US citizens are a medicated nation; half of all Americans, man woman and child, take at least one prescription drug daily, and of that half, 1 of 6 pop three or more per day.
GENERATION RX How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds and Bodies By Greg Critser
MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY TIMES - As Greg Critser's provocative new book, "Generation RX," makes clear. Indeed, baby boomers and their offspring have become the most medicated generation ever, devoted consumers from cradle to grave of every manner of pharmaceutical imaginable - pills that not only cure real diseases, but that also promise, in Mr. Critser's words, to "do everything from guarding us against our excesses of drink, food and tobacco, to increasing our children's performance at school, to jump-starting our own productivity at work, to extending our very time on this mortal coil."
Boomers, who grew up using drugs recreationally, have become a generation that lives almost full time in the Valley of the Dolls: bombarded by direct-to-consumer ads, they are happy to self-medicate, and their cost-conscious H.M.O.'s are happy to substitute antidepressants for expensive talk therapy, prescriptions for repeated doctor visits.
Little wonder, then, that drug use - of the legal sort - has soared. Americans routinely take pills for high cholesterol and high blood pressure, and they also routinely take pills to sleep, pills to focus, pills to chill and pills to perk up, pills for more sex and pills for less stress. Mr. Critser notes that "the average number of prescriptions per person, annually, in 1993 was seven," but had risen to 11 by 2000, and 12 in 2004."
The total number of annual prescriptions in the United States now stands at about three billion," he writes. "The cost per year? About $180 billion, headed to an estimated $414 billion by 2011." He adds that spending on all forms of drugs to treat childhood and adolescent behavioral disorders rose by 77 percent between 2000 and 2003, "with 65 percent of all children on such drugs taking at least one antidepressant." On college campuses, the portion of students who went to health centers and "who were already taking psych meds went from 7 percent in 1992 to 18 percent in 2000." . . .
Hat tip: UNDERNEWS
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