Like the words of the famous song Alice’s Restaurant today’s prescription drug addict “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant”. Why risk getting arrested and possibly spending any time in jail when you can go to a variety of doctors and easily get prescriptions for Xanax, Celexa, Zyprexa, Ambien, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Paxil, Oxycotin, etc….. After all it’s legal.
Thanks to our pill cure obsessed society along with the greed of Big Pharma who consistently bribes most physicians to distribute their pills like they were M&Ms in the Candy Shop to unsuspecting patients who need relief from pain, anxiety and depression. Very few people are suffering from psychosis which most of the aforementioned drugs are designed to treat.
How do I know this? I am a recovering prescription drug addict. Shocked? Surprised? Never would have suspected someone like me right? A church goer, Bible student, Cum Laude College graduate, hard worker, one who has always been able to hold down a job and be success in the workplace. Well now you know. I’ve come out from behind my mask. The mask I’ve been hiding behind since 1999 the year after my Mom Mable Palmer passed away. Nineteen Ninety Nine was the pivotal year when I made my descent down the rabbit hole of grief, depression, anxiety and pressure to get past the pain of my parents deaths which occurred within three years of each other. I had to keep the charade going. I could never reveal to anyone how really devastated I was by their untimely loss.
Nineteen Ninety Nine was the year I started seeing a psychiatrist. It started off well enough. At least I thought so in my troubled mind. She had me watch a video on mental illness, specifically bi-polar disorder, asked me a few questions then sent me into a journey and eventually a slide into the land of Happy Pills. What I probably most needed was a mild sedative and extensive talk therapy but no I received Celexa and eventually was promoted to stronger more debilitating prescription drugs.
Mind you because at the time I had a good job and good health insurance there was no problem in me obtaining in number or manner of pills to satisfy my growing reliance on these medications. In fact my doctor enabled me by reaching into one of her office drawers and dispensing free pills she had obtained from the many pharmaceutical agents who visited her offices, and most likely plied her with dinners, trips, etc…. if she would promote their “medications”.
What Dr. Pill Happy failed to ask me was if anyone in my family specifically my parents had any addictions. If she had asked me that I would have told her my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was an alcoholic most of her adult life. But then again who knows, given the fact that the Big Pharma Drug Pushers were greasing her palms she would have ignored the obvious connection between my behavior and my mother’s and continued adult candy. Then again I can’t just blame.......................Continued on A Call to Witness
