We all know that drugs are bad, but many of us only associate the term “drugs” with illegal substances. However, medications can be just as dangerous as any other type of drug. Every year, more and more people are dying as a result of being addicted to prescription medications or suffering from serious side effects. Lives are being destroyed through the use of these medications.
Big Pharma companies simply gloss over or hide the fact that their products are causing more deaths than some wars ever did. Over the last decade, drug overdose deaths in the United States have increased twofold. Deaths caused by drug overdoses – which include opioid-related deaths- increased from 16,849 in 1999 to a staggering 70,237 in 2017 alone. And this trend hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
As more and more people start taking different medications each day, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that dangerous side effects are becoming more common. In many cases, the side effects caused by prescription drugs are even worse than the conditions that they supposedly treat.
Medication side effects can range from the relatively mild -such as headaches and dizziness- to the truly severe -such as anemia, mood alterations, addiction, and even death. In some cases, these side effects end up requiring further medications and medical intervention, leading to greater expenses and worse health outcomes.
And to make matters worse, the pharmaceutical industry has been allowed to manipulate the population through their marketing campaigns. They make vulnerable people believe that their products are safe, but at the same time, they are peddling new medications that will cause even more side effects.
Even the scientific community acknowledges that up to 7 percent of all hospital admissions in the U.S. every year are due to adverse side effects caused by medications. Thousands of medical emergencies need to be treated every year because of the side effects derived from prescription drugs. But if we know that this is happening, and that it is so frequent, why are so many medications still being prescribed to hundreds of millions of people every day?
The answer, of course, has to do with money. The pharmaceutical industry makes billions of dollars each year, and they’re not going to let some side effects interfere with their profits. So instead, they simply pay to hide these adverse side effects from the public. As a result, people continue to take their medications without realizing that they could suffer from devastating consequences.
These are some of the strangest side effects that can be caused by medications:
- Kidney or liver failure
- Painful blisters on your skin
- Gambling addiction
- Swollen, painful palms and feet
- Numbness, tingling, and shooting pain in different parts of your body
- Blisters around your mouth
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Insomnia
- Vivid nightmares
- Loss of smell
- Priapism, which is a painful and long lasting erection
- Nails falling off
- Feeling like you want to “crawl” out of your skin
- Hallucinations
Would you really want to risk your health like that? And this list, of course, doesn’t include the risk of becoming addicted to your medications. Big Pharma knows exactly what they are doing: they sell drugs that are highly addictive so that people always need to take them, and they market other medications that are meant to “treat” the side effects caused by their own products. It’s a vicious cycle that has led many people to illness, depression, financial problems, and death.
At the end of the day, Big Pharma doesn’t care about you regaining your health. In fact, they can make even more money by keeping you sick through numerous side effects that require even more medications. Thanks to these convenient side effects, you’ll end up spending tons of money on new drugs without ever feeling truly healthy.
Nowadays, opioid overdoses cause more deaths in the U.S. than automobile accidents, homicides, shootings, and suicide. And yet, opioids are still being prescribed everyday without a second thought. Previously healthy people are being turned into drug addicts who lose their homes, families, jobs, money, and even their lives thanks to these medications. As long as they’re still paying for their prescriptions, Big Pharma doesn’t care.
That’s why it’s so important to educate other people on the dangers of prescription drugs. Trying to go against a multi-billion dollar industry is incredibly difficult, but spreading information and knowledge can make other people aware of the dangers of prescription medications. By spreading awareness, we can keep more people safe from harmful drugs and their side effects.