. As for having your email…DUH, I forgot…too many things happening at once right now.lol! I will do that.
Pam
thanks Pam, received it, and it will go first class tomorow.
The song from Grace Slick’s great voice always made me curious about the power of 1 pill. We had a culture where everyting seemed “fun.” Now I take a pill for so many health reasons the “fun” is gone. I worry about the over-medicating and try to research everything but combining meds is still a big worry. The trusting your Dr. days are long gone.
Hi Sherry, I see the sixties as the beginning of a drug culture that was at first, a subculture but now it has taken over the whole culture. Addiction to drugs is a very common ocurrance and most of the addicts are addicted to drugs prescribed by their doctors and would never think of themselves as drug addicts. Almost all of us have a kind of psychological dependence upon pills in wanting that promised quick relief. Often, we don’t give the thought we should to how many pills we take in a day especially, if they are over the counter. The ‘power of 1 pill’ is great in my estimation. Timothy Leary’s, Kool-Aid Acid test forever, changed America and the world and I don’t see it as a change for the better. In regard to drugs, I think the fun is over for everyone.
I trust my doctor only so far and save my complete trust for God. People are just people, no matter how many degrees they have. They still make mistakes and all of us must work to fend off corruption in a very corrupt society.
Love,
Pam
Wow, Pam! We really are on the same page! You have written here about what I just wrote about on the other site where we “met.” LOL
But Boomers who as youngsters experimented with drugs were not the start of all this!
Drug companies were. My mother, before the sixties, used to sing “Librium, my librium, I’d go insane without my Librium.”
The Beatles were being honest when they sang about “mother’s little helper,” and she was not getting those little helpers from the street, but from her doctor.
By the early 70′s (certainly before the hippie generation had any effect on the medical community, if it ever really did) I was working in doctors offices and seeing what they were prescribing. Valium, Librium, and other psych drugs were given out to women for every little crisis, or just for feeling overwhelmed with their kids and responsibilities in general. The drug companies started the idea that a pill could be taken to cheer you up, solve your worries.
Of course in the previous century, cocaine was sold as a remedy to perk you up, while laudanum (heroin derivative, if I remember correctly) was sold to help with melancholy. And that was before the Boomers’ parents were even conceived. Babies were given paregoric if they were “fussy,” or just as an aid so that mothers could get all their work. (My mom used to dose us all with benedryl for the same reason: drowsy kids are less rambunctious more, shall we say…sedate?)
Thought I’d put my two cents worth in, so the boomers could all put down that bit of guilt about being responsible for the current over use of RX drugs. I’m sure we each have enough of burdens to carry without that particular one.
I used to teach pharmachology among other subjects, before I retired (early) a few years ago, so I started with a bit of history about it each semester…
Hi Karenina,
Welcom to Boomer Back-Beat. I don’t blame boomers. I blame the people who exploited them. People like Timothy Leary. I know illicite drug use isn’t new but kids were sold a line of you know what with LSD. It was going to bring peace and harmony! Instead, it has brought great heart ache and destroyed individuals and whole families. What it did do however, was give people the idea that drugs could create a new kind of world and they have;but not the utopian world that a lot of us dreamed of. Drugs have always been linked with sorcery, the word pharmacy is testment to that and we are living in an age of wizards. Drugs are part of that wizardry.
I wrote this post with the hopes of changing people’s relationship with drugs and how they are used. Many are too ready to swallow a pill and believe it is making them better when it is only casting a spell of wellness that too often, leads to greater illness. The sixties and the Kool Aid Acid Test, I believe, was the beginning of our culture losing all reason when it comes to drugs. Now the Timothy Leary’s are in the government and the kids they experiment on are in the public schools and foster care and anywhere else the government can get their hands on them. These intelligent elites view our children as merchandise to be used in creating a world over which they hold ultimate control and behavioral medications are a big part of the control they wish to have over us. Progressives are scary, creepy, control freaks and they make up both parties and are part of a global good old boys club that threatens us all. They are only human though and I hope they fail before they do too much damage.
Anyway, I’ve probably been reading too much, lately. It’s enough to keep me awake at night listening for drones! However, I won’t fall victim to the fear that is consuming so many people today. I put my faith and God and not mealy mouthed politicians with grand dreams of personal power and ultimate control.
I’m glad we met, Karenina and I hope to ‘see’ you here often!
Pam
Hi, Pam Thanks for the welcome!
I got that you didn’t blame the boomers, but that some did, from your article, so I was adding to your evidence.
I wonder about Timothy O’Leary. He apparently had some whopper of a trip where he believed that his mind was opened in some wondrous mystical way and that all humankind might advance to this so called higher state of consciousness. Perhaps he believed it thoroughly himself. He was waaaay off track here, but many fall off that track and can’t find their way back to it. I heard it’s sorta narrow, didn’t you?
Morning Karenina, My current thyroid problem gives me a rather foggy brain so please forgive me if I’m off some of the time. It is amazing what I can get cofused right now!
I heard Timothy Leary speak in the early 80’2 and at that time, he was encouraging young people to move as far from their parents as possible. He definitely seemed to see himself as a person with the right answers for everyone! I wasn’t impressed and didn’t like what he had to say. He led a lot of America’s children to ruin by introducing them to the use of LSD but thankfully, most snapped out of it and went on to lead productive lives. I used LSD when I was young ( a teenager)but can’t say it made a lasting difference in my life one way or the other. I just knew I didn’t want to be like some of the older ‘freaks’ I knew who had nothing to talk about except their acid trips.
The history of LSD is very interesting and the hopes of the men who stumbled upon it are interesting too. Timothy Leary was the one who insisted upon unleashing it on college age young people. The others hoped to use it in treating the mentally ill.(My grandmother was an avid reader of the magazine “Psychology Today” and there was an issue on the wonders of LSD along with a paper record to play while tripping.) They took it believing they would gain empathy and insight into scitzophrenics. There dreams were dashed because the actions of Timothy Leary brought government into the picture and it was made illegal.
I’m glad I didn’t fall off the tracks with it. I know there are people who never quite come back. It is still a popular street drug. I also, expect many of the psycho-tropics developed in the ninties to find a second life on the streets. For all the money spent, they have made very little headway in the attempt to treat mental illness with drugs. They do achieve a certain measure of control but no healing and the system today, seems to have given up all hope for healing and settled with only treating symptoms.
Life is much better straight. I don’t know why humans think that getting stupid is fun!lol!More of us need to stop and think about what we are doing.
Pam
Pam – can you pls share more about your experience with natural supplements ? I dont want to clog up darlene’s site with a back and forth discussion about medication. I just started taking probiotic this week. As you know i am completely off of effexor. My blood pressure increased dramatically after i got on effexor so i have also been on a drug for that. I am going to go off of that drug too since i think the effexor is what was causing the high blood pressure.
Are there good websites that have helped you in your quest to use natural supplements/vitamins to help with your healing process ? Do you know of any site that will give you what the natural supplement or vitamin would be to take in place of a prescribed medication ? If i do have high blood pressure just from genetics i would much rather take a natural supplement than continue to take a prescribed pill for it. Thanks !
dave
Hi Dave, I know how badly you want help with this and how anxious you are to get off of medications that are making you sick but when I stopped, I took it slow and easy, going off of the most obnoxious medications first, which were the psycho tropics. They were the root of my other health problems by either creating a side effect, causing physical damage, or causing an underlying chronic condition to flare up and get much worse.
I know what I shared with you about the pro-biotic but I’m not clear on why you are taking it. Do you have problems with your bowels? I take it because I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Some people get chronic diarrhea when coming off of antibiotics or after taking a lot of medication. A probiotic might be helpful in restoring the balance of good bacteria in the bowel. The bowel is where the body stores seretonin and I think maintaining that balance also, helps my depressive symptoms. If you have no problems with your bowels just eating some good yogurt is probably all you need.
SafeHarbor.com is an excellent site for learning how to develop your own formula for the nutritional support you need in managing your mental health. At the time I was coming off of all the medications, there was a company in Canada called New Hope that you could contact and they would develop a formula for you according to your symptoms. They had great results and were even written up in “Discovery Magazine” but the pharma companies took them to court and now they are only allowed to sell a one size fits all multi vitamin for nerveous system support. Basically, they didn’t have enough money to win the fight and that is the problem with natural medicine, it is supressed knowledge and people have to be careful in how they state things, even me. If you go to GNC’s website, you can read about the different supplements they sell and what system of the body they support and that is a good way to begin to learn how all of it works together. I don’t know a lot about herbs because of my liver condition. I have to be as cautious about herbs as I do drugs because my liver doesn’t process them quite right and they do different things in me than in other people. Most all of us have quirks that we have to learn to work around. Also, it isn’t only doctors prescribing drugs that can make a mistake and hurt you. I found a Chinese physician that I liked a lot and she helped with with many things but when it came to herbs and hep c, she just didn’t have the right knowledge and she prescribed an herb that could have done me a lot of damage if I hadn’t known better. Supplements, in general, are safer than herbs.
I don’t know why you have high blood preassure. Mine is caused by my high heart rate so if I can control it, my blood preassure comes down too. I did well taking GABA and Taurine for years but recently, possibly because I’m getting older or because I’m having trouble with my thyroid, I had to start taking a beta blocker. It’s a newer one that I tolerate much better than the older one’s I had tried before. I am still taking Taurine too as it still helps support my autonomic nerveous system (the part of the brain that regulates breathing, heart rate, sleep, etc.) and exercising more. I’m hopeful that when I get my thyroid condition under control that I’ll also, be able to stop the beta blocker but for now, I am able to take a smaller dose and I believe it is because of the natural methods I am also, employing. I’m doing the same with my thryroid conditon, by the way. There is always more to keeping yourself healthy than popping pills. I wish more doctors would emphasize that. GABA helps my blood preassure also, because it calms my anxiety. I also pray while surrendering my worries to God and I integrate my faith with yoga breathing and poses. I love to listen to the Hallelujah Chorus when I do yoga.:0) I’m telling you all of this because natural healing is a change in lifestyle and isn’t accomplished with diets or supplements alone.
I hope this helps, Dave. I’m not really a natural medicine expert but what I have become is an expert on myself. I study all the time about the conditions I have and all the different methods there are out there to help me feel better. I double and tripple check everything and I alway double check what my doctor or other health providers suggest I should do. I didn’t get here over night. It took me a year to get off of all thirteen of the medications I was taking at one time. I had a clear impression from God that I should listen only to Him and look to nature. He led me every step of the way and even provided the people I needed to help me. I also, went through a horrible one year chemo therapy treatment for hep c that I came close to not surviving but it got rid of the virus and I’m not sorry that I did it. There are times when we need big guns to get better. I view Western medicine as the big guns and natural methods of healing as what i need for the smaller things. It is all a lot of work but worth it. I think you know from EFB that mental health is much more complicated than taking a pill, or two, or three, or…now we sit and drool and that’s the worst state of mental illness of all.
I’m here to pray for you and with you, brother. If you want to send me a personal note, you can do so through the contact. Be really good to yourself, let God guide each step, and you’ll find your way through the maze.
God Bless,
Pam
Dave, I’ve written quite a few articles about the conditions I’ve struggled with and how I got them under control. Just click on the “Health” section and you’ll find what I’ve written with mental health included. You can also click an appropriate heading in the tag cloud in the lower right hand column.:0)
Pam