“I am giving Houston, and all the others, and each of us, a standing ovation by speaking out against the irresponsible, duplicitous, misleading and dangerous prescription drug propaganda and use in America.”

NaplesNews.com
By Nori St. Paul
February 17, 2012

It’s time to take back our human potential, and find the answers within, where they have always been.

It’s time to take back our human potential, and find the answers within, where they have always been.

It happens every day to people of all ages, but there are certain people who in death shine a spotlight on paradigms of cultural fragmentation and social inconsistency, even though most of us don’t see it at first.

Even while America and the rest of the world celebrate these icons’ lives, these “stars” illume a sad state of the American condition, and in some ways perhaps focus a beam on the collective human suffering. These public figures ante up the unnecessary ultimate price for a peoples that more and more feel alone in a crowd and are turning to Big Pharma to sate our appetites for some kind of reprieve from our psychic suffering. We are looking for that missing mirror of wholeness, and many believe it’s in a bottle.

On the outset, let me say I am not against all prescription drugs. Just most psychotropic medicines. I am passionately against the mass epidemic promotion and consumption of drugs in a world that cannot seem to produce unbiased numbers that substantiate efficacy in the realm of pill popping bliss.

It looks like the latest sacrifice to this devastation, of course, is Whitney Houston. While toxicology results are pending, it is widely known that Houston used, and allegedly abused prescription drugs.

As I have been known to do, allow me to get away from the drama of the bathtub in which she allegedly died, the glamorous dresses and Grammy parties, even her incredible musical talent, because these specifics are irrelevant fodder for the American frenzy toward sensationalism. Today a blue collar middle aged man with a wife and small children may suffer the same death as Houston, without the fanfare, because tens of thousands of people die each year from drug overdoses, including prescription medication. Now, believe me, I know you might be well tired of hearing this, but since I am not here to win a popularity contest, let me shed light on perhaps the deeper and more sensitive issue.

The scientific evidence doesn’t fit, and itself is cause for concern and the promulgation of a return to sanity is adding to the insanity, not fixing it. This is a grave issue for society.

I am giving Houston, and all the others, and each of us, a standing ovation by speaking out against the irresponsible, duplicitous, misleading and dangerous prescription drug propaganda and use in America.

The big dollar is winning out for doctors, pharmaceutical companies, advertising agencies, investors, and the government. Is this game somehow killing a part of the human potential, even before stealing lives to their last broken breath? I believe the answer is “yes.” The sad thing, too, is that people who turn to drugs are searching for an answer to their suffering, but I believe are really succumbing to the huge anatomy of the big cult of Big Pharma. The result is not a natural state of happiness. It’s high, or numb. Or worse. It’s a manufactured brand of happiness that is widely accepted by consumers that are suffering, and thing is, the message is so enticing, there seems nowhere else to turn.

It seems like we all see this happening, but as a whole we are in denial. Houston’s death is amid a pattern, and perhaps started years ago, at the height of her career, when Houston joined the ranks of an ever-growing world of “wanna-be-fixed-by-a-pill” culture. When I say by a pill, I really mean any mind altering drug, including illegal drug use, but critical, however, is that the problem includes an ongoing and aggressively promoted upward spiral of prescription drug use in America.

Research into this prescription drug issue uncovers some alarming facts. For example, Kenneth Kendler, coeditor in chief of Psychological Medicine, wrote in 2005, “We have hunted for big simple neurochemical explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them.”

On the promotion side, suffice it to say that research reveals a gaping and frightening discrepancy in the direct marketing vs. research dollars for American drug companies. That’s right. More money is spent to entice us than is spent to insure our safety and well-being when it comes to drugs for anxiety, schizophrenia, depression and bipolar illness. And worse, there is no evidence this tack is working. Mental illness has not abated, it has grown more widespread. This subverted reality keeps a lot of people working, and some are making a lot of money, while a lot of people are dying, or just living drugged up lives unaware of who they really are, or could be.

It’s like walking a tight rope, where we will find that “perfect balance” between total death and drug induced bliss or balance or walking zombies.

Back to Houston. Is it possible that compounding this is the potential that as a result of her death, or other high profile deaths like Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse, we actually experience a deeper delusion in some ways, as the fodder flies for weeks or years over these untimely deaths? “Well, gosh, I’m not that bad.” Or, “He’s not as bad as that. Oh, what a loss of a great talent. Wow, look at that.” In fact, are we living in a world of truncated human potential and looking for the answers outside of ourselves?

I am giving Houston, and all the others, and each of us, a standing ovation by speaking out against the irresponsible, duplicitous, misleading and dangerous prescription drug propaganda and use in America.

It’s time to take back our human potential, and find the answers within, where they have always been.

Read article here: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/feb/17/listening-to-life-speaking-out-against-drug-and/