Drugging of America

Dependency on medication for well-being

One notices more and more the growing, automatic dependency on drugs (more for the hope of wellness rather than real healing itself) by Americans. Perhaps this is also true worldwide. Reports say this is growing. I believe it is so.

It has gotten to a point where the drug manufacturers, in their advertisements, often merely mention a drug brand name followed by an admonition “ask your doctor.” On TV the slogan is, of course, spun out by a mellow, comforting confident voice. In print it is often presented by the image of a compassionate face with a knowing, compelling gleam in eye.

And, of course, we consumers, like a great mass of thoughtless cattle, follow lock step progressively further onto the plains of addiction and fantasy. The public is not stupid, but we have been subjected and conditioned by a long practiced strategy of commercial hype, fear and general non-awareness. Even the chemists and manufacturers hope their message, if not deeply believed, is at least based on how things really work. In a material society, profits depend on this.

And now comes the truth, in part. Latest findings have it that in the case of certain antidepressant medications, “suicidal ideations” are a potential and dangerous side effect. This is especially true of such medications administered to children. The FDA may have now mandated that warning alerts be included in the product labels, which is as much for protection against law suits as it is for consumer benefit.

So, what does one do, when something must be done for relief or remedy? I will try to answer this in a bit.

Aside from such recent studies, when in one’s memory have most, if not all, drug advertisements not been accompanied by lists of side effects to which users must be alerted?

When one stops and thinks about these side effects, really thinks about them, one must question if “the cure is worse than the remedy.” In our conditioned fear of symptoms and illness, and the accompanying desperation to “feel better,” we generally do not think about side effects. We bury the implications of “nausea, shaking, headache, sleeplessness, drowsiness, bleeding,” heart symptoms and possible cancer potentiality, and the like.

These sorts of side effects are indications of deep damage to our system. When one uses medications with such effects, often enough, one does serious, long lasting, wide spread damage to her/his system. Such damage contributes to a weakening of one’s natural immune system as well as one’s overall health and strength.

Please think of it: children put on antidepressants, stimulants and other medications! When we are young our naturally resilient system is so strong that we often seem to do very well under a regimen of medication. We continue to use such medication.

Over time the accumulative side effects often show up in serious, troublesome ways. Our psycho/emotional system, over time, becomes conditioned to addictive and compulsive dependence, and, of course, general systemic weakness and vulnerability. Our immune system becomes less resistant to viruses and disease.

With frequent use, adults are also subject to the same results.

In my practice of more than thirty years (at this writing) a large number of adults addicted to prescribed medications have had to struggle extra hard to overcome the chronic distresses and trauma of their lives.

In order to achieve freedom from the grip of distress (and one’s distressful or, as it is said, dysfunctional behavior) one’s neural/mental faculties must be able to function effectively. When one’s psycho/neural system is influenced by an accumulation of drugs, legal or otherwise, one’s faculties are inhibited, regardless of the “high” or temporal “good feeling” derived from the drug.

Many therapists will not treat a client, or patient, as one is often called (I don’t like the term for it is part of the institutionalism, i.e., the victimization, we are subjected to in society) until the client can come down off the drug dependence. I have found that, on the contrary, while the job requires greater commitment and persistence, people can be greatly helped to both decrease the dependency and their chronic distress.

This can be achieved when the therapy treatment includes the recovery of awareness (of one’s inherent healing mechanisms and natural psycho/emotional strength), inherent detoxification (chemical/emotional purgation) system, and the truth and validation of her/his inherent worth as a human being.

How have we, as a society, become so dependent and addicted to drugs?

Let’s consider, first, the cultural phenomenon of “shut down.” This is a society wide oppressive pattern that stymies humans from expressing their emotional and intellectual material fully and freely, and without threat of rejection, ridicule, institutionalization, punishment or of being ostracized, that is, cast out of one’s social group.

The second part of the shut down pattern is the conditioned disability of listening to one another. By listening, I mean the act of listening with full attention, respect for the other’s humanity, non-biased judgment of the other, no interference or interruption of the other’s flow of feelings and thoughts, no argumentation or subjective interpretation of the content of the material.

Part of a successful exercise in listening consists of the listener being given a turn to be listened to. This becomes easy when the first person reaches a point where she/he feels respected, and a sufficient amount of “charge” has been purged from her/his material by being listened to.

Being human, living in a world where typically many upsets and oppressions, large and small, are experienced, it is safe to say that everyone needs and deserves to have a turn at being so listened to.

A model of such listening can be found among very young children, who naturally listen to another when there is upset operating, and who have not yet had to internalize too much of the “shut down” conditioning: don’t talk so much, don’t cry, don’t be angry, don’t be ridiculous, don’t even laugh too much, etc., etc.

When did this shut down pattern place such a universal grip on human society? It is not possible to say. Perhaps it started when that moment in evolutionary history arrived that the human specie became aware of its mortality, and aware of aggrandizement, that is the collection, ownership and primary access, and use of anything and everything that promoted optimum living and survival.

Why would such awareness impede listening and purgation (of emotional/intellectual material)? We have many great, inherent qualities, but we have not yet shed an old compulsive urge driven by the fear of non-survival, and which exists in all life forms. It is this urge that drives humans to try to control and oppress other humans in order to acquire and own anything and everything that promotes advantageous living and survival for one’s self, one’s group and particularly one’s own gene pool(one’s own descendents).

If everyone, particularly young ones, were listened to and supported in the way described above, each person would retain her/his sense of worth, confidence and strength. As such, each one would grow to be a powerful competitor for the limited resources (in past times) for optimum survival.

In ancient times, because of greater size and muscularity (not necessarily greater strength) males became the “leaders” of the cave, the clan, the territory. The leaders learned not to listen, not to respect nor treat as equals, other males, females and children. Leaders learned to shut down the expressivity of the members of their group.

Such “shut down” effected and installed a sense of less worth, fear, powerlessness and psychic weakness, in the targeted ones. They became less competitive and therefore less of a threat to the leaders; resulting in more resources for the leaders, less for everyone else. Very much like present, similarly hierarchical society, is it not?

Despite all our social and moral advances, the human specie still suffers the results of this old fear of non-survival that drives oppression and the never ending cycle of conflict for control and domination.

Adjunct to this cycle is the developed technique of promoting negative propaganda and oppressive ideas against subjects and others perceived as opponents. Examples of such ideas are notions of “superiority/inferiority,” class value, stereotyping, stigmatizing, “us against them” mentality, and the exploitation of fear and hatred. Often we distort religion to justify such ideation.

This has resulted in the social institutionalization of classism, elitism, sexism (which includes homophobia), racism, religious hatred, anti-Semitism, nationalism, ageism and childrenism, and other social patterns of oppression.

This habit of installing such invalidations and oppressive conflict and treatment in people infected every level of human society. It exists in oneself (sense of worthlessness), personal relationships, in family life, community groups, school systems, business and governmental structures. In less severe appearing forms the habit of invalidation and oppression is often masked by jokes and “teasing,” and bullying. In more severe forms it appears as hostile competition, abuse, as unequal and unfair treatment, deprivation, war, authoritarianism and other harsh oppressions.

The effect of shut-down on health and vitality

We inherently have natural healing mechanisms. They operate in the form of our immune system, against viruses and diseases. In the case of psycho/emotional hurt they operate in the form of natural hormonal/chemical discharge and detoxification. When there is sufficient detoxification our rational (aware thinking) faculties recover a clear view of the situation, leading to workable actions and solutions.

(A full explanation of this and all the processes mentioned in this article can be found in the Healing forum under the title of “Recovering Your Human Power; Healing and Surviving in the Oppressive Society”)

We see the tip of this detoxification system as “emotional” release. It appears not only in tears, which drain away the chemistry of loss, grief and humiliation, but in hot sweat and tantrumming to detoxify the internal effects of frustration and anger (notice how people like to work out); cold seat, screaming and trembling to relieve the effects of fear; talking and laughing as the starter mechanisms to get to the deeper levels of hurt. Yawning and stretching releases physical tension.

(Typically, almost all of us try to tell a friend or relative our story of upset. Almost always the other interrupts trying to tell her/his story of upset. Typically, little gets completed. Little release and insight is achieved. This is why we keep trying to tell the story over and over.

When we are hurt or sense threat our system produces the “fight or fight” hormonal/chemical substances that prepare us for defensive action. We know these substances as adrenalin, cortisol, steroids, norepinephrine and the like.

Hurts consists not only of physical injury, but also of illness, emotional assault, negative (invalidating) treatment, oppressive treatment, deprivation, and the conditioning effects of dysfunctional behavior patterns modeled by our care takers. We internalize these patterns from the moment our central nervous system develops in the womb, and as we grow through our childhood years.

Such internalization is a necessary and natural conditioning process for organic life forms, such as human beings, in order to learn and shape our behavioral patterns in response to life conditions and experience. If we are raised with care, support, fair and equal treatment, with a model of rational relationships, we grow to be and respond, for the most part, as healthy, confident, successful adults.

If the conditioning influences are hurtful we develop rigid and irrational mental/behavioral response patterns, even while most of us retain enough of our inherent goodness and human qualities to maintain a modicum of social stability.

(However, social stability within the fragile structure of the oppressive society is always at risk – wars, class/racial/gender conflicts, extreme hostile competition and fragmentation, mutual misunderstanding and tensions in our relationships, etc. - due to oppressive patterns in our political/economic and cultural systems)

Hurts effect us comprehensively: our entire mental, physical, emotional and biological systems. All are part of the whole. In our present day, western view of the human being and healing, we have become compartmentalized and specialized. We generally treat one part of the human being without much attention to the rest of the human being. Slowly this is, fortunately, changing as the “holistic” view of healing grows.

One cannot experience physical or sexual assault without its hurtful effects on one’s mental/emotional system. Likewise one cannot experience emotional or psychological hurt without it affecting one’s physical and biological system. The distress, regardless of the source, effects and injures the whole of one’s being.

In our earlier discussion of the “shut down” phenomenon (as a function of the anti-human, oppressive system that pervades much of society) we see that it is a pandemic habit that has plagued human society for ages.

“Shut down” occurs as a result of oppressive treatment, repression and intimidation. It means that one is not listened to fully nor respected as a human being. It means that our natural healing system is repressed. When we are shut down often enough growing up, we internalize this as a habitual, chronic shut down state.

When one is shut down one’s entire natural healing system is also shut down. But the natural defense system, that is the “fight or flight” system, still works, for the most part, in response to threatening or hurtful encounters and conditions. Our chemical/hormonal response system still works putting out its internal product of adrenalin, cortisol, steroids and norepinephrine, and the like.

The hormones and chemistry functions to get us away from or to overcome the hurtful situation. While in the grip of this defensive response we cannot think in evaluative terms, only in automatic and learned defensive ways. Once we perceive we are safe, these substances are meant to be purged, drained out of our system, and detoxified.

One’s system must return to baseline, “normal,” levels in order to return to healthful and rational functioning. One cannot keep living one’s daily life, and doing one’s daily tasks healthfully and rationally, while one’s heart and pulse are rapidly beating, one’s sweat is pouring out, one’s teeth are chattering and muscles are trembling, one becomes exhausted easily, disinterested in life. One cannot function well when one’s entire system is tensed up, or one’s mental state is racing, and one’s attention is not sharply focused on her/his tasks.

Our medical/chemical industry has invented labels for such sets of symptoms, such as post traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit disorder, and have fashioned drugs to suppress the symptoms, but no real cure is effected by the drugs. The shut down state is internalized and associated with all the symptoms and behaviors, eventually becoming a chronic distress pattern

In short one cannot retain all that emergency chemistry at a high level, and be able to regain one’s capacity for normalcy, problem solving thinking and enduring strength, when the emergency subsides, and it becomes actually safe to do so.

A major effect of chronic shut down is the continual accumulation of the emergency chemistry/hormone product which clogs up the neural system. As we encounter more and more upset as we live our lives, more and more of this damaging clogging occurs.

This accumulation interferes with the immune system, as well as all of our bodily/mental processes. It undermines and weakens our healing system, our entire system. We become increasing vulnerable to viruses (which surround us all the time, and which are successfully resisted by a healthy system), to diseases, to weakness and fatigue, to diminished mental and thinking capacity (see my article “Considering Alzheimer’s” in the Healing forum) to overall wear and tear, to premature frailty and death.

In the oppressive society the natural function of mutual listening has been “shut down.” Each generation in turn learns to not listen well, by virtue of not being really and fully listened to. We have internalized this dysfunction as a society wide chronic pattern. We then model and pass it on to the next generation.

In this vacuum, in our human genius and need, we have grown an industry of “psychotherapy.” Now we pay money to be listened to. One is lucky to find a therapist who can really listen. Therapists are people who also grow up in the oppressive system and are generally subject to the shut down phenomena. While our training institutions are excellent in providing important theories of psychotherapy, they are deficient in teaching and helping people to recover the natural art and skill of deep listening. Therapists are special people who are generally caring and interested in the well being of humans, but who are also victimized by the culture of oppression and shut down in which they are born, raised and socialized.

In this vacuum, in our human genius and need, we have grown the practice of medicine to a high degree, and made an industry of it. This industry, too, is generally dependent on profits. One is lucky to find a good doctor who has avoided the temptation of elitist authoritarianism and can also listen well. A chief problem is that our medical schools still lack training and guidance on the human side of healing.

Medical science, to be sure, is genius and has developed great methods and material to confront injury and illness. By the same token our chemical companies have grown as an adjunct industry of the medical community.

Because of our “big business” culture and addiction to making excessive profits (at the expense of our human need) pushing and promotion of drugs have, as discussed early in this article, become a societal conditioning factor. This conditioning has fostered dependency, fear, and unawareness on the public. And generally, manufactured drugs have not provided the answer to the recovery of real, durable health.

Drugs are now widely used as a substitute for real therapy and healing. Drugs are now the automatic crutch for problems of mental and physical health.

People have been long conditioned away from the awareness of our inherent human healing and recovery abilities and processes.

This article is definitely not stumping for the elimination of drugs in our strategy of healing and prevention. On the contrary, as stated earlier, medical and chemical science is phenomenal.

There is a proper place and timing for the thoughtful use of drugs within the course of injury and illness. But, rationally, it should be an adjunct to the inherent healing mechanisms every human possesses.

An Example of a balanced healing strategy

Let me cite a personal example of the employment of a balanced stratagem to confront a life threatening illness.

In 1976 I was suddenly attacked with what my doctors described as “adult onset asthma.” At first I could barely breathe, I could barely move without being drained of the last vestiges of breath.

At the moment of onset, fortunately, I was with a friend who had been trained in the skill of listening (as described earlier). The moment I stopped breathing (actually some air was getting through, enough to keep me alive) I burst out to my friend “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

She sat next to me, took my hand and immediately paid full attention to me, instead of slipping into any panic. Also being trained in listening and natural detoxification awareness, I began to instinctively form the question, “what’s the hurt, what’s the hurt?’

No aware thoughts occurred, but a steady trickle of tears began to emerge from my eyes and roll down my cheeks. After what seemed an eternity, but what was about ten minutes, I began to breathe voluntarily. I filled my lungs with the precious stuff we call “air.”

Minutes later I rose, intending to let my friend drive me to my doctor’s. I could only take a few steps before my breathing stopped again. Each few steps would produce a cycle of not breathing, scanning my memory for the distress underlying the dysfunction, letting my tears come, and then breathing again.

In this way I got to the doctor’s office. My friend was there, paying full attention every second of the travail.

To cut through to the main point of the story, I was told by several doctors after examinations and consultations, that unfortunately I had an irreversible condition. I was told that the condition would proceed to greater difficulty, emphysema and death within about two tears.

Each doctor, most were empathetic, recommended the employment of the strongest medicine they had at the time, chiefly steroids, so as to make my days less uncomfortable and painful.

I thanked each one. But I opted for a different approach. I asked the doctor, whom I choose for his seemingly deeper human concern, to prescribe the lightest medicine he knew of that would at least keep my bronchial tubes open enough to do minimal physical tasks: walking, washing and the like. This was a drug called “aminophilline.”

The fact that I released tears when I put my attention on my memory bank, so to speak, indicated to me that there was a pile of grief that I had been conditioned to repress during my life, that had now reached it’s overflow point.

My psyche(neural/mental/emotional – some might add spiritual - system) and my body worked together to produce the symptoms (the lung damage and breathing dysfunction) that finally alerted me to the life threatening problem.

I then organized a steady regimen of (psycho/emotional) sessions with several colleagues who were also trained in these natural listening skills. The sessions consisted of my scanning my memory for its grief experiences (and other distresses that came up spontaneously) and detoxifying, in the form of talking, tearing, trembling, sweating, laughing and whatever form was available, to drain away the “bad” chemistry that had effected such damage to my system over years of repression.

Briefly, over the many sessions that followed the awareness that emerged from my memory, once enough of the repressed material had been released and detoxified, was that the chief distress that erupted in physical symptoms concerned, one) the loss of my mother when I was eight years old, and the fact that she was herself too distressed and threatened to pay personal attention to her son (me), assigning the duty of care-giving to my sister, who was only nine years older than me, and 2) my father who carried a load of rejection and humiliation from his childhood, and whose pent up anger and rage would pour out at anyone, especially on his wife, and children, in terrifying ways. He never actually hit, but the force of his boiling, maniacal rage was such that one could only feel that he would blindly kill whomever was his target, at the slightest degree of further provocation.

(These were not “crazy” people. They were good, charitable, hard working, talented people whose own conditioned distress patterns turned them into irrational creatures, when triggered by what they saw as an upsetting stimulus. Readers of this article will readily identify with such painful phenomena in their own experiences)

In a rational, human society we would, as young ones, all be given support, validation, unconditional encouragement about our uniqueness and gifts we bring to the world. In such an environment our healing and immune capabilities would retain their inherent strength. The level of illness, disease, mental, emotional, behavioral dysfunction and distress would be immeasurably lower than what we typically experience. Our entire society would be healthier, safer, richer and a great deal more delightful than we commonly can imagine.

Within the first year of this balanced treatment, light medicine and psycho/emotional sessions, I had these session once a day, five to six days a week. My condition steadily improved. The next year I cut the number of sessions to three or four times a week. By this time I felt strong enough to increase my life activity. Not reliably strong enough to return to my acting and theater work, I decided to attend college (for the first time – I was now fifty years old). Unsurprising, I made psychology my major focus.

I continued my treatment as I attended junior college, university and then post=graduate school. At first it was physically difficult. Often times it took almost ten minutes to climb a flight of stairs. I persisted. I continued with my treatment regimen.

Another year passed. I did well in my studies and better in my recovery. By 1980, I decided to wean myself off of the medicine. I did pretty well, but whenever I was sufficiently restimulated (triggered by what I perceived as an upsetting event) my breathing again became more difficult. At each time, I resumed use of the medicine as I worked on the restimulating event in my sessions, until I cleared away enough of the deeper underlying distress to recover my breathing and put aside, once again, the medicine.

Not only did I recover my breathing to the level previous to the restimulation, but I achieved even greater capacity towards normal breathing and health. This is because each time I worked on the distress I detoxified (purged) more of the pile of internalized old distress chemistry that was affecting bad health.

By 1981 or 1982, I achieved complete freedom from the need of medicine for the condition. I achieved greater internal systemic (hormonal/chemical, neural processes) balance and function, and much more of my natural strength of immunity.(I believe I am still recovering more of my breathing capacity, which is about 90% to 95% at this writing)

I gained tremendous insight and awareness of the causes of my chronic distress. I recovered a great deal of my natural confidence and power to react and behave in rational and flexible ways. My perception and intuitive understanding of the causes of human dysfunction in behavior and health grew significantly. I achieved rich insight to the inherent human potential for health and for the conduct of rational, caring, cooperative, successful and joyful function in our lives and our relationships.

(In 1986 I became a licensed psychotherapist. In 1991 I returned to the world of theater and film (my first love). Today I maintain a practice as well as a theater and film career. See the topic forums in the home page)

In working with an uncounted number of others, I found they made the same kind of gains from their process of healing. In short, the benefits from a regimen of persistent and committed psycho/emotional detoxification is phenomenal, which speaks to the real power of our inherent qualities and strength.

Of course the thoughtful use of medicine when one’s physical condition has reached of point where medical intervention is necessary is the rational thing to do. The thoughtful use of medicine for prevention may also be intelligent. The need for chemical intervention, however, becomes less and less as one engages in a persistent course of committed detoxification and healing.

The beginning step in the recovery of one’s inherent health and power of rational behavior, and ability to affect a more humane and safer world, is to seek out people who can listen, at least, pretty well or, at least, willing to relearn how to listen. To join with them in the practice of trading time to listen and be listened to. Take turns to listen, not in the typical conversational way, for this cuts off the flow of thought that can otherwise lead to insight, if not interrupted. Give each other chunks of time, five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, even a day or more when one is the midst of a deep upset. Then the listened takes her/his turn to be listened to.

Of course this seems unusual or strange. In the oppressive society we have been conditioned not to listen, not to detoxify our distresses. We have been conditioned to be unaware of our fantastic human abilities and qualities. This is the point. Do we perpetuate the oppressive condition that infects us all, and that we pass on to our children and they to theirs? Or do we take on the glorious temporary discomfort of breaking our addiction to the oppressive shut down habit; thus to obtain the lasting and natural high of better health, better relations, better living and a better world?

Thanks for listening.

< Prev

No Comments.
You need to login or register to post comments.
Discuss this item on the forums. (0 posts)

Main Menu

Who's Online