Medicated Nations

What in the World has us so Hooked on Drugs?

Is it just me, or is the state of the world reflected clearly in our collective dependance on being medicated, in one way or another?

Coffee to wake up and stay perk'd throughout the day.

Some take prescriptions for ailments, others find solace in supplements.

A good many of us turn to a beer or 6 to help us remember, or to help us forget...

There's also all those those illegal medications to that so many use.

What I wonder is,

Why do most of us want and/or need to be medicated to stay balanced?
Is it perhaps that we need to be numbed from the knowing that there is so much wrong with the way the systems that govern us work?

For myself, there's an element of helplessness that I feel when I think of the hoops I have to jump through to be a part of a society that I was born into. There's no easy way around it, I have to file taxes, to have jobs, to create security and safety. I have to be somewhat of a ' productive member of society' in order for my life to have a semblance of balance.

(Yes I realize there are amazing humans who have worked hard to free their lives of all conventional ties, and they inspire and educate me greatly. However, that is not my path... yet.)

I still live in the system, and I do respect the priviledge that comes from my lot in life here in North America. I am grateful that I can drive, that there are highways, that an ambulance will show up incase of emergency, that there are community and social services to help those needing guidance or help. For all of these reasons, and more, I do respect 'the system' in which I live.

BUT...

I also have a sneaking suspicion that my personal preference for alcohol and marijuana stems from that helpless feeling that I cannot fully extricate myself from these systems, even though so much of them are ineffective, counter-intuitive, and surprisingly inhumane.

The first instance that springs to mind which demonstrates this is the state of the school systems.

Who really actually liked school?

Sure, there were some cool parts, and we might even remember a couple things from a class or two, but on a whole, school was bullshit.

I never again used that history information that was shovelled down my throat. Nor the finite mathematics, or chemistry, or Shakespeare for that matter.

Yet I was forced, by law, to sit down, look forward, and respond in kind to the authority figures for the first 15 years of my life, and so were you, and so was everyone else.

Is it really any wonder that I struggle with feeling HELPLESS?

I'm no doctor, and I have read many brilliant things about addiction, especially from a man named Dr. Gabor Maté, but for my, my health revolution will not be complete until I can find ways to balance myself that don't require me to numb myself out any longer.

The privilege of having these well designed cities where everything we could want, we can find seems to have a dark underbelly that feeds out collective desired for something outside of ourselves that makes us feel better.

Why did't I learn anything about self-care or nutrition in high school? Or how to budget finances?!
That would certainly have come in handy.

Instead, in school we're fed irrelevant and counter-intuitive habits that have us sitting for far too long, then trudging slowly forward, obeying orders and numbing ourselves to sleep.

The Health Revolution for me is about breaking away from the conditioning and finding a better way!

So I sip some tea, breathe, and try to remember all the good that is in the world - and I run as fast as I can toward that.

Be well.
Speak soon,
Bee