The disturbing phenomenon of Sick Chic. The habit of drug dependence.

why do medical costs keep going up? one reason is the popular demand for prescription drugs.
people like tom cruise are wrong to say all drugs are useless. but, drugs should be the last resort, not the first option. most aches or moods pass without drugs. also, it's human to feel pain and depression. if we trust our bodies, we overcome most problems.
of course, there are unbearable and prolonged aches and pains. and, some people have emotional problems which can only be controlled with drugs.
but, i'd wager that most americans who use a whole bunch of drugs don't really need them. they probably get something out of those drugs but prolly could have done without them.

are these prescription drugs cheap? no. pharmaceutical companies keep coming up with new variations promising better somatic effects. new drugs are highly expensive. and demand for drugs keep going up. some people grow dependent on drugs or, more accurately, to the HABIT of drug-taking--like couchpotatoes are addicted to the habit of pigging out even when not hungry. worse, many folks ask for drugs just to experiment or sell them to others.
it's depressing that many americans see drugs as the first resort to all their physical and emotional problems. and, there are many people who seek alternative treatments which can be just as bogus. many of those food supplements promising relief from this or that ache are useless. has the health of americans improved since alternative supplements hit the market? no. of course, some are genuinely good, like green tea and some others. but, i'd wager that most of them are utterly useless or only minimally useful and not worth the cost.
anti-pharmaceutical folks are often just as greedy and crass as pharmaceuticals coming up with their bogus--and often expensive--'cures'. alternative or holistic companies will say, 'don't use that stuff from a chemical lab; use this ORGANIC medicine from china, india, or brazil'. bogus.

the history of chinese medicine is one of the most depraved in the world. i'm sure that certain chinese medicinal concoctions have value, especially if blended with herbs like green tea. but, much of chinese medicine is based on cruelty, torture, and bad habits. the chinese confucian ideal was not involve oneself in physical or manual labor or exercise. so, the mandarins of china sat around, grew their fingernails, refined their elegant manners, grew soft and flabby, and ate white rice and greasy foods. now, what happens when you eat all that rich food and don't exercise? you get sick. the healty thing would be to eat more raw veggies, eat less fancy meals, and get some exercise. but, such were deemed too vulgar for the mandarin class. so, they sought cures by coming up with all sorts of weird cures. instead of eating better and exercising, they sought some medicine made from rhino horns or tiger penises. in their 'holistic' and 'organic' way, privileged chinese were just as drug-addicted as modern americans. even today, every chinatown has its share of chinese medicine stores where sickly and flabby chinese men and women go to buy some stupid stuff. these people don't exercise and they eat too much fatty chinese food. will they change their habits? no. instead, they stick to old habits while seeking cures from chinese medicine, most of which is crap. anyway, china became a drug-addicted society. it's no wonder that they were so vulnerable to introduction of opium.

worse, chinese medicine derived from animal products often involve unimaginable cruelty. boiling cats alive, viciously and slowly beating dogs to death, killing a bear just to cut off its paws and pull out its gall bladder, killing tigers for their penises, or killing a rhino just for the horn. needless to say, chinese medicine isn't scientific but mystical. as medicine, it's on the level of voodoo or animism. tribal people don claws and fangs of lions or bears in the belief that animal power will pass onto the human warrior. it's like sports teams naming themselves after beastly animals--a sports team is more likely to be called bears or lions than squirrels or frogs. this has nothing to do with science. but, chinese still think this way; since a tiger is a powerful beast, eating its penis must make one's sexual libido stronger. since a rhino is a big majestic beast, its horns MUST have magical powers. since turtles live for a long time, eating turtle soup must translate into longevity. this is like saying eating rabbits will make one run faster or that eating wolf balls will make one more wolfish. there is no science to any of this. we know that protein is protein. it doesn't matter if you get it from a rabbit or from a buffalo. in your body, protein is protein, vitamins are vitamins. but, chinese medicine is based on magic and mythical thinking. worse, it's very cruel. the decadent mandarin class of china grew so self-absorbed and self-interested that they didn't care how viciously an animal was tortured in order to extract its medicinal essence. in some ways, the method of torture was enjoyed and admired as an art form--anticipating marquis de sade. chinese became a narcissistic, vain, and petty people. for all their pretension of wisdom, old rich chinese farts thought it was justified to kill a majestic rhino just so they could live a few more days or have another hardon.

western folks aren't so sick and cruel. but, there is a certain similarity between chinese mandarin attitudes and western attitudes. like the mandarins, many americans are unwilling to do the most obvious things first--eat healthy and exercise. some feminist author named paula kamen wrote a book about her aches and pains, but it never occurred to her to lose weight. she is GROSSLY FAT even now. indeed, many americans who bitch about pain and depression have lousy eating and sleeping habits. many don't exercise. many smoke or drink too much. yet, instead of changing their habits, they seek 'cure' thru drugs or don't expect to be cured at all and embrace permanent drug use.
though we don't believe in cruelty toward animals, our demand for more and more drugs has turned pharmaceutical companies into torture chambers for animals. whether animals should or shouldn't be used for medical experimentation is not easy to answer. such experimentation is almost always terribly cruel. BUT, they do lead to breakthroughs which may justify the practice--which is something you cannot say about chinese boiling live cats and beating dogs to death or cooking a live bear on a pit. but, we may well ask how many animals have been sacrificed in the creation of essentially useless drugs we can do without? if animals must be used in experiments, shouldn't such experiments be for drugs or cures that we really need? but, the fact is drug companies just wanna come up with new fancy drugs with little benefit in order to make more and more money. let's face it. most new drugs on the market are scams. they have some benefits but they are not worth the cost... and have the many side effects which require other drugs. the sad fact is many drugs are vanity drugs, and so it could be said that countless animals were cruelly experimented upon and killed for the vanity of not-so-sick people. In this sense, there are some parallels with Chinese torture of animals for medicine and our experimentation with animals to create unnecessary drugs.

is there a vain drug culture? yes. many americans think it's normal and even essential to fill their medicine cabinets in the washroom with all sorts of drugs and substances. americans greet the day with some drug and end the day with some drug. behind mirror mirror on the wall are those drugs we've convinced ourselves that we can't do without. vanity and medicine go together in our culture. we see our reflections in the mirror backed with drugs.
worse, many americans don't take drugs to get better but with vain resignation of permanent dependence. so, taking drugs everyday is normal, being off drugs is abnormal. so, if you don't feel so good you must be abnormal; so, you need drugs to feel normal. but, if you feel good, you must be abnormal too; how can anyone feel sane in our 'crazy' world, right? so, you must take drugs to feel different. everyone tries drugs like mascaras or shoes or hats. it's a fashion show of the emotions. it's a substitute for thought and feelings that come with genuine experiences. our culture glorifies neurosis, and people who are considered 'normal' or straight are deemed lame, square, white bread, simple-minded, etc. so, even people who are perfectly normal feel ashamed of feeling perfectly normal. it's more fashionable to suffer from some depression, mood swings, pains and aches, etc.
at the other extreme, you have people taking drugs and various food supplements because they've been led to think people should be totally healthy. our narcisstic culture says your vison has to be perfect, your hearing must be optimal, your skin must be totally smooth, etc. every little defect is seen as deformity, every molehill is magnified as a mountain. if it's not drugs, it's surgery. this mentality is most ludicrous among those with lazy habits. a fat person who won't exercise but swallows tons of diet pills or gets a surgical tummy tuck.

also, there's a sense that it's cool, hip, sophisticated, complex, and/or serious if one is dependent on some drugs. call it sick chic. in the 50s and 60s, many europeans found a kind of sick satisfaction in feeling 'alienated' from society. supposedly, god was dead and old values were irrelevant and man was lost and so on. some people grappled with this moral malaise in post war europe but many just jumped on the bandwagon as a short cut to be an intellectual or lost/searching soul. films by antonioni were fashionable not only for their seriousness but their glamour. being alienated meant looking and dressing like jeanne moreau or marcello mastrionni. though these films of antonioni and fellini despaired of the fallen state of modern man, they peddled a fashionable sense of ennui. in this climate, being neurotic was cool. if you were content and happy, you must be a simpleton dufus.

the sick chic culture is similar; instead of relying books and films to attain ennui, there's drugs as a shortcut. it's more fashionable to come to work and say you suffer from all these ailments both physical and psychological. first, you win the sympathy vote. second, it shows that you're lost in some kafkaesque jungle and adds a tinge of philosophical dimensions to your 'sickness'. third, it shows you are up-to-date with the latest technology, rather like showing off that you have the latest cell phone; how cool and sophisticated to be using the latest drug for whatever ailment. fourth, it shows how emotionally complex you are to suffer from so many neuroses, depressions, insomnia, etc. and so on. how cooler than to just you drink your V8 and feel healthy. the healthy way carries the stigma of 50s-father-knows-best whereas the sick chic druggie way is a combo of fashionable alienation and 'sex and the city'--or at their more extreme, william burroughs and david cronenberg.

many people take drugs for the same reason they smoke and drink. it's not to get better or to return to health but to posture in the fashionable jungle of alienation. it's a shortcut to emotional complexity just like intellectuals and bohemians smoke 3 packs a day and drink alot of coffee, pretending to be creative and rebellious.

pharmaceutical companies happily encourage this drug chic or sick chic. ours is depraved culture of capitalism gone bonkers. having clothed, fed, and housed everyone, now companies make their money by feeding on our vanity. there's the vanity of health and vanity of sickness. health clubs serve the vanity of health and, as such, do more good than bad. but there is also the vanity of sickness. a lot of people think it's cool to be sick one way or another. we see this is movies. oftentimes, depressed or neurotic people are shown to be more interesting, more serious, more sympathetic, more complex. this may be the case among some creative types, but we know that the vast majority of neurotics are annoying idiots.
we must lay some of the blame on modern psychiatry which is mostly bullshi* and never helped anyone and made problems worse. but of course, the appeal of psychiatry wasn't really the promise of cure but the never ending exploration of one's troubled soul; indeed, a shrink junkie would probably really feel depressed if he no longer had a reason to see a shrink.
seeing a shrink means that you're haunted by some dark, mysterious forces; it makes you feel important and complex, like a great horror film. so, if a dumb person is depressed because he's simply dumb, he can't face this fact and goes to a shrink for some fancier excuse.

one thing has been ignored by both shrinks and their patients. complexes are not complex. they are complications of simple problems. for example, guys wanna be handsome and win the affection fo girls. but, if a guy is ugly, he gets no girls. so, he may develop a sexual complex. this is why woody allen is full of shi*. you'd think his psychological problems are about the meaning of the universe and social injustice around the world when, in fact, the the ONLY reason for his lifelong depression is he's ugly as hell. as such, he never felt very secure. you don't need a shrink to figure this out. all you need is some honesty.

similarly, a lot of people who purport to be sick would be a lot healtheir if they took simple steps but, such steps are deemed suitable only for bumpkins and simpletons. just as intellectual types seek ever weirder and more 'complex' ideas to satisfy their vanity--of being at the cutting edge--while turning their noses at moral sermons that have stood the test of time, modern people feel dependent on the latest drugs to maintain their 'troubled' sanity. concepts of good and evil are too passe for modern philosophers, and concept of health and sickness are similarly passe among modern people. there's a sense that there's no such thing called health, and that we are all sick in one way or another. so, we should all think of ourselves as outpatients.

the internet has made it worse by making everyone do his own research and come off thinking he is afflicted with a whole host of diseases for which he needs this and that drug; since normal health is a myth, we should find ever new drugs and go on taking them forever. this mindset makes the sick even sicker and even makes the healthy sick. every imaginary ache or mood is mistaken--rather proudly--as some illness. how often do conversations go among friends, male or female, 'yeah, now, i'm on this drug, and it's kinda working but it's got some side effects which i'm taking this other drug. i really need this stuff or i can't function'?
we wonder... just how did people do without all these 'necessary' drugs thru history?

and of course, celebrity culture also makes it worse. people not only imitate celebrities in what to wear, drink, and smoke but also in what drug to take. kids not only imitate the illegal drug habits of celebs but also the legal stuff. celebs have made therapy and drug dependency fashionable and glamorous. how we read and hear over and over that this or that celeb has seen a shrink for yrs and yrs or has been on this drug over many yrs.
how often we hear this celeb suffers from this malady and that one suffers from that illness. elvis obviously convinced himself into thinking he needed all those drugs.

in some ways, it's a good thing that we are more open about discussing mental and physical illnesses than in the past. however, it has now reached indecent exposure proportions. how often do we see celebs say they have this or that problem to win sympathy votes and to remain relevant? and, how often do we hear news of celebs who've been hospitalized and put on this medicine or been hospitalized for taking too many prescription drugs. in all these cases, the public comes to associate prescription drug use with fame, fortune, glamour, tragedy, scandal--not a bad word today--, and whatever. to be sure, the tabloid industry which intrudes into the lives of celebrities is more to blame; still, many celebs flaunt their problems in public.

a celeb may rely on some drug because he or she really needs it. but, whenever he or she comes on tv and talks about it, the message the public gets is that it's glamorous and cool to rely on a whole host of drugs.
of course, some celebs publicly speak of how they'd become addicted to all these prescription drugs, broke free from dependence, and caution the public to forgo that route.
still, the underlying message is that this celebrity was able to find new meaning only because he'd been mired in drug dependency. the implication is you gotta get messed up first to find redemption in life. in this sense, the i-overcame-drug-dependency message also glamourizes drug use. similarly, a rock star who advises against drug use has to have gone thru the orgy ordeal. the message is that one must go thru wild orgies and use tons of drugs BEFORE coming back down to ground and finding jesus.

and, of course, there's been a sin chic in christianity as there is a sick chic today. for every christian who truly grapples with his sinfulness, there were others who used sin chic to feel spiritually more complex and deep. confessions can be a ritualized form of spiritual drug addiction. the sinful may savor constantly committing sins and then seeking redemption over and over. the whole committing sin/seeking forgiveness becomes a kind of fetish.