EduClaytion

We’re All On Drugs

Pfizer is getting in on the bailout fun.  The pharmaceutical giant will provide free drugs to folks who have lost their jobs recently.  The interesting point here would have to do with the inclusion of Viagra for the jobless.

Call me old-fashioned, but if you’ve recently lost your job, the last thing you need is Viagra and the distractions that come with all that.  If your distractions last for more than four hours, how in the world will you get any applications filled out?  I would focus on beefing up a resume instead.  I can imagine the conversation.

DOCTOR: What seems to be the problem?

JOBLESS GUY: I recently lost my job.

DR.: What am I supposed to do?

JG : Give me Viagra.

DR.: Do you work in porn?

JG: No, I just want to be ready in case the time is right.

[Cue terrible music by middle-aged cover band]

***

Of course Pfizer will dish out free meds.  They need to keep people hooked.  We are a society that will medicate everything.  We have prescriptions for any malady under the sun, real or imagined, none more prevalent than happy pills in case life is just too scary or sad for you to cope.  Why deal with the challenges of living when you can down a tablet with wine and leave the world behind? 

According to an article by Riley MacLeod in Relevant magazine, almost half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug.  That rate will continue to soar as we raise more and more children on kiddie drugs.

Pill-popping grade schoolers have increased over the past decade.  Seems now that every kid who experiences a burst of energy is automatically diagnosed with ADD and given medicine.  Any child who doesn’t display the focus of a CEO at  a stockholder meeting must have something wrong with them.  Doctors, insurance companies, and drug makers love the free flowing pills.  Parents who feel like failures because their child isn’t Mozart make for great suckers buyers. 

Actually that’s not fair.  Mozart probably acted up a lot when he was a child.

The invention of ADD wasn’t enough though.  Now the little ones are leaving the kiddie pool for deeper waters.  Some 4% of preschoolers are now diagnosed as clinically depressed.  That’s over a million children. 

Since I have no medical training I suppose I have no credibility.  Of course, I also haven’t been turned into an idiot by stupid professors with fantastical medical journals.

Kids get sad.  I get that.  Everybody will from time to time, but do we have to dissolve anti-depressants into their sippy cups?  How in the world did humanity survive for over 6,000 years without pills?  Give it a few more months and we’ll be administering pre-natal Prozac for babies in the womb.

There’s so much pressure in our society to achieve that parents need excuses when their child turns out to be, gulp, normal rather than exceptional.  God forbid you have a happy, healthy child who likes video games and gets rowdy a couple times a day.  Parents fear summer anymore.  What will they do with kids around all day?  Quick, create more programs and places for them to be dropped off at.  After all, it takes a village.

If you want to take pills every day just do it, but don’t pretend to be treating something fictitious.  All I’m saying is leave the kids alone.

We become so hypocritical by telling kids “Don’t Do Drugs” in one breath and “Take two of these a day” if the kid doesn’t make enough friends in 2nd grade.  It’s the same as when politicians decry smoking yet do it themselves as they rely on revenues from tobacco.

Give me a call if you develop a cure for cancer.  In the meantime, let’s quit making excuses, hiding from reality, and raising a generation of junkies.

May 14, 2009 - Posted by educlaytion | News, Politics