Prescription Drug Addiction

Teens are using prescription drugs as the addictive drug of choice--the entry into the wide world of illegal drugs. Used to be marajuana started you on the road to highness, now it's painkillers from mom and dad's medicine cabinet.

I have repeatedly written about the cavalier way addictive meds are prescribed to adults--pain meds, anti-seizures, anti-anxiety, sleeping drugs that are all almost immediately addictive.

Doctors would like to think that there is a big difference between them and the pusher on the corner. There is: education. The doctors KNOW what these drugs do and give them anyway. Come by my office building some time. The drug reps scores of them, come in and out of the offices like bees feeding the Queen. Free meals, gifts, and lots and lots of samples all courtesy the drug rep who looks like Ken or Barbie. These people have such an ingratiating, aggressive style, I can pick them out when they are out of costume--so characteristic are a their charms.

What have we come to America? Are we so ill-equipped at dealing with disappointment and the vagaries of life we must be doped up to cope? It would seem so.

Our children are learning from us well. Happiness is caused and cured externally. Personal responsibility, self-reliance and internal ability to create a life of our dreams is impossible. We are weak. We are hopeless. We need drugs to survive. In fact, the reason we are "sick" is because we lack the drugs to make us "healthy".