The cure for stress is not pills but saying 'No'

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/janet-street-porter/editoratlarge-the-cure-for-stress-is-not-pills-but-saying-no-1782536.html

The Independent:

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Janet Street-Porter

Sunday, 6 September 2009

Belatedly, the Government has announced that, along with alcohol and cigarettes, another highly popular and legal way of dealing with modern life's little difficulties is to be sold with a prominent health warning. All painkillers that contain codeine will be available from next year only in packs of 32, and the packaging will prominently state "Can cause addiction. For three days' use only".
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What makes the human being become so dependent from drugs? Comfort? Or is it their own idiosyncracy, or their subconscious, that compel them to obey what they hear from supposedly well informed sources? Doctors and Chemists have much to do with our tendencies to adopt drugs as the only remedy for our ills. We have had porcine flu now as an example. The world is upside down because of announcements made by Health Authorities that "A" flu is more or less the last plague in our lives, something like God's flail for our sins. Whereas the "other" flu - that happening every day every year - kills thousands, hundreds of thousands, this one has become the focus of every government in every country on Earth. Why?

The answer is easy. Many commentators have proposed that it is really a hoax to make governments spend in pharmaceuticals. And I think they are not very much wrong.

What happens with stress, then? Why are we advised by doctors and other health professionals to use pills to fight stress?

In my opinion it is all a question of education, of people being well aware how their ills can be suppressed by means other than medicines, and this is something that might start since we are mere children. To that effect parents should be warned no to unduly give their children medicines that will only cause an addiction for life which is more dangerous than the very illness that is treated.

And I am not only referring to the drugs that are deemed addictive, I am referring to all kinds of medicines: aspirins, anaelgesics, etc. Medicines should be left as the last resource to heal a human being.

But it is clear this recommendation of mine will not be received with a smile by the multinational Pharmaceuticals.