Prescription Drugs Quotes

“...someday..., we'll medicate human experience right out of the human experience.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my drugs because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I always thought it was: mad cow. No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her—which, in the medical field, is known as the “full Limbaugh.” They opened her up, and a Walgreens jumped out. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone—this woman was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. I’m not going to say his name, but only because (a) I don’t want to get sued, and (b) my back is killing me.

This month marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of a famous government report. I was sixteen in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon’s much ballyhooed National Commission on Drug Abuse came out and said pot should be legalized. It was a moment of great hope for common sense—and then, just like Bush did with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage, and from there the ’70s went right into disco and colored underpants.

This week in American Scientist, a magazine George Bush wouldn’t read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could reach from the toilet, described a study done in England that measured the lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than pot, LSD, or Ecstasy—which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this same area. The Beatles took LSD and wrote Sgt. Pepper—Anna Nicole Smith took legal drugs and couldn’t remember the number for nine-one-one.

I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what they’re addicted to and making it illegal—it’s a miracle our government hasn’t outlawed fat white women yet—but I leave with one request: Would someone please just make a bumper sticker that says, “I’m a stoner, and I vote.”
― Bill Maher, The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass

“Before you treat a man with a condition, know that not all cures can heal all people. For the chemistry that works on one patient may not work for the next, because even medicine has its own conditions.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“My girl was mad and I loved her. Upon a night, she read my poetry; and kissing me madly she cried, ‘You are a genius, my love!’ To which I replied, ‘My girl,’ whispering, ‘Every doctor in this land with a prescription pad is more of a genius than I.”
― Roman Payne

“Love is a chemical reaction, but it cannot be fully understood or defined by science. And though a body cannot exist without a soul, it too cannot be fully understood or defined by science.
Love is the most powerful form of energy, but science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, but even the most advanced physician cannot prescribe it as medicine.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“What is the number one cause of death in the United States? It's not high cholesterol or accidents by cars, planes or trains. It's not wars. It's not drug addiction, and it's not even disease, so that lets out heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes and more. In Third World countries, infections and malnutrition are major causes of loss of life. But in the United States the number one cause of death is not any of these things. IT IS PRESCRIPTION DRUGS (Null, TW).”
― Dr. Sherry Rogers

“The advertise their products in such a fashion as to make it seem wonderful to drink their ethanol products. It does not matter if they give their products fancy name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, or if they put bubbles in an ethanol product and call it champagne or beer- everyone is selling ethanol.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“If those underlying conditions aren't treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we'll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That's the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent of alcohol and addictive drugs. It has little to do with alcohol and addiction themselves and almost everything to do with the original causes that created the dependency.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“A patient complains of feeling nervous or fearful. These feelings and behaviors suggest that the patient has an anxiety disorder, and the doctor prescribes whatever drug will most probably work for an anxiety disorder. However, there's no conclusive way to tell that this patient definitely has an anxiety disorder. Even if the doctor did get the diagnosis correct, there's a great deal of variation regarding which drug class (for example, anti-anxiety drugs versus antidepressants) a particular individual will respond to and which drug within a class (for example, Prozac versus Zoloft) will work best. If the drug doesn't work, the doctor will try the next one on the list and so on, thus delaying treatment success and complicating the process with the mix-and-match type of treatment.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Doctors and health care institutions are complicit in the medicalization of poverty that encourages the creation of professional patients.”
― Anna Lembke, Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It's So Hard to Stop

“How many thousands
of stories like yours
have been told
and forgotten how many
stories of lovingly durable nurses
of hospital sheets of IV tubes
dripping saline and morphine
How many stories of drugs
that would haul you
along in their wake for a while
but finally
let you sink”
― Mark Bibbins, 13th Balloon

“And since no one any longer responds to things spontaneously-you take drugs to study, drugs to love, drugs to rise up in revolt, drugs to forget-the distinction between manipulated and natural feelings has ceased to exist.”
― Stanisław Lem

“With approximately 50% of the USA population on prescription drugs and 10% on anti-depressants, it is clear that things are going seriously wrong with human health in the modern world.”
― Steven Magee, Health Forensics

“If you feel comfortable enough to spill your guts to a stranger you pay per hour to do that with, then you'll be receptive to the idea of taking pharmaceutical dry ice with side effects that range from egregious to deadly.”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“The mental and physical terror, along with extreme discomfort, is excruciating and debilitating. To truly understand the enormity and cruel extent of the incapacitation and dread in the waking nightmare of akathisia, one must experience it firsthand.”
― Jonathan Harnisch

“Time heals without prescriptions.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“When approaching a strange police officer, be aware that they may be taking a potent combination of prescription drugs for their physical and mental health conditions.”
― Steven Magee

“Do you find it strange that the modern human is the only animal in history that has developed a healthcare system?”
― Steven Magee

“i could tell that the speed was affecting my heart rate and i could only sleep for a couple of hours at the time, sometimes the only thing i ate was beer, it’d all gotten very extreme. (…) at one point i walked by a kinda scary looking homeless woman and said ‘good morning’, and she spat back ‘don’t good morning me, you got the devil in you, and i can see it’, and i lost it, because she was right, i did have a devil in me, the devil came in the form of medical grade prescription diet pills and they were controlling my mind and killing my heart. (…) and so here was my life, working out exactly the way i wanted to, and i blew it, because i couldn’t handle taking pharmaceutical grade speed daily, i just didn’t have the grit or the gumption…and i didn’t have any kind of plan or a mentor, i just figured it would work out fine (…) no one said ‘hey, this weird plan can give you permanent seizures’, i just kinda went for it.”
― Karen Kilgariff, Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide