A Spoonful of Sugar

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Can I tell you something?

Growing up I took no pills unless my mother made me when I was too sick to go to school but not sick enough to go to the hospital, or not sick at all but faking it so I wouldn’t have to go to school. In such cases, she would always phone our genial physician – who we referred to as Doctor George because in those days physicians were considered part of the family – and he would tell my mom to give me two aspirin and call him in the morning. I’m not making this up.

Mother Mary also went on a brief but intense multi-vitamin kick in the early ‘60s and the breakfast table was always adorned with a large bottle of One-a-Day brand horse pills. Hewing closely to the concept and name, once a day my sister and I were forced to choke one of those bad boys down with a glass of Tang. I remain convinced that the idiom “it left a bad taste in my mouth” originated with the combination of One-a-Day vitamins and Tang.

Another plausible source, however, could be Kaopectate. This popular palliative for a variety of digestive system maladies, colloquially referred to as stomach aches, wasn’t a pill but a vile chalky liquid we were given multiple tablespoons of in the event Karen or I had even a hint of nausea or diarrhea. Consequently, we rarely complained of nausea or diarrhea.

There were lots of other remedies for various maladies, all of which in retrospect were hilariously named, highly touted by advertising executives, and largely ineffective, but none of which were ingested.

These included products like Vicks Vapo-Rub and Aspercreme which purported to treat chest congestion or muscle pain inside our bodies by rubbing ointment or cream on the outside of our bodies. Mentholatum which through the magic of “aromatic vapors” would cure nasal congestion. Bactine, an all-purpose antiseptic generously applied to everything from scrapes after falling off your bike to compound fractures after falling off the rope swing, and Lidocaine which was a local anaesthetic used in conjunction with Bactine so you wouldn’t feel the pain from the compound fracture quite as much. And, of course, Brylcreem which claimed to cure bad hair days but actually made them worse.

As a young adult I eschewed taking pills for health maintenance or remedy, instead popping them only if they could get me high.

And generally, only once or twice before swearing off them forever. My entire life has been dedicated to slowing down and taking it easy, so you can understand why amphetamines didn’t appeal to me. I did take speed on a couple of occasions to ‘pull an all-nighter’ and cram for a big test in college, which only served to make it impossible for me to concentrate or retain the knowledge needed to pass the exam. Likewise, taking a Quaalude one time at an otherwise raucous party made me realize it is possible to slow down too much. And please don’t be shocked because I did take LSD a few times, but that was never in pill form so I shouldn’t have even told you that.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you anyway.

Americans take a lot of pills – fully two out of every three adults, or about 131 million, use prescription medications. And we’re taking a lot more than we used to.

In 1980 we spent about $30 billion on prescription drugs, but by 2022 that figure ballooned to nearly $380 billion. Some of the spending increase is of course due to inflation, not to mention price gouging by Big Pharma, but the lion’s share is because we just take a lot more pills now.

Which could be at least in part because the U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries on the planet which allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription medications directly to the public.

Today, over one billion prescriptions are written annually by doctors after an office visit – mostly tranquilizers to calm patients who spent an hour in the waiting room – and another 360 million are prescribed in hospital emergency rooms. One out of four Americans take three or more prescription medications every month, and almost one in seven take five or more. Most of these meds are designed to ameliorate pain and suffering, or just embarrassing effects, of various diseases so people can get through the day. But almost one in ten people take some form of soporific so they can fall into the arms of Morpheus at night.

Prescriptions aside, fully nine out of ten Americans, or about 260 million, use over-the-counter medications, vitamins, or other supplements daily. Which begs the question who in Sam Hill doesn’t?

We make more than three billion trips to the supermarket or pharmacy to get them and spend more than $40 billion annually. Due to the pain in our wallets and strain on our purse strings, it’s not surprising that fully a third of those sales are for analgesics like Tylenol, Aleve, Advil, Motrin, or their generic equivalents, as well as good-old aspirin. On top of that, we spend another $35 billion on vitamins and dietary supplements, the vast majority of which we don’t really need and don’t really work.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.

As a man rapidly approaching his dotage, I now take lots of pills too. Not to get high mind you, but often to get low.

I take vitamin C and zinc to try and boost my immune system, and I take Aleve and Tylenol to take the edge off my osteoarthritis and headaches from chronic sinusitis. My two prescription medications are Atorvastatin to lower my cholesterol – this is America’s #1 prescribed drug with more than 115 million users which is an indication of how poorly and how much we eat – and something called Metoprolol to lower my blood pressure and keep my heart atriums from fibrillating when they should be acting like normal atriums that beat regularly or host guests in hotel lobbies.

Basically, I’ve become a drugstore cowboy waiting at Walgreen’s for my unfun fix but thankfully, so far, I’ve avoided needing any of the heavily advertised prescription medications with snazzy names that cost a thousand bucks a month or more and are strongly recommended to treat a variety of moderate-to-severe afflictions, many of which nobody had even heard of until recently and are most likely made up by drug companies.

The truth is I’m grateful to still be alive, and in a time when diseases and afflictions which used to regularly make people’s lives miserable or kill them are treatable. Despite the high costs of these miracle medications – thanks to our fucked-up healthcare system and the obscene greed of drug companies – many people now lead healthier and happier lives because of them.

What really makes me sick, however, is having to use one of those pill dispensers with giant letters for each day of the week. I wish there was a pill for that.

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.