Does the wide availability of pharmaceutical drugs contribute to a decline in personal accountability?

It portends nothing for the evolution of the species as most of us don’t do this sort of thing.

When my doctor prescribed Metformin for me, I ceased eating sugar.

@Dan_Lyons That would certainly be sensible to take charge of your own health, but as somebody who fills and distributes 300+ prescriptions every day, I don’t believe you represent “most people”.

No, I assuredly do not represent most people (or even some people!). But then neither do the few customers you see buying exactly what their meds tells them not to ingest.

These folks will pay for their choices with their health, maybe even their lives. That kinda seems like the ultimate accountability to me.

@Dan_Lyons I live in a city of 110,000 people and there are 20 pharmacies doing equivalent business which adds up to 6000 prescriptions per day. This isn’t counting the 2 hospitals and 4 walk-in clinics.
I’d say that my experience does not represent a “few customers”.

Well if you blindly accept the Dr’s prescriptions and it’s an opiate, you risk everything. You have to educate yourself. Those things scare the hell out of me.

Opiates are an entirely different kettle of horror, @Adirondackwannabe.

I truly hope there is a breakthrough in chronic pain control research.

@Blueroses GA. The heroin around here is out of control. I would not go out at night without a big group of friends.

The sad thing @Adirondackwannabe is that there is no evidence that opiates aid actual pain. They help in not caring about pain, but that’s not really the same thing.

If we concentrated more on the blocking of pain receptors (like Tramadol, which doesn’t work for everybody but is a damned good start) and combined that with something similar to meditation and/or biofeedback, we could reduce opiate dependency and certainly take a lot of prescription drugs off the street markets.

I agree with @Darth_Algar Unless someone is truly developmentally disabled, aka retarded. Well…lets just call a spade a spade shall we? Everyone KNOWS what they are doing or not doing to promote good health. I am not in denial about a few things I could change, take no prescription drugs and am fully aware whatever choices I make carry consequences, good or bad.

I think these people you speak of are employing rationalization tactics, unless they truly are as dense as a dirt clod. haha
No truly intelligent and conscious person would consider substituting a pill as a buffer against bad habits.

@Blueroses That’s an awful lot of ‘scripts you fill. It is amazing that people given Lipitor have bacon among their purchases.
It seems that people in need of pharmaceutical assistance with their dietary problems are addicted to the foods for which they need medication(s).
Like I know I am a sugar junkie. So I get to have high blood sugar. I wonder if I had no sweet tooth would my sugar be fine?
I don’t know, but I do know it is a struggle to stick to a strict diet that no longer includes pastries, candy, cakes, ice cream…

Well ya know, I smoke a few American Spirit cigarettes, but hey..they’re organic. lol

@Coloma Don’t we all have an arsenal of reasons to justify our own behaviors?

I think we’ve been raised to respect people in lab coats and people with titles. (Which is silly, because I wear a lab coat and would you take MY word for what you should do for your health?)

I do realize that bringing this question to Fluther already pretty much guarantees me a like-minded audience.
Where else do you bring a question?

@Blueroses No doubt..I’m having my wine and cigarette right now. lol but I’m not in denial that smoking is not a good thing.

I can see and understand the temptation to take a med rather than make a lifestyle change, especially if the person isn’t experiencing any negative side effects from the medication. We all have to die of something eventually. If they can continue the bad habits that make them happy and just take a pill to keep a medical condition at bay, why not?

As a nurse, I deal with patients with this mindset all the time. They make comments like, “of course I can eat this Snickers, I’ll just up my insulin to take care of it.” I wish there was an easy want to get them to understand what they are really doing to themselves.

@Seaofclouds You do make a valid point, we all have to die of SOMETHING! I think it is more about quality of life. If smoking s few cigarettes shaves off 3 years of my life and I die at 85 instead of 88, who the hell cares, or…I get cancer and die in 12 weeks…okay, I can deal with those consequences. but ending up with COPD for 20 years before a slow death or a slow death from heart disease, well…that would really suck.

@Coloma I think your quality of death may be just as important as the quality of life.

@Coloma Agreed. Giving up all those sweets that I love when I can take pills and insulin though; that’s a lot harder for me personally. Of course if the time comes I’ll do it because I know better than to think it’s that simple, but I definitely see the lure of it.

@Seaofclouds Agreed. I love sweets too. Oooh cheesecake and raisinettes.haha

@Dan_Lyons You have a point as well, but all death is not going to be easy, whether that is cancer, heart disease or decrepit, demented, old age.
I recently read that cancer deaths peak in our 60’s, then heart disease in our 70’s, if you get to 80 something, you are then looking at, most likely, rotting away into dementia land. No thanks..I’ll take cancer with plenty of morphine over being a bedridden, senile, immobile 90 something sipping Ensure thoughh a straw in diapers.

My dad is 84 now @Coloma. He beat the lung cancer (they found it early by accident) and he beat the heart problem he recently had and he still rides his bicycle 26 – 30 miles a day, in the early morning.
he is in very good shape for an old man.

@Dan_Lyons That’s great, lucky him!

I was almost put on statins for the rest of my life because of where I live. As I am healthy I queried why I would need medication. The answer was because of my postcode. If I lived a mile West of where I am I would be fine. I could see no sense in this so I don’t take them.

I see it as merely an indicator of what type of people we are. Personal accountability hasn’t declined; technology (including new drugs) has merely spotlighted the flaws that used to be hidden. People were embarrassing themselves long before YouTube, now they just have a larger audience. People with high cholesterol were eating bacon, they just didn’t take Lipitor.

Humanity is as it always was. We’re merely more aware of how screwed up we really are.