Book 124 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: There are no quick fixes to living a balanced life!

Book – 10 Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Modern Medicine by Thomas Hager

Book Description: Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine. Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.

Reflection:

Modern medicine and drugs are incredible. They have the power to perform miracles in an emergency setting.

Modern medicine and drugs played a huge part in the miracle of my 2 children having any chance at a shot at life in this world as they both were born extremely premature at 22 weeks (Emilia) and 28 weeks (Luca).

I’ll forever be in debt to all the doctors, nurses, surgeons, pharmacists, dietitians, speech pathologists, x-ray techs, respiratory therapists, etc for what they did for my family. I will also forever be in debt to the drugs that were deployed to help save my children. In an emergency setting, what these people can do with their modern training, knowledge of the body, and how to apply what drugs and when at the right times is nothing short of a miracle to behold.

Trust me…I saw a few of these miracles play out in front of my eyes on numerous occasions. The tension in the room would be at a 10, but all the medical professionals were still calm, cool, and collected. They would huddle up, come up with a plan, restring all the lines needed for new drugs and medicine to deal with the situation, and then get to work. All the while, they would keep me in the loop, answer any and all questions, explain what was going on, and then sit with me as we all waited for the miracle to happen.

It is truly a sight to behold, but one that I will be happy to never see again in my lifetime if I can avoid it.

I can’t even begin to fathom the impact that modern medicine and drugs have had on the number of lives saved in this world. Who knows where we would be as a species if we hadn’t been able to figure out how to harness the power of the world around us to keep us safe.

However, as with all great things in this world, modern medicine (and specifically drugs) brings with it a darker side when applied incorrectly. In an emergency, drugs can save lives. In a non-emergency, drugs can become a crutch that limits us from ourselves.

Drugs cannot be our answer to everything no matter how hard we try to make it.

It is a nice notion to think that all of our problems can be solved with the quick fix of the next new drug. Whether it be mental (anxiety, fear, love, happiness) or physical (pain, weight, diet, health, etc), wouldn’t it be incredible if we could just make all of our problems go away in an instant?  

You’re damn right it would, but there are no quick fixes in this world.

If something is off balance in your life or health, you can’t just keep doing it, take a pill, and think that it will all work out okay in the end. That is a recipe for disaster. You have to figure out the underlying cause that is creating the imbalance and then put in the daily work to restore harmony to your world, mind, and body.

The universe operates on balance and harmony that has been fined tuned over billions of years. No matter how much we fight it, we are all subject to the same rules of the universe as everything else. There are no quick fixes to living a balanced life. It takes time, observation, and making course corrections little by little each and every day if you want to achieve the harmony you desire in your life.

Question: What crutches do you lean on for quick fixes to your problems? What would life look like without them?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - 10 Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Modern Medicine by Thomas Hager