Heroes Not Zombies

(Part 1)

I was taught that bad medical practice was to prescribe a pill for every ill.

I especially remember sessions where we had to reflect on our use of the prescribing pad, asking ourselves exactly why we were choosing to prescribe at all, not just why we chose a particular drug.

That teaching may be long since gone. Prescribing rates grow exponentially. I read the other day about the number of prescription drugs found in waste water in cities, and how around 70% of adult Americans now take at least one prescription drug every day.

I wonder why that is. Why are more and more people being prescribed more and more drugs? Are we, as a species, becoming sicker and sicker? Is it because the drug companies “don’t sell drugs. They sell lies about drugs“? Is it because of the distortion of “evidence” by drug companies?

I think it is at least in part due to the fact that modern medicine is practised on the basis of a delusion that human beings are complicated machines. They are not. They are complex organisms.There is a huge difference. When you see a person as a machine with a part which doesn’t work, the idea that you can sort that part with a drug makes some kind of sense. What’s lost in this way of thinking is a very, very important truth.

The only healing which occurs is natural healing. It is the person’s own healing system which gets the results. Drugs, if they do anything useful, act as adjuncts to steady things up whilst the body gets on with sorting itself out. There is not a drug on the market which directly cures anything. Benjamin Franklin said “God heals and the doctor takes the fee” – same observation, framed in a particular way.

So, given that the truth is we don’t have any drugs which cure, and its only the natural self-healing capacities of the human being which actually repair tissue, and restore health, then why don’t we FIRST of all seek to stimulate and support self-healing, self-care and self-repair, and ONLY when necessary, support the process with a carefully prescribed drug?

The problem with the data, algorithm, drug model of medical practice is that all roads lead to drugs.

We need new maps. We need to be able to understand how to set the conditions for recovery, for resilience and for health. We need to understand how to live differently to have sustainable health, and to maximise health when we have a chronic condition.