Are you trying to make people become a drug addict and no affence
It is really troubling that the way that our society talks about medication is such that ‘it’s okay if you need meds every day’ is immediately turned into ‘are you trying to make everyone drug addicts’ by a literal kid.
Young human, I guarantee you that some of your friends need meds every day right now. You just don’t know about it. Part of the reason that you don’t know about it is the way that many societies – but especially American society in particular – looks down on people who have chronic health conditions. This is literally a Puritanical worldview.
The Puritans – no, not, the ones with the comical blunderbusses and hats, those were Pilgrims, totally separate – literally believed in predestination. They believed that God had already chosen who would be sick and who would be well, who would be saved and who would receive God’s grace. (Note: I am Jewish, and all of this is total bullshit anyway, I don’t believe a word of it, I’m explaining how it has affected our lives here in the U S of A.)
The Puritan belief that illness is an indication of moral failing can be seen in today’s ‘thinness = virtue and fatness = lack of virtue’ lines, in the idea that people who have chronic illnesses ‘caused’ it somehow and could have avoided it or can cure it by simply eating more kale, and many more deeply destructive ideas.
None of those things in the preceding paragraph are true. Disability is not an indicator of value as a human being. Illness is not an indicator of value as a human being. The vast majority of people who lose dramatic amounts of weight gain that weight back and more, and regardless, weight is not a significant indicator of health nor is it a personal failing if you’re fat.
So this whole idea that human beings are total failures if they’re chronically ill and need medication comes to us directly from the same people who thought that getting a man to confess that his wife was a witch by stacking rocks on his chest until he died was a good idea, that they were totally entitled to clear-cut a continent and massacre entire peoples, and that hanging Quakers was the nice way to deal with the Friends.
Or if you don’t want to read a whole bunch of paragraphs about why the idea that any medication at all is a moral failure and just someone being a rampant addict (and oh heck, talking about why addiction isn’t a moral failure, and it isn’t, is a whole other discussion), here are a few reasons why people have to take medication every day just in my family:
Their brains don’t produce enough serotonin
Their heart will go out of rhythm if they don’t take medication to regulate it, then they’ll get blood clots and die
Oh but they need three different medications for that, every day.
They’ll have seizures if they don’t take their medication
Their thyroids work too hard
Their thyroids don’t work hard enough (obviously these are not all the same person)
They don’t absorb enough nutrients from their food because their immune system freaks out occasionally over the presence of certain foods and attacks their digestive system
Their nerves are broken and send haywire signals into their limbs, causing pain for no reason, pretty much all the time, and they’d like to get out of bed and be able to function
They don’t want to get pregnant
Their immune systems think that their internal organs are actually external invaders and thus must be destroyed
Their uterus doesn’t just grow lining inside the uterus, it grows outside the uterus, too, and that is very painful and can cause cysts if not treated
Their immune system thinks their skin is actually an external invader and keeps attacking it. Yes, their skin.
None of those are ‘let’s have a happy fun party’ reasons to take medication, and there are many, many more. They’re just ‘we’d like to stay alive’ reasons to take medication. And honestly, the only thing you need to know is those members of my family saw a qualified doctor, were diagnosed with a reason to need medication for their safety, longevity, or quality of life, and they take that medication. Anything beyond that is really not your business – I’m just providing some examples of maintenance medication that allows people to stay healthy, to return to health, or to live longer lives of greater quality.
It is not helpful for people – especially people with mental illnesses, or people who are already struggling with feelings of damaged self-worth because of their illnesses – to hear their necessary, life-saving, quality-of-life-improving treatments spoken of as if taking those treatments is some sort of failing on their part.
And look, like, I know you’re a kid, and I’m not trying to rag on you, I’m just mostly sad, because it really sucks to think that someone your age genuinely thinks that the only reason someone would encourage people to take their meds every day is because they want people to be ‘addicted’.
When people encourage others to ‘take their meds,’ they are encouraging others to take the medication prescribed to them by their physicians. They are encouraging health and self-care in others. That’s all you need to know.
tl;dr: some people need medication to live. Don’t be a jerk, okay?
DustAndFundamentalists 