I am a prolific consumer of supplements and vitamins. I maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of all my inputs. I take a bunch of exotic stuff so it’s easiest to check for interactions and assess impact if I maintain strict consistency.
I’ve seen remarkable benefits to the entire mess but it’s taken over a year of dedication to see the compounding effects. Taking vitamins isn’t quite like taking a pharmaceutical that way. But I suppose everything is dependent on dose. And yet I tend to apply a completely different moral valence to my supplements then my pharmaceuticals.
When I was a teenager it felt like the war on drugs had mostly devolved into scar tactics. After school specials, assemblies with terrifying speakers, and the general media landscape showing “this is your brain on drugs” probably gave me an unnecessarily limited view of how to approach drugs. Recreational drugs were bad but I also knew that pain medications were deadly. It didn’t help I had a family member who was an opioid addict.
The running gag on South Park with Mr. Mackey telling the kids that drugs are bad mmm kay logged into my subconscious. And not in a sun skeptical way. I appear to have taken it at face value.
Except drugs are neither bad or good. I wouldn’t dream of considering my various supplements and vitamins as making me bad or weak. Those keep me healthy and function. I also take prescription medications. Those also keep me healthy and functional. It’s the same thing. I don’t take them for kicks or to get high.
But the idea I absorbed from childhood that I’m supposed to regard things like pain killers with intense skepticism continues to hinder my progress. I was warned by the orthopedist I may need to up the anti-inflammatories I take for my spine as my ligament injury heals. But I am still reluctant to take the prescribed dose. Despite being under the supervision of two doctors.
I’ve got to learn to let go of this attitude. Drugs are good mmmkay? Tinkering and tweaking and looking for improvements are great. No one deserves to be in pain. It’s not morally better no matter what religious nonsense we may have absorbed. Sure pain is a terrific teacher. But it’s perfectly alright to chose to forgo it. We can chose to grow without inflicting any more pain on ourselves than necessary.