The American Dream – by Michael Snyder
The American people are the most drugged people in the history of the planet. Illegal drugs get most of the headlines, but the truth is that the number of Americans that are addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans that are addicted to illegal drugs. As you will see below, close to 70 percent of all Americans are currently on at least one prescription drug. In addition, there are 60 million Americans that “abuse alcohol” and 22 million Americans that use illegal drugs. What that means is that almost everyone that you meet is going to be on something. That sounds absolutely crazy but it is true. We are literally being drugged out of our minds. In fact, as you will read about below, there are70 million Americans that are taking “mind-altering drugs” right now. If it seems like most people cannot think clearly these days, it is because they can’t. We love our legal drugs and it is getting worse with each passing year. And considering the fact that big corporations are making tens of billions of dollars peddling their drugs to the rest of us, don’t expect things to change any time soon. The following are 19 statistics about the drugging of America that are almost too crazy to believe…
#1 An astounding 70 million Americans are taking legal mind-altering drugs right now.
#2 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors wrotemore than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants during 2010.
#3 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug. An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#4 Americans spent more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs during 2013.
#5 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years old say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.
#6 There are 60 million Americans that “abuse alcohol”.
#7 According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 22 million Americans use illegal drugs.
#8 Incredibly, more than 11 percent of all Americans that are 12 years of age or older admit that they have driven home under the influence of alcohol at least once during the past year.
#9 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is an unintentional drug overdose death in the United States every 19 minutes.
#10 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
#11 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#12 According to Alternet, “11 of the 12 new-to-market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration were priced above $100,000 per-patient per-year” in 2012.
#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#14 Many of these antidepressants contain warnings that “suicidal thoughts” are one of the side effects that should be expected. The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010. The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents every year.
#15 In 2010, the average teen in the United States was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
#16 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.
#17 A shocking Government Accountability Office report discovered thatapproximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.
#18 A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.
#19 It turns out that dealing drugs is extremely profitable. The 11 largest pharmaceutical companies combined to rake in approximately $85,000,000,000 in profits in 2012.
In America today, doctors are trained that there are just two potential solutions to any problem. Either you prescribe a pill or you cut someone open. Surgery and drugs are pretty much the only alternatives they offer us.
And an endless barrage of television commercials have trained all of us to think that there is a “pill for every problem”.
Are you in pain?
Just take a pill.
Are you feeling blue?
Just take a pill.
Do you need a spark in your marriage?
Just take a pill.
And most Americans assume that all of these pills are perfectly safe.
After all, the government would never approve something that wasn’t safe, right?
Sadly, what most Americans don’t realize is that there is a revolving door between big pharmaceutical corporations and the government agencies that supposedly “regulate” them. Many of those that are now in charge of our “safety” have spent their entire careers peddling legal drugs to all of us.
We have become a nation of drugged out zombies, and it is all perfectly legal. The funny thing is that many of these “legal drugs” have just slightly different formulations from their “illegal” counterparts.
If more Americans understood what they were actually taking, would that cause them to stop?
Perhaps some would, but for the most part Americans are totally in love with their drugs and giving them up would not be easy.
Just ask anyone that has tried.
So what do you think about the drugging of America?
Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…
Many of the prescription drugs people take end up in town and city water supplies, so even people who take no medications at all get pharmaceuticals in their bodies.
The pill crisis can easily be consolidated and solved with just two pills:
Take the RED pill or take the BLUE pill. The choice is yours.
warning if you take the blue pill you can never return to how it was or how you were, you are changed forever.
Got that backwards, Susan.
The blue pill keeps you asleep. 🙂
sorry braInFART 🙂
Correction take the red one immediately!
LOL 😆
in other words, we are a nation of junkies. At least the ones doing the illegal drugs know that about themselves. This article really brought it home, Missy, how little difference there is between the two.
Get as many people hooked and hoodwinked as possible. Take their money, their health, their life, but before you take their life, milk them for as much as you can. While you give them the drugs, pretend to be their friend, tell them that you care. Perhaps even believe that about yourself.
All drugs are “mind-altering.” The thing is, are folks aware of what that means and what that does to them.
No wonder the traffic/drivers are so increasingly dangerous and erratic these days.
And yes I think it is very true that most people are “on something,” myself included. I think that makes it more acceptable, more easy to rationalize. Some good food for thought here, Missy.
“#5 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years old say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.”
Nice! I’m a ten percenter.
I fought with my primary care physician for a year and half. She wrote a Rx for Thyroid. I asked her why and she said my thyroid was low. OK I said now here is where we part company on this. Why is my thyroid low and what can be done to fix it. She said take the thyroid. I said no because when I do that it doesnt fix but just supplies the body with what it needs but the body will not produce it and over time I will need higher doses.
So I went home and started my research. Mind you I had no proof that I had a hypothyroid condition. I found that kelp for Iodine and Selinium was good for the thyroid and would do the trick and even if I wasnt low in thyroid this combination would be safe and insure the health of the organ.
Come July 25th and I need my primary care physician to clear me for my knee replacement on August 2. She refused unless I promise to take the thyroid. Now the last thing I want to do is break a promise but it should not have be asked of me and here is why.
On my third day postop my doctor came in and told me my glucose and T4 (Thyroid) were normal. I asked for a written copy of the T4 to present to my primary care physician who never showed up at the hospital. As a former nurse I can tell you that from the time of the visit on the 25th of July till August 2nd the thyroid did not heal itself so two things are possible:
1. I never had a thyroid problem
2. The treatment I chose took care of it if there was a problem, which I can not say for I had no proof.
I took the selenium and kelp for over 6 mos.
I have new insurance provider and a new primary care physician. Always check our an alternative way.
Haven’t seen a doctor since I had a portion of my left lung removed 4 years ago. That surgery was the result of Kaiser dropping the ball. I had a collapsed lung that they managed to miss in the x-ray. Had they caught it the first time, the problem could easily have been remedied. They KNEW they screwed up, that’s why they had me sign a waiver saying I wouldn’t sue. I’ve sworn off of doctors for life since then.
There was, however, one good thing that came of that whole fiasco. I couldn’t quit smoking, so naturally I ended up with lung cancer. Once I was certain of this, I started eating the apricot kernels (B17), so I found out through personal experience that B17 really does cure cancer. That’s what compelled me to write the article, so I guess it was a blessing in disguise.