Are You Contributing to Opioid Abuse?

Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”  Hippocrates 

Are You Contributing To Opioid Abuse?

Are you as a parent, a grandparent, a caregiver of children, unintentionally adding to the likelihood that your children will grow-up to abuse drugs? 

 

From the time most of us are born we are indoctrinated to believe that we need drugs and invasive practices to help prevent or “save us” from things that might make us ill in the future.  We are hoodwinked into believing that the only way to assure good health is to intervene with our perfectly designed bodies natural processes for immunity and healing.

  This belief starts immediately after birth with all the inoculations thrust upon us to theoretically protect us against anything and everything we might encounter.  The pharmaceutical industry has done an outstanding job at lobbying our government, while at the same time spending billions upon billions of dollars to convince us that this is the only way to protect our families.  It’s as if God has made a mistake in designing the human body’s immune system and we can’t possibly have enough faith to allow the body to grow and mature as it should:  drug and chemical free.  (Click here to read how many shots are encouraged by age 18)
 

  For most, the situation escalates from there.   The minute a baby gets a tummy ache most of us ask our doctors to give us some medicine to help. A few months later as they begin teething and experiencing pain in their gums, or a fever, an easy solution is to just load them up with children’s painkillers of all sorts.   Soon, when they start school we get them their booster shots, and even a few new ones to protect them in case there is an outbreak of something.   In elementary school they fall on the playground and they skin their knee, but not to worry, the well-meaning school nurse might be able to administer a pain-relieving pill for that as well.  And then a month or so later they stay at home in bed with a stomachache, and while watching the t.v. a commercial comes on promoting that there’s another pill or a liquid that can help.  Diarrhea, no problem! There’s a drug for that too! In fact there’s a medicine, a pill, an injection that covers us for anything that can possibly “go wrong.”

The child grows a little older and the teacher lets us know that he or she is having a hard time paying attention in class (no joke, they are bored stiff!) Not to be too concerned because of course, there is a solution.  She suggests that there is a prescription pill for that too.  We want our kids to fit-in and to do well in school.  We want them to be healthy yet we are all too quick to find a doctor to (once again) prescribe something because we are too busy or too lazy to change the child’s diet or find other natural ways to help them succeed in class and in life.

Fast-forward to high school and the same student is having a tough time studying for a test.   Along with the well-meaning advice of other parents, and another doctor appointment, sure as heck there is yet another drug to help with that too.   *Meanwhile, at the same time, high schools all over the country are conducting assemblies encouraging the youth to stay “drug free.”

 

A year or two later and at around 16 years old, unfortunately the same student’s parents have filed for divorce.  The teenager is having a tough time sleeping and is dealing with anxiety and worry.  A quick trip back to the doctor and they are given yet another drug to help with sleep and to assist them in dealing with a myriad of emotions.   To “dumb them down” and numb them so they can’t even feel, and to hopefully make them “all better.”

   At this point in the teenager’s life it’s unlikely that they can make it through the weekend without drinking a bit here and there (it’s a great painkiller for a while) and why wouldn’t they try the latest pill since it will help them have more fun, help them fit-in, and help the emotional pain go away for a while?  

If any of the above sounds familiar you are among the majority of people who started out innocently brainwashed into believing that this is the right or the only path to follow when it comes to raising children. Yet, in truth, many of the things we perceive as unnatural and painful (physically, emotionally, spiritually) are just small chapters; sometimes longer episodes, in life that help us to grow, mature, and gain character.   Physically, even something as simple as a fever acts to kill bacteria and viruses that are competing to take over our health. 

  

Think way back, once again about that little baby or that very young child.  What if we questioned and became educated regarding every foreign substance before we allowed it to be put in our perfectly healthy child?  What if natural, drug-free remedies (including changes in the diet) were used at a young age to help mitigate the discomfort of teething? Or massage was used to help a headache or a stomachache?  What if a parent did the necessary research and tried the variety of functional medicine modalities available, including the addition of specific nutritionally rich protein drinks (food) to the diet to help with all kinds of symptoms and issues?  What if they found a practitioner who could naturally release neurological pressure on a child’s brain, which could also help with behavioral problems?  How about taking a child to a specialist who could give the child, and the parent, real life tools for success for the future?

 What if we cared enough to spend the time necessary to investigate and to learn what it is that our children might be sensitive to?  Things like certain chemicals, food dyes, and GMO that are in a lot of what we eat and drink.  

Most importantly, what if we lived our lives as outstanding examples for our children and young people?  What if we showed them that when we got a headache, a stomachache, or experienced any other unpleasant challenge in life, we didn’t first grab for a drink or a pill, yet instead handled situations in holistic ways?  What if they saw us pray, saw us use relaxation and deep breathing techniques, saw us mediate, and witnessed us seriously seeking to find what could be adding to the inflammation and stress response of our perfectly designed human bodies?  What if we shared our knowledge and educated them to grow in this way?

In closing, my question is this:  Why are we so surprised when our child or grandchild begins using drugs that we have not supported or given to them?  If you’ve read the model I’ve sketched out above, I think one answer could be that for their entire lives they’ve been taught that there’s a pill or a potion that could solve most all their problems.

 

  If more of us would embrace and practice the faith that we profess to have instead of looking for immediate “quick fixes,” in a half a generation I believe we would see a huge dent in and reduce the occurrence of substance abuse, including alcohol, opioids and other mind-altering drugs. 

My opinions are just food for thought. 

Disclosure: I realize that many of you are dealing with life-threatening situations and are doing the best you possibly can.  My opinions start with a person who has been born perfectly healthy and they go from there. The above is not meant to make you feel badly or shamed in any way.  

To contact me for questions or health/nutrition advice you can email me here:  

Donna@DonnaSchuller.com