May 24, 2018 (Thursday)
When I was a child I suffered many earaches. As far as I know, few families back then had a big supply of pain medications on hand. So I suffered through each episode. When I was eleven, I developed “hayfever” (allergies) and asthma (difficulty breathing). There was no one around to hand me a pill or other meds to ease the symptoms. I just suffered through each attack as I had done with earaches.
I remember the first time I was given the medicine, “Anacin,” for pain, which was aspirin with caffeine. I got relief and it felt great. As for the allergies and asthma, as a high school student, I was taken to a doctor, who did allergy tests on me and started a regimen of injections while I was in high school. It was a new way of treating allergies, and as far as I could tell, did nothing for me. Once or twice during an asthma attack I went to the doctor and he gave me a shot of Adrenaline, which seemed to help some.
The asthma continued to worsen, and when I went away to college, it got even worse. I withdrew at mid-semester because I was sick all the time and missing too many classes. It was there, however, that another student offered me the use of her asthma medication, and lo and behold, it stopped the attacks whenever I used it. It looked something like this:
I immediately bought my own at a local drug store, and that medication was breathed in by me for the next 15 years or so, until I moved to Rockport. Amazingly, after moving to Rockport, I gradually stopped having asthma, and have not had a bad experience with it for many years, no longer needing inhalers, which replaced the vintage nebulizers. I don’t know of any specific physical and medical reason for my no longer having asthma.
I was raised without constant medication, as was almost everybody I knew. Gradually our population has become better acquainted with medicines of all kinds, and most people have a medicine cabinet in their homes, usually well-stocked. The problem today, however, is that we have a drug problem. The latest reports about this are telling us that millions of us are addicted to prescription meds that are based on licensed but restricted substances. Every year sees an increase in the number of deaths from these pills and solutions.
I remember that whenever I got sick my parents would call the doctor and he would call the drug store. Then we would go to the drug store and get a square amber bottle with a cork at the top. It was called, “Chocolate Quinine.” Ugh! Bitter but “chocolaty.” So I took it. I think it was for fever, but I don’t really know. Perhaps if everything we take for pain these days tasted as bad, we might not be having this drug epidemic.
At my age, I take a lot of pills before going to be each night. They are probably helping to keep me alive. But many people are taking meds they don’t really need because they have become addicted. Their numbers increase daily.Let us pray for our situation to improve so that fewer people are caught up in the deadly trap.
If you visit https://www.hhs.gov you may find more information about the opioid crisis.