Perpetuating Illness

The conventional medical response to illness is a pill that eases symptoms. Such pills often perpetuate problems. For example, overwork can cause depression, for which a pill can be taken to enable continued overwork. In such cases the pill is a maladaptation that perpetuates the problem even as it creates dependence.  It can also prevent cure by masking the user’s true state of being. Those who might learn to cure themselves by sensing and altering their state will be prevented from doing so. The pills then prevent self-guided healing and cure even as they enable ongoing abuse of the sevenfold body.

When we demand a pill to fix all our problems we create corrupting incentives for those whose vocation it is to aid the sick. Now that Madison Avenue ad companies own drug development laboratories, and can market them directly to the public, they can make billions from drugs that create dependence, and more by fueling demand. The old adage caveat emptor (buyer beware), now applies when we are most desperate and least able to help ourselves. We can help ourselves by recognizing that only one disease has been cured in our species, and that is smallpox, which was eradicated by an unprecedented global collaboration of health care workers who joined together with the aid of, and in spite of, their governments.

As a result, we who are ill have no real choice but to guide our own healing and cure, even when we have a wise doctor to help us. If we do not have a wise doctor, we can help ourselves with self-guided healing and cure, as described in The Chronic Illness Owner’s Manual and in this blog. Like spiritual seekers who have freed themselves from intermediaries, and who no longer create corrupting incentives for clergy, we can take responsibility for seeking integrative, comprehensive healing and cure, and for becoming active partners in healing and cure.