Self-medication From A Different Angle
Apr 9, 09- (by Bill)
- one response
- Mind, Body, Spirit, Sober Salon
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Through the years, I’ve noticed an odd propensity among people being treated for all sorts of maladies: the tendency to take medications until they feel better, and then stop.
You see this in a variety of situations. Folks taking antibiotics take them for two or three days, and then when the symptoms begin to abate, they stop even though it says on the bottle to take the entire prescription. Then the infection comes back, and they have to take an entire new course of antibiotics to knock it down, assuming that the bug hasn’t developed an immunity from having been allowed to live and prosper after the first exposure.
I’ve seen people taking over-the-counter analgesics for chronic pain fall into a similar trap. One of the odd things about pain is that, if you allow it to get really bad, it takes more to suppress it than if you begin taking — say — Tylenol when the symptoms first appear. Wait too long to start, and it may not be possible to do the job with OTCs any more — especially problematic for people in recovery.
People on psych meds may be the most tragic cases, taking their medication until they feel pretty good, then deciding to see if they can get along without them. Helloooo? Often, in the case of that kind of medication, they either stay off them and regress, or discover when they try to go back to them that the particular medication no longer works. This is, in fact, a common thing with psych meds, and it has been the cause of severe problems for both patients and practitioners when it turns out that there are no other drugs that do the job as well for them.
The same thing is true of 12-Step Programs of recovery. How many folks have we seen who decided, after a few months or years, that they were OK, and stopped doing the things that made them that way? How many relapsed? How many turned into dry drunks? How many showed up at the detox or treatment center in an advanced state of addiction, bragging — while drying out — about how much sobriety they once had, and acting like they know all there is to know about recovery?
I put it to you: if you insist on doing what you think is best; if you don’t have the sense to keep on taking your medicine as prescribed, you’re asking for whatever you get. Or whatever you lose.
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Not too long ago I found myself praying. I was praying for something I wanted to go “right”. I stopped myself and thought, well, I haven’t prayed in awhile. I used to pray all the time with my mala beads–I would go fully around the beads, 216 times and pray for others. So I stopped myself and said, “I’m not going to be that person who only wants to get something out of it for myself.” So I prayed for others that day, then I prayed about the courage to accept whatever does happen surrounding this thing that I want so badly. I’ve been praying more recently, and getting back into the specific meditations I have for myself. Because for me, it isn’t always about doing it just to get to a better place and level out–it’s about imagining new places and also doing it for others.
Thanks for the post Bill, well done.