Walking in the Valley A weekly column for those who live and walk in Silicon Valley by Barbara Dahlgren

Your Drug of Choice Column for the week of July 27 - August 3, 2002

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The American people have a love affair with drugs.... all kinds of drugs. Some love the illegal variety, guaranteed to help us forget our troubles and get happy. Some of us love the legal variety, guaranteed to help us forget our troubles and get happy. We are a feel good society and we want to feel good all the time. Therefore we have drugs to wake us up and drugs to put us to sleep. We have steroids to buff us up and diet pills to reduce the buff. We aren't satisfied to let our bodies rest and replenish when ill. We'd rather pump them full of some concoction that will keep us going. After all, we are important. We simply can't miss that appointment, cancel that date, or postpone that meeting.

And to answer the public need to keep us dancing as fast as we can is the drug company coupled with the medical profession, working hand in hand to supply our demand. It's a marriage made, not in heaven, but at the bank. They learned a long time ago how to keep us happy. They just tell us what we want to hear and have us pay for the privilege. This drug will lower your cholesterol. This drug will lower your blood pressure. This product will reduce your hot flashes. This pill will help prevent heart attacks. Are they lying? No. These drugs will do what they claim, and so much more if you consider the side effects. In fact, sometimes one of the side effects of a drug is the very symptom it is supposed to treat.

One of my favorite commercials shows a happy fellow enjoying life. The voice over says, "Be sure to ask your doctor about this blah, blah, blah, blah life changing drug." The implication being that your doctor is far too busy to know about this drug himself so you, the patient, being fully educated through this media propaganda blitz, should tell him. Then the voice over lists the side effects, which run the gambit from a to z, so quickly he sounds like Alvin the Chipmunk. Magazine ads are the same. Our eyes soak in the bold printed claims and skip the small printed side effects. It's marketing, folks. And it works.

I know that drugs can save lives. But drugs can take lives, too. Adverse reactions to prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S. And according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association "twenty percent of all new drugs are found to have serious or life threatening effects unknown or undisclosed at the time of drug approval." Just witness the uproar over hormone replacement therapy. The headlines in the San Jose Mercury News read "Sold to make women healthy, happy and beautiful, hormones were never proved safe and effective." Old slogans like "buyer beware" and "if it sounds too good to be true, it is" come to mind.

We can't blame the medical industry for offering us a quick fix. Many times that is exactly what we want. We're too busy to take advantage of the information age even though knowledge about health is plentiful. It's much simpler to let the doctor give us an antibiotic for our sniffle and a dose of Ritalin for our active kid. The fact is that we rely on what we are told by the medical/drug professions. We've deified doctors and we've decided if we can't pronounce it, it must be good for us. It's quicker and easier to accept things than do the research and find out for ourselves.

Spiritually speaking, people approach the Bible the same way. Rather than read the Bible for themselves, they prefer to rely on what they've been told. We believe what preachers or doctors of theology say because they have the credentials. If we don't like what they say, we just reject the Bible or we go through life with huge misconceptions based on faulty messages we've heard. It's easier than reading it ourselves.

I challenge you to read the Bible for yourself. I suggest starting with the New Testament because it gets right into the teachings of Jesus. Try reading it without preconceived ideas about what you think it says or means. You may be in for some surprises. For example Jesus didn't come to condemn you. (John 3:17) He knows you inside and out, and loves you anyway. If you have questions, He is the answer and the only way this society is really going to "feel good." If that boggles your brain just take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

©July 2002

Be sure to visit this page every week to read the next edition of Walking in the Valley. You can write to the author at bydahlgren@aol.com.