One of the first major medications to become mainstream in this world was penicillin and while it was officially discovered back in the late 1800’s, it didn’t become mainstream in its pill form until the 1950’s. Since then, it seems as if there has been a shift with many people from one of natural healing to one of pill therapy.
Granted penicillin has saved many lives and helped many people since it came into widespread use. Prior to that, I know many people died from something as simple as a scratch or a cut that became infected. While I’m not knocking medications such as that and their effectiveness to elongate a human life, there is a sad reality that is facing our society today because of drugs and medications. People are becoming more and more dependent on them to exist and function throughout any given day.
While penicillin indeed was a major breakthrough in medicine as it’s purpose was to help heal infections, many of the drugs that followed have done no healing at all, and instead, simply have band-aided deeper issues. There are quite a number now of anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, and anti-pain based medications. None of them heal anything other than to help a person cope with their life and what has been handed to them. And many people get on them today to help with what they are going through but never do the work necessary to aid their body in its healing process and instead choose to stay dependent upon them for the rest of their lives.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my own case with battling chronic pain, depression, and anxiety, I never healed from those conditions when I took any of the vast numbers of prescriptions that doctors prescribed me. In each of those types of medications I took, what I was going through was only suppressed or covered-up. When I’d take them, I might feel slightly better on the level of depression, anxiety or pain I was feeling, but I’d also have to deal with a whole new slew of side effects that my body would have to endure while I was on them. I’m sure most people have seen at least one of those commercials for these types of medications. They show a person hurting on some level and isolating from life before taking some wonder drug. Then it shows the effects of that person after taking the drug with them doing a lot more activities and living life seemingly a whole lot better. As the commercial comes to a close, in a rapid fast forward fashion, a long list of side effects are read off. What’s sad is how many people are becoming dependent on all of these types of medications today and having new health issues be created because of them. Each of them are changing the chemical pathways and productions in the body, but as soon as one ceases to use them, for many, like myself, the symptoms would return.
After a long battle over the years of me going on and off of them again and again like the hills and valleys of a roller coaster, I finally decided it was worth investing time to delve into why they were happening in the first place. Why was I getting depressed and having anxiety attacks all the time. Why did I develop chronic pains all around my body? Doctors would say it was genetic and heredity and that I wasn’t going to be able to function without taking one of those types of drugs. I beg to differ.
Most of the reasons, if not all of them, on why I’ve dealt with depression, anxiety, and chronic pain in my life comes from the circumstances of the life I came into and put myself in day after day after day. I was often mentally and emotionally abused as a child. I was sexually molested as well. I did vast amounts of recreational drinking and drugs. I ate terribly for a long time. I put myself in unhealthy friendships with people who continued to use and abuse me. I was often promiscuous. I relied on legal stimulants such as caffeine to exist and a whole lot worse. All of those things made me who I was and dealt me the hand I had to hold.
I think most people don’t really want to face any type of pain whether it’s mental, emotional, or physical. I know I didn’t. I loved medications at first. It was just another way of me running from the deep-seated issues I had within. Until I decided to change myself, until I started to open up pandora’s box from my past, until I started eating better, until I started hanging around healthier people, and until I started living my life with God at its center, I couldn’t function without medications and pills and I continued to fall back into some level of addiction based behaviors.
It’s been over a year now that I haven’t taken any prescription or been acting out in any addiction. I’m trying to cleanse my life of all the poisons I placed within it. I eat as best as I can. I don’t spend time around people who are actively living in darkness through addictions or other clouded paths. I do a lot of writing and work on myself to heal from all the past traumas I’ve gone through. And I start and end my day asking God for guidance, strength, and healing so that I can keep moving forward on my healing path.
So far it’s working. I’m still alive. I’m still free from medications. I’m still functioning on some level. Is it the level I desire to be at? No. But I want to heal completely from what has caused me to get in these pains in the first place. I want to heal from what got me unbalanced to start with. I know it didn’t take me overnight to get here and please don’t take me the wrong way. I’m not against medications especially those that might help a person survive or get back to a reasonable state of functioning. But I’ve learned well enough now that much of the conditions many of us deal with today go back to how we have been living our lives in the first place.
I think it’s important to remember that any medications, drugs, or substances we may have taken to feel better, any abuse we may have endured, any addictions we may have gotten ourselves involved with, any unhealthiness we may have consumed regularly with food or drinks, any toxic people we may have hung around with consistently, or any other behavior we may have done that wasn’t filled with God’s love and light, each could have contributed to us getting sick in our own way.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I know I don’t want to be sick anymore. I’m doing my best now to heal naturally. I walk through a lot of fear regularly because of it. It’s tough. It really is. But I have a lot more faith in God now that I will make it to the other side of this, free of medications, free of drugs, free of addictions, and free of anything that ever took me off of the path of love and light in the first place.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson