Paying Attention

Add.

The New York Times this week quietly published an extensive piece investigating the role of advertising and pharmaceutical drug sales in the recent rise of ADD and ADHD in the American population. The article takes an open-eyed look at the correlation between increased marketing, both to prescribing physicians and the public and the rate of prescription for those conditions. According to the CDC, more than 3.5 million children are being medicated for ADD or ADHD. As with any medical diagnosis and treatment there are many people that genuinely suffer and are in need of these drugs, but, it also seems like a fad. I know that there is a good market for Adderall and Ritalin on the recreational drug scene, and prescriptions come from diagnoses. I also know that the symptoms and definitions of both ADD and ADHD are broadly defined and easy to fake. And the ads, they promise parents good grades and a happy home, no tough love required. These are powerful drugs, and there are a lot of us taking them. I cannot help but wonder what role our collective addiction to medication plays in all of this. It would be wise for us to have an honest discussion about behavior, expectations, and parenting in conjunction with the widespread medication of our children before we wake up and discover we have a generation built on pharmaceuticals. 

Picture/Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/

Comfortably Numb

Soma.

Overdoses of pain medications have surpassed cervical cancer and homicide as a leading cause of the death among women in the United States.  This is particularly true for women between the ages of 20 and 40, though one would presume that older women may have more medical cause for pain medications.  While the rate of overdose deaths has increased somewhat in proportion to the associated increase in the prescription of these drugs, there is no evidence to suggest that chronic pain conditions or other illnesses such as severe cancers that require pain medications have also increased.  What we are observing then, is a cultural trend towards the use and abuse of prescription drugs.

This is not news.

Prescription drugs have a long history of overuse, recreational use, and addiction.  From Laudanum in the 1600's to Valium in the fifties and now the Adderall and Oxycontin decades, people have long been looking for a solution to pain, something to lift their mood, motivation, solace, or just plain escape.  But drugs are stronger than ever, and there seems to be a lot more of them, and reasons to need or want them, than ever before as well.  

I think there is room for caution regarding the disparity between our ability to design and manufacture more and better drugs and our ability to handle them both physically and socially.  Perhaps we should consider this a social consequence of other choices; high rates of incarceration and poverty; decreasing vacation time; the dissolution of the family structure; a cultural sense of victimhood.  Somewhere along the line we need to start asking ourselves if we really believe that happiness can come in a pill, or if it should.

The Top Ten Abused Prescription Drugs and Their Effects:

http://listverse.com/2010/12/21/top-10-abused-prescription-drugs/

References/Photograph:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/health/rate-of-painkiller-overdose-deaths-rises-among-women.html?ref=health&_r=0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/02/drug-overdose-deaths-middle-aged-women-prescription-painkillers_n_3535847.html

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/a-spoonful-of-laudanum-daniel-hagerman.html

There's a Pill for That

Waterfowl.

In October of 2011 the National Center for Health Statistics released a report which stated that the number of people in the United States with prescriptions for antidepressants increased more than 400% from 1988 to 2008.  Prescriptions for amphetamine-based drugs used to treat ADD and ADHD saw a similar increase just between 1996 and 1999. Over-prescription of antibiotics has led the Center for Disease Control to call antibiotic resistance a major health problem in the U.S.  The average American takes 12 prescription drugs a year, compared to seven twenty years ago.  We are taking enough prescription drugs that they are appearing in measurable quantities in our waste water.

Sadly, our health, mental or physical is no better.  We are overweight and unhappy, and choking in the cost of our own medical care.  We still love MacDonald's and beer and we still don't exercise.  Our use of prescription drugs has become a symptom of our greater illness.  Take pause. Take a walk.  Take care of yourself.  Sometimes there is no magic pill. 

References Cited:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/astounding-increase-in-antidepressant-use-by-americans-201110203624

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/drugs/stats.html

http://www.chrt.org/publications/price-of-care/issue-brief-2011-02-antibiotic-prescribing-and-use/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/20/healthcare-drugspolicy