6 Ways to Avoid Unnecessary Drugs
6 WAYS TO AVOID UNNECESSARY DRUGS
1. DON'T GET IN THE HABIT OF TAKING A PILL FOR EVERYTHING
Some people will take a pill to fall asleep, stay awake, have sex, not get pregnant, go to the bathroom, and believe it or not, there are even infomercials on late night television for "memory pills" that can allegedly help you remember names and phone numbers!
Don't fall into this trap by reaching for a pill every time you have a minor ache or pain.
If you have no trouble walking, but you decided to start using a motorized wheelchair because it was a lot easier than walking, it would only be a matter of time until you actually started to need the wheelchair, because if you stop using your legs they will start to atrophy, and if you don't use them long enough, they will eventually become too weak to support your body weight. And you can develop a similar dependency on any "crutch" out there (from caffeine to pain killers) if you rely on them long enough.
ALL drugs can cause harmful side effects, and if you doubt this, simply walk into a drug store and try to find a drug that doesn't come with a list of potential harmful side effects on the label.
In fact, one of the most common ways for people to commit suicide is to simply take pharmaceutical drugs in really high doses, and it is estimated that at least 100,000 people in the U.S. alone die each year due to side effects that occurred from taking the normal and recommended dose of a pharmaceutical drug.
Even if an "immortality pill" was ever invented that would make anyone who took it immoral, I wouldn't want to take it, because I wouldn't want to risk having to spend eternity suffering from pharmaceutical side effects!
2. DON'T PLAN AND PREPARE TO GET SICK IN THE FUTURE
Something that blows my mind is the fact that when people go to the store to buy "headache pills", they will buy a HUGE bottle with 100, 500, or even 1,000 pills in it!
The way that I see it, if you are expecting to need that many "headache pills" in the future, then you will probably end up with a future full of headaches!
Back when I was younger, I actually used to take an Aspirin before I would go to work every day, just because I wanted to be prepared for the headaches that I was expecting to get at work.
Instead of going to the drug store and stocking up on lots of drugs because you are expecting sickness in the future, I would encourage you to go to the health food store and stock up on lots of healthy foods so you can have a good reason to start expect wellness instead.
And if you feel that you can't afford to eat healthier, remember the wise saying...
"Your health is an investment, not an expense. (Although it will become an expense if you don't take time to invest in it.)"
- Unknown
3. FIND AND FIX THE ACTUAL PROBLEM
Sometimes pain is a serious conversation that our bodies are trying to have with us, and the message is usually "painfully obvious". ("STOP DOING THAT, IT'S BAD FOR YOU!!!")
Did you know that there are rare people who are born with a condition known as C.I.P. (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain) which causes them to never be able to feel pain? And did you know that one of the reasons these people are so rare is because they almost always die at a VERY young age?
The curious child who touches a hot stove and doesn't feel the message "OUCH, THAT HURTS, DON'T TOUCH THAT AGAIN!!!" is a great danger to them self, and when we take drugs that results in us not feeling any discomfort when we make unhealthy choices, we become a great danger to ourselves.
If I get bad heartburn whenever I eat certain foods, I interpret that as my body telling me not to eat those foods anymore because they're bad for my heart, and I also understand that if I ignore these warnings and choose to eat foods that are bad for my heart anyways, then what started out as mere "heartburn" could eventually become something as serious as a "heart attack" when I'm older!
But whenever I see a drug commercial about heartburn, the advice will be THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what my body would tell me, and they will actually say that if eating certain foods gives me heartburn, I should take their drug to cover eliminate that feeling so that I can ignore the warnings that my body is trying to give me and keep eating things that are bad for my heart.
Did you know that drug commercials like these (which are common on American television) are actually banned in many other parts of the world? And did you know that it's because they encourage people to just take a pill rather than take responsibility for their choices?
"Lack of communication" can cause serious problems in the world (including divorces and even wars) and a lot of health problems could have been avoided if people listened more to their bodies.
When I was younger, I used to have a medicine cabinet, and any time that I would feel even a little bad my conditioned reflex would be to reach for a drug that would make me feel less discomfort. But if I were to come down with a sickness today, my intuitive reflex would be to ask myself "why" I got sick and "what" I needed to do (or stop doing) to actually fix the problem, and reaching for a drug would now be more of a "last resort" for me than an "impulse".
4. LET FOOD BY THY MEDICINE AND MEDICINE BE THY FOOD
Many people have been able to successfully get off of their meds by switching to a healthier diet, and if you start filling your refrigerator up with wholesome foods, you may find that your medicine cabinet naturally start to empty itself on its own.
But unfortunately, there is very popular form of drug on the market these days that most people don't even a think of as a "drug" (even though it certainly can be when abused) and that drug is "nutritional supplements".
Supplements can be very helpful (and even life-saving) in certain situations, but what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that the majority of nutritional disorders (at least in the U.S.) are due to consuming TOO MUCH of a specific nutrient rather than too little.
People have the tendency to think that if getting a little of something is good for us, than getting a lot of something will be even better, when the best scenario of all would be to simply get the amount of a nutrient that we actually need and not over or under exceed that amount by very much.
The same nutrients that we need in order to be healthy and thrive, can actually become toxic to us if taken really high doses.
If you are consuming far more of a nutrient than you need, the best-case scenario will be that your body will simply eliminate the excess whenever you go to the bathroom, and it will merely be a waste of your money, but in the worst-case scenario, the excess will create a burden on your body which could lead to serious health problems in the future if you continue this overconsumption.
Also keep in mind that we still don't know everything there is to know about nutrition, and that what is being recommended by "experts" today could change tomorrow. (A lot of the vitamin supplements that people were taking when I was younger were synthetic vitamins that are now considered by many to be useless or even harmful.)
One of the ways that supplements can be harmful is by giving people a false sense of security which leads them to feel that as long as they are taking supplements, there is no real need to go out of their way to eat healthy things like salads. (As if taking a multi-vitamin will make them healthy no matter what they are actually eating.)
And because there are countless (and sometimes conflicting) studies about nutrition coming out every year, you could drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how much of each nutrient you should be getting every day, or you could simplify things by realizing that no other species needs nutritional supplements to be healthy or nutritional studies to know what they should eat, and that by eating more natural foods, most (if not all) of our nutritional needs will likely be getting met.
So before you decide to become a "supplementarian", I would encourage you to ask yourself questions like, "Am I actually deficient in any nutrients?" and if so, "Are there any whole foods that contain these nutrients so I can get my nutrition from real food instead of out of a pill bottle from the pharmacy?"
5. POSITIVE THINKING
The idea that our mental thoughts could have a serious impact on our physical health used to be laughed at and considered nothing more than new age nonsense, but now that "antidepressants" have officially became the most prescribed drug in the United States, it would be hard for anyone to deny that the way we think can have a major impact on our health.
Yes, you can worry yourself sick, and you can have a heart attack by spending your life feeling stressed out and angry at the world around you. And if "negative thinking" can cause serious health problems, then "positive thinking" must have the potential to prevent serious health problems.
There are a lot of great motivational speakers out there, so I would encourage you to start reading, watching, and listening to people who leave you feeling uplifted and inspired.
"Wayne Dyer" is someone who has inspired me a lot over the years, and to watch a short video clip from one of his lectures that is sure to bring out the "good tears", click "HERE"
FIND YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE
Most drugs don't really make you "feel better", but rather, they make you "feel less", and for those who are in a lot of physical or mental pain, drugs can provide a temporary escape from what they are feeling.
There can certainly be situations where people are in so much pain that it would be better to take a "pain killer" than have to endure an unthinkable amount of pain, but a lot of people become addicted to these kinds of drugs and will continue to take them long after the physical pain is gone to help them escape from a mental pain.
One of the biggest fears that people used to have in the past was "having to have surgery", but now-a-days I will overhear people talking about how excited they are about an upcoming surgery because it means that their doctor will be giving them a prescription for "Vicodin" again.
One of the reasons that people will turn to drugs, is because they don't know what they want to do with their life, or they don't believe that they can do what they want to do.
Working at a job that isn't fulfilling will literally suck the life-force out of you, and it doesn't matter whether your job is lifting 100-pound boulders or answering a telephone, you are going to feel drained after spending 8 hours doing something that your soul just doesn't want to do.
When it comes to finding a fulfilling job, the advice that a lot of people will give is, "Do what you love." but if you can't think of a job that you would genuinely love doing, then I would like to ask you the famous question by "Andy Stanley" which is, "What breaks your heart?"
If the fact that children are dying every day due to starvation breaks your heart, then make it your personal mission to find a way to start doing something about it, because making even a small difference will naturally feel good to your soul, and the more that you do it, the more that you will be "doing what you love".
I have a vision for a better world, and whenever I'm working on a project that is intended to help make my vision a reality, my energy levels don't just get turned up to "HIGH", but they will go all the way up to "NATURAL HIGH", and I don't believe that any drug could give me the kinds of energy and passion that I experience naturally when I feel like I am doing what I am here to do!
6. DON'T WATCH, READ, OR LISTEN TO THE NEWS
Below are 3 reasons why I feel that watching the News can completely wreck our health...
REASON #1 - "You can't fill your mind with negativity and expect to be healthy."
It's no secret that the News focuses on the negative, because negative News stories get the highest ratings, and they know that if the viewers are scared enough or outraged enough, they will literally feel unable to stop watching it!
Back when I used to watch the News, I noticed that not only were they BLATANTLY trying to raise my anxiety levels by doing their best to make me feel scared, angry, or depressed every time that I tuned in, but whenever they would go to a commercial break, they would show commercials for drugs with messages like...
"Do you suffer from depression?"
"Are you living with unbearable anxiety?"
"If so, then ask your doctor if this new drug is right for you."
I used to believe that I needed to watch the News in order to be "informed", but then I started to realize that the News was actually an "infomercial" for drug companies where they would give me every reason they could come up with to feel bad, and then they would show commercials for drugs to help me feel better.
Luckily, I decided to just stop watching the News, and like magic, the anxiety that I would get every single time I turned on the News magically disappeared.
As long as the News is partnered with drug companies, they will continue to do whatever it takes to to keep not only their ratings as high as possible, but your anxiety as high as possible, so please stop watching it.
If you don't watch the News, I can assure you that you will still be informed about important things that are happening in the world from loved ones such as friends and family. (But unlike the News, your friends and family won't intentionally try to make you feel so bad that you have to go to a doctor and ask for a drug just to feel better after talking to them!)
I personally recommend that you don't even have websites like www.yahoo.com set as your Internet home page, because if you do, the very first thing you will see every time you get on-line will be the "Top News Stories", and since negative stories tend to get the most clicks, it will almost always be negative "clickbait" headlines like, "17 Killed in Bus Bombing in Israel" or "Over 800 Die Due to Hurricane Charles", or "Global Death Toll Nearing 1,000,000 As Cases Continue to Surge!".
And after seeing headlines like these enough times, you can start to become so desensitized to them, that within just a few seconds of seeing the most tragic headline imaginable, you will be browsing YouTube or Facebook and will have already forgotten about it, and I feel that this kind of desensitization to tragedies can be just as unhealthy as getting stressed out about them.
REASON #2 - "Distractions"
If the media is suddenly putting all their focus on something trivial (like a tweet from a celebrity) and they are acting as if it's the most important issue on the planet at that moment, there is a good chance that there is something far more important happening at the moment that they don't want you to be aware of because it might cause you to have a different view of the world than they want you to have.
REASON #3 - "Division"
The word "prejudice" means to "pre-judge", and I feel that the News teaches people to be prejudice.
When you watch media programing like the News, they aren't just trying to fill your head with negativity, they are trying to program you to take on a "you're either with me or against me" mentality towards the world, and those who allow themselves to become "hardwired" to think in this divisive way will not be immune to serious mental health issues in the future.
There is an old saying that says, "there is strength in numbers", but that's not always true. There is only strength in numbers when there is "unity", and the News is CLEARLY set up to have a very polarizing effect on our society. (They aren't even trying it anymore.)
All of the division tactics that are being thrown at us are to not only prevent us from ever uniting, but to also make us belief that we NEED lots of rules and rulers controlling every aspect of our lives for our own protection.
It is estimated that the actual time that the News devotes to covering "bad news" compared to "good news" is roughly 17 to 1, and if you were to meet 18 new people today, I highly doubt that 17 of them are going to be bad people, and that only 1 of them will be a good person, and if anything, it would probably be far more likely to be the exact opposite.
But the News focuses so much more on the negative, that it causes people to feel an unnecessary fear and prejudice towards strangers, because they are so used to hearing about the worst in people that they start to expect the worst in people as well.
"Albert Einstein" once said that the most important decision you will ever make in life, is whether you believe that you live in a "friendly universe" or a "hostile universe", and the News definitely wants all of us to believe that we are living in a VERY hostile universe!
I grew up in the country where there weren't a lot of places to work, so once I became an adult, I moved to the city and found a job working at a factory. And on my first day at the factory, I was in the break room with my co-workers, and they all started talking about the guns that they owned, and something about the way they were talking about it made me wonder if I had just moved into a neighborhood that was a lot more dangerous than I had previously thought. So later that day I approached each of my co-workers individually, and I asked them why they needed a gun just to feel safe, and every one of them gave me the exact same frightened and wide-eyed response...
"DON'T YOU WATCH THE NEWS???"
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