They Gotta Pill For It

If you open any magazine, turn on any T.V. or even take public transportation, you are bombarded by messages telling you that the solution to any conceivable problem you could ever have has already been R&D’d, FDA’d packaged and delivered to your local pharmacy.

They’ve got the purple pill and the little blue pill and the capsules and the liquid gels and the time release answer to all that ails you. If you’ve got nervous stomach or hay-fever or joint pain or depression or attention deficit disorder or dry eye or high blood pressure or high cholesterol or forgetfulness or premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, low arousal threshold or social anxiety disorder – they got a pill for it.

If you’ve got a troubled teen, or a boring spouse or your job makes your crazy or you want to lose some weight, or gain some muscle, or look younger, feel younger or are just plain shy – they got a pill for it.

We as a nation have come to define ourselves by what we lack, not by what we have. So age and its accompanying inconveniences are a disease, and youth with its hormone-driven madness is a disease, and if you’re not as tall or short or fat or thin or outgoing or friendly or sexy as some unidentifiable “them” say you should be – well, that’s a disease. It needs a pill. And they got a pill for it.

It’s no coincidence that the cure for what ails you is a product in the chain of commerce that defines our world. And it’s not a coincidence that consumers, like cattle, are being driven to yearn for more … of anything or nothing at all, it hardly matters … just as long as that yearning can be (temporarily) mollified by a pill. That you buy at the pharmacy. That you demand from your doctor. Who is taught to think in terms of pills rather than prevention. Who is ceaselessly courted by the manufacturers. That spend billions on advertising and millions on research and development. That provide jobs. That were probably filled in another country. That is starting to look a whole lot like us.

But the one thing that is not encouraged is to follow the thread back to its source. For if you truly take the time to consider why we are afflicted by so many maladies, why we flit from one fad to the next in our quest to make us feel better, why we are so fat and so stressed and so out of shape and so fast food addicted and nicotine addicted and chemically addicted – we might actually realize that what we’re running from is us.

The “us” that has been defined by the corporations and the government and the institutions that have convinced us that we must fit a mold that is no longer feasible, if it ever was. The “us” that is the product of a system run amok, a system built on greed and acquisitiveness and is out of balance with every aspect of the natural world and its natural laws.

For that there is no pill. That requires major surgery.