Below is my friend’s personal experience with the medical/pharamaceutical industry over the past 15 years. I suspect the story is not unique and underlines the profound lack of trust many feel with the industry. Without further ado….

I’ve had a couple of long-term conditions (migraines, chronic back pain after a back surgery) over many years, and so I’ve been to the doctor more frequently than many people my age (mid-30s). Since my early 20s, I’ve noticed a dramatic uptick in my doctors’ pill pushing.

Partly I think it’s managed care, which dictates that I only get 10-15 minutes with my doctors, so they really don’t have time to get to know me, to look at the “whole patient.” A pill solution signifies to the insurance company and to me that they are Doing Something.

Partly it’s our health care model as a whole, which is focused on putting out fires, not on preventative care or health maintenance, alternative approaches, encouraging exercise, etc.

And then there are the BigPharma reps I see in the elevators at the medical buildings, dressed to the nines with their little wheelie suitcases of samples, making rounds.

One of my doctors is a total pusher, opening up his cabinet of BigPharma treats and dispensing oversized free samples of whatever’s New! whenever I visit, even though I’ve been taking the same drug for migraine for 15 years.

My odyssey through eight years of chronic pain was a debacle, as it is a condition completely misunderstood by the medical industry? cynic might say willfully misunderstood. Over the years, they threw every narcotic in the book at me, and my drug drawer was overflowing because most didn’t work for me so I’d try a couple and then stop. And it’s difficult to dispose to excess drugs responsibly because they seep into the groundwater from landfills, contaminating critters.

After a car accident complicated my back pain situation, I was barely able to work and extremely stressed. The stress manifested itself in symptoms like itchy skin and shortness of breath. But luckily my docs had drugs for those conditions too! Steroids for skin itchiness and, after an expensive test to diagnose me with asthma, two different types of inhalers, one steroidal. I think I was on about 10 drugs simultaneously at that time. And I was basically healthy!

It was insanity. Especially when I started having digestion issues because my system was overloaded on drugs!

I decided to say no. I decided that a doctor who spent 10 minutes with me did not know my body better than I do. I stopped looking to them as the authority and following their advice. Although I had tried alternative therapies like acupuncture, massage, and physical therapy over the years, along with all the drugs, at that time I read a couple of books about the mind/body connection and tried hypnotherapy.

It worked for me. I learned to think about my body in new ways and retrain my brain to “think healthy.” I know it sounds kind of woo-woo, but that’s what happened. I feel my age (which actually feels younger since I felt old for so many years), I am able to exercise, I feel strong and healthy.

I still take drugs for migraines (because they are chemical/hormonal), but that is only necessary occasionally. But that’s it. I don’t have asthma, I don’t have chronic pain, I don’t have a couple of other “conditions” I have been diagnosed with over the years.

I am grateful for advances in medical science that allow a level of comfort, health, and longevity our forebears did not enjoy. However, greed (BigPharma), narrow-mindedness (health care model), and accidental authority (doctor over patient) are keeping us from truly effective health care, in my personal experience.