Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Prescription pill dependency among American troops is on the rise
According to data from a U. S. Army mental-health survey released last year, about 12 percent of soldiers in Iraq and 15 percent of those in Afghanistan reported taking antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, or sleeping pills. Prescriptions for painkillers have also skyrocketed. Data from the Department of Defense last fall showed that as of September 2007, prescriptions for narcotics for active-duty troops had risen to almost 50,000 a month, compared with about 33,000 a month in October 2003, not long after the Iraq war began.
In other words, thousands of American fighters armed with the latest killing technology are taking prescription drugs that the Federal Aviation Administration considers too dangerous for commercial pilots.
Marine Corporal Michael Cataldi tells of the medications he is taking. The prescribed drugs were Klonopin, for anxiety; Zoloft, for depression; and Ambien, to help him sleep. Later, other military doctors added narcotic painkillers for the excruciating pain in his leg, which he'd injured during a training exercise.
Doesn’t this cause you to pause and think for a minute? Do you know of individuals who are on multiple medications? How are they? How do they actually seem to you?
Even one of these medications can have scary side effects, and most people can find out these details with a little effort, but when an individual is taking multiple, powerful, mind-altering drugs, something is wrong. Whether they have been ravaged by the terrors of war, or if they simply have trouble dealing with daily life. And that something may be societal in nature.
Sure, people may act “better” or “different” in our eyes, but lets do our own reality check. Can you in any good conscience think that the source of any persons problem is a lack of a pharmaceutically manufactured, artificial, addictive, mind-altering chemical?
If that’s what you truly think, then maybe you’re the one who’s out of your mind.
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