medicating the masses

1. had three classes today, and my weekend started at 4:45. baller! 
2. had a delicious and fun (!) dinner with my grad student friend. good times. that's all i can really say about that. 
3. i had a great night. except for that one part involving a ping pong ball and an oreo... 

so my subject line may be telling...but i am pissed off about overmedication. i think it is way to shove drugs at someone to attempt to solve problems. this issue is really personal for me in more ways than one, but in general i think it is a huge issue for western society today. what happened to just letting a headache be a headache? what happened to just letting a cold run its course? sure, the argument of "why feel pain if there is a medicine to remove pain?" is legitimate, and in some cases completely understandable. but pain is the body's way of alerting us to the fact that something isn't right and needs to be fixed. it's a built-in warning system--why mess with that? it means you're stressed or have been staring at a computer for too long or aren't getting enough sleep or aren't eating right. so...change whatever is off and make it better. but drugs mess this process up--they mask the pain, thus masking the body's natural response and inhibiting the proper action from being taken. i also look at this from an emotional standpoint. it's like feeling hurt/angry/sad/stressed and doing something maladaptive to mask that feeling. the actual problem doesn't get fixed at all, just the symptoms are taken care of. but that's not getting at the root of what is actually wrong. so by merely treating the pain and ignoring the cause, no progress or growth can be made; then how are people to grow as individuals? overmedication really bothers me. i wish i could say more right now, but i'm feeling a block building up inside my head--writer's block, i guess it's called.