We’re drowning in pills

WE are drowning.

And it’s not in computer technology or plastic bags or petrol fumes.

We’re drowning in pills.

Go into any chemist – or even your local supermarket – and you’ll find more pills than varieties of chips, or types of jam, or packets of biscuits.

And you can’t blame the doctors. I’m not even counting the pills that actually cure you of things.

I give you, for example, my wife’s pills. As I write she is consuming tablets of amino acid, chelated zinc, vitamin C with rose hips, vitamin B6 pyridoxine hydrochloride, sugar-free chewable vitamin C, natural vitamin E, balanced B complex, brewers yeast, PPMP (Potassium phosphate and magnesium phosphate), Glucosamine Chondroitin joint food with MSM (God knows what MSM is!), sweet almond oil with lavender and roman camomile, and Proban.

And that’s only the contents of her handbag, which, actually, is the size of a horse’s nosebag.

To be fair, the joint food and the almond oil aren’t tablets. One’s a powder and one is, obviously, an oil, but I’m sure you get my point.

You can’t count the Proban either, because I discovered later that it’s to stop the dog getting parasites.

I told her, by the way, that it was pretty silly keeping Proban in the same handbag as the rest of her armoury, in case she made a mistake and ate them.

She said that if she did at least she wouldn’t keep being bothered by me.

But the point I’m getting to is… why?

Why is she doing this? She’s eating so many pills she’s putting on weight. She said it was side effects, but it’s not! It’s calories! The sheer volume of pills is weighing her down. And they aren’t curing anything!

I can’t even remember what half of them are for. To prevent split lips, chapped hands, tension, debilitation, poverty, parasites (if she swallows the wrong one) and probably boredom.

But they aren’t working! I know they’re not working because she’s still taking the pills.

It’s astounding really, how much faith people have.

Look, I am not targeting my wife here. She’s a big believer in natural remedies and there’s nothing wrong with that. But do me a favour… check out the internet. Do you know how many health problems there are out there? And I’m not talking about the really dangerous problems, like death.

I’m talking the ordinary things that our forefathers just had to live with.

When lunch was a charred hoof dug out the fire with a stick you probably didn’t have time to worry about something to help with the tension (though I imagine Proban would have been handy).

There are more dodgy health conditions out there than there are… well, pills… and that’s very hard to believe.

But what it means is… we’re losing. The health conditions multiply and the pills hit the market place in ever-increasing numbers and we just keep getting unhealthier. Obesity, heart disease, muscle problems, bone deterioration are all on the increase.

I reckon we should start again. Throw all the pills in the ocean and go into detox for a year or two, just to see what happens.

I know what would happen. The Environmental Protection Agency would accuse of poisoning the fish.

My case rests.