By Barb Hauge
The chemical/pharmaceutical companies keep coming out with designer drugs to alleviate everything from migraine headaches and incontinence to prostate problems and cancer. The sad fact is that many drugs have side effects so severe they are worse than the original problem.
Xenical and Vioxx cannot be taken if you are pregnant or nursing. Celebrex and Vioxx are supposed to relieve arthritis pain but may cause stomach problems such as bleeding and should not be taken if you have allergic reactions or if you have liver or kidney troubles. Many prescribed drugs cause upper respiratory infection, diarrhea, nausea and high blood pressure. Also headaches, dizziness, vomiting, heartburn, back pain, tiredness, swelling of legs and feet and urinary tract infection.
The only time my husband went to a Urologist it cost him 200 bucks and he ended up flushing the prescribed drugs down the toilet and controlling his problem with herbal remedies; mainly Saw Palmetto and Pygeum.
Priloses is for heartburn but it may cause headache, diarrhea and abdominal pain and can damage a fetus. BuSpar is for anxiety but it could make you dizzy, nauseous, lightheaded and nervous. Cold medicines often raise your blood pressure. Avandia is for diabetes but may cause cold-like symptoms, headache, anemia, swelling of legs and ankles and increase in weight. Readers Digest prints two pages of disclaimers on the drugs they advertise but in such fine print its not easily read by the elderly.
Equally serious side effects of substance abuse are those which damage other people. Few think of the horrible consequences of parental alcoholism on children. Kids raised in alcoholic homes become Crises Centered and when there is no crises they create one. Such warped personalities are hard to live with, no matter how much we love them. Children of alcoholics can never recover unless they become aware of why and of what they are doing to mess up their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Only THEY can stop their stupid, crises-creating behavior. Few of us are smart enough to be nuclear scientists but most of us do have common sense that controls our behavior; an endearing quality that nuclear scientists would do well to develop before they destroy the world we live in.
Those mature enough to have children think very carefully before they become slaves to any substance including drugs and alcohol. The pitiful plea of those they victimize could truly be: Please abort me, let me go. No one wants me, don't you know? To bring me to life would be a sin so abort me; let my soul be born again.
It's a big bad world out there. I'm so small I need someone to care. Let no booze-crazed monster break my bones. Abort me; save me from the moans and groans.
When you build a kinder, gentler world where God's not gold and have flags of Peace unfurled; where children and conceived in love I'll come back from Heaven up above!
