2.3.1

2.3.1

Drugs

Drugs, medications, pharmaceuticals: These are all names of substances that can help to make us feel better, heal us, keep us alive – or kill us. Every year, the pharmaceutical industry rakes in billions of dollars in profits. That’s an awful lot of money, and it makes you wonder just how much of these pharmaceutical products are really necessary. Without drug and pharmaceutical companies, though, many people would experience pain and suffering and a marked decrease in their quality of life. So it is crucial that these drug companies continue to conduct research and produce the things that society needs to keep its citizens healthy.

Pharmaceutical products are meant to cause some change in the body’s systems. This change can help a non-functioning organ to function or eliminate pain even if just temporarily. The main point here, though is simple:

Any medication you take causes some physical or behavioral change in you.

Some of these changes are positive if not vital for promoting good health and even survival. Consider a patient taking medication for extremely high blood pressure. Without it, the patient could have a stroke or suffer a heart attack. So too for blood thinners that can help people to avoid strokes. That said, people on blood thinners must be extremely careful; a seemingly harmless laceration could be serious for someone with thin blood that does not clot easily.

Over-the-counter allergy medicines and cough medicines can change a person’s bodily systems for the better by alleviating symptoms caused by seasonal allergies or the symptoms associated with a cold or flu for example. So, instead of suffering through days or weeks of feeling lousy or even incapacitated, people can manage symptoms until they finally subside and disappear altogether by taking a pharmaceutical product that targets those specific symptoms.

So, if drugs are so good, why the bad rap?

The explanation is simple: the right drug for the right individual with the right symptoms and the right needs is beneficial, again, if not life-saving. The bad rap comes from abuse and misuse. Can you identify with any of the following?

  • “If one pill is good, then two are surely better.”
  • “Take this, it will help you to stay up all night when you study for exams.”
  • “Hey, try one of these. You’ll get a great high for a few hours.”
  • “My brother gave me these. He says that they should help deaden the pain in my ankle.”
  • “The label says not to operate heavy machinery, but I have to drive to work.”
  • “Let me wash these pain meds down with my wine. There’s no water around anywhere.”

Many people simply do not realize the power that different medications carry. Too many people do not read labels that warn of possible side effects, activities to avoid, and interactions with other drugs or substances. And then we have people who just want to feel good and are told that taking a couple of pills will have them flying high for a while.

As with many, if not most things in life, people making poor choices is one of the biggest reasons for that bad rap given to drugs. They use drugs that they shouldn’t or ignore dosage warnings or cautionary messages such as, “May cause drowsiness.” Why would you take something that makes you drowsy and then hop into a vehicle and drive? Yet some drivers do it without thinking. They just assume they can fight off the drowsiness, and then find out the hard way that they are wrong.

For you to get the most benefit from a drug and experience the least harm or other negative consequences, knowing more about it will help you to make informed decisions when it comes to using medications, drugs, or whatever you want to call them. So, in this next section of the course, we want to give you some very important basics.