We have all heard the pill quote from The Matrix by now. I’ll summarize it: take the blue pill while in the Matrix, then everything is cool, but take the red pill, and you’re going to get into some major chaos. Well, in today’s society, we treat EVERYTHING with pills! Think about it. Each person that reads this, at the very least, probably takes a vitamin or a birth control pill. I was taking an allergy pill or two, every day. All of these pills, regardless of the color, are going to get us into some major chaos too.

As my avid readers know, I’m allergic to chocolate, milk, corn, and peanuts.  A guy I work with asked me one day if there were a pill I could take in order to be able to eat the foods to which I’m allergic (without any repercussions) would I? I immediately said, “Pffft! If there were such a pill, I would be popping them all the time!” I know I would take a pill and then thoroughly enjoy some créme brûlée. Then I would take another pill and eat a brownie, or a Snickers. Later, you guessed it, take another pill and drink a bottle of Dr Pepper with a handful of salted roasted peanuts dropped into it (don’t crinkle your nose until you try it… it’s awesome!). I’m horrible at remembering to take pills, but I bet I wouldn’t have a problem remembering that precious pill!

About ten years ago, I went to the doctor with a rash on the back of each hand. I figured maybe it was an allergic reaction, or something that needed a cream. To my surprise, the doctor handed me a sample pack of an antidepressant. Really? She said the rash may have been caused by stress, and I could try this pill out. She would write me a prescription if I liked it. I was shocked, and kind of ticked off. What she should have done was ask me what I had been eating, and possibly suggested that I keep a list of the things I eat from then on and document any other reactions. She instead, handed me pills. Needless to say, I didn’t take that sample pack, and the rash went away on its own a couple of days later.

We as parents also medicate our children too much. As soon as they are born, we start allowing the doctors to pump them with shot after shot because, “We’re supposed to, it’s the law.” They’re not pills, but they are foreign to our bodies nonetheless. I know that now, after seeing my daughter suffer for over eight years because of the vaccinations I thought she just had to get. I watched a perfectly healthy toddler fight to breathe; she coughed for years like she had bronchitis. So much to the point that she had pulmonary specialists baffled when the cystic fibrosis test came back negative. After getting all other causes ruled out, we now know that it had to be the DPT Vaccine. I thank God that my daughter is alive! It was my lack of knowledge that put her at risk; I thought I had to get her that vaccine, but I did not.

Every little fever, every sniffle, every cough – a mom will rush to the medicine cabinet (which is usually so full that pill bottles will fall out upon opening), grab a chewable pill or a liquid medicine and feed it to her child. This society loves instant gratification and quick results. So if there is something that can make the fever go away in an hour, that’s what is grabbed. Fevers are actually the natural way the body fights off what is making it ill. Sure they make us uncomfortable for a little while, but it is doing a job, it’s killing the bad stuff.

When we grow up, what do we do when we’re sick? We do what our parents did for us when we were little… we grab medicine. Near the end of last year, I had a headache every day. I would come home from work, lie on the couch, and eventually gave into the ibuprofen I had been refusing to take. It would take the edge off, but it wasn’t fixing it. When I was at my wit’s end I went to a chiropractor. I was told that the headaches were due to the muscles in my neck being extremely tight and subluxations in my spine. I went through physical therapy and was shown stretches to do, and ahhhhhhh, the headaches went away. Now and then the headaches come back, but rather than grab a pill, I do simple stretches and trigger-point therapy. It works, and much faster than the pills ever did!

I heard that the most-prescribed medication last year was a narcotic pain reliever. It was prescribed millions of times. So all of those pills, plus all of the other hundreds of types of medicines that people intake every year are ending up somewhere, and I don’t mean stomachs. In addition to the ingested medicines, have you ever flushed an expired or unused portion of a medicine down the toilet? The sewer is collecting pound after pound of pills and “potent” solutions of dissolved medications. This sewage gets processed and the water is filtered and treated with chemicals. There are not filters fine enough to rid the water of things like hormones and antibiotics. The chemicals added to the water don’t erase or neutralize those either. Perhaps, in lieu of flushing, you discarded your meds into the trash for them to be deposited in a landfill. This too can contaminate underground water sources.

There was an article I read one time that involved studying fish found downstream from a sewage treatment plant and those found upstream. The ratio of females to males downstream from the plant were approximately 10:1, and almost as many “intersex” fish as there were males. Upstream from the plant, the ratio was almost 1:1 and no “intersex” fish were found. Do you know the cause of this major difference in the two areas? It was estrogen!! There was a large amount of estrogen from birth control pills in the water!

Can you see now the consequences of turning to pills for the magical cure? Not only are they “band aids” that temporarily mask the real problem, but they can also be harmful to our bodies in the long run. Our accumulated dependency on medications as a nation has even been proven to cause issues in our environment. That in and of itself is the start of a vicious circle. The food will be unhealthy, which could make one sick and that causes one to reach for medicine, and so on. However, as long as insurance companies cover the cost of pills, there will always be people looking for a “quick fix” to an ailment or disorder.