Once again today, I am
counseling and working with another client.
Many come to me with drug problems, marital problems, mental and or
emotional problems or just struggling with sin, religion, life, etc.
People keep asking me WHAT I
am. I am not sure what I am. I know WHO I am. I am a punk kid from the streets of the west
coast, saved by grace. I am a husband,
father and grandfather. I am a Licensed
and Ordained Christian Minister. A
Pastor of several Pastors, a Missionary, an Evangelist and an Author. I am a fairly extensively read and studied Counselor
and most days for the last 20 years I have worked with alcoholics, drug
addicts, homeless, abandoned, widowed, orphaned, divorced, incarcerated,
trafficked, hurting and broken people. I
do it on my time, on my dime.
Because of all of this I am
going to speak out AGAIN about the modern medical practices of the private
physicians, clinics and hospital doctors in America. I am not foolish enough to believe that ALL
doctors are part of the problem. Three
of my personal friends are doctors and 2 of them agree with me 100% about
this. The other agrees mostly but
disagrees on certain points. Many
doctors are not part of the problem but the practices that I am about to speak
of have become the more predominant instead of the less predominant; Especially
among the entry levels of practice.
This man that I am currently
working with, (one of several for the last few weeks), has a story with the
medical field that is so incredibly common that if I used the exact circumstance
they would fit 8 out of 10 of most of the people that I have been working with
for the last couple of years.
This is the story. A person gets hurt, gets sick or becomes prey
to their own bad choices and ends up not functioning well in society. Their life begins to fall apart and so they
go to some sort of an entry level physician.
The patient tells the doctor that they are not thinking straight,
feeling good, can’t get out of bed, are abusing certain chemicals, lost their
job or spouse or house, etc. etc. etc.
Now, there are a thousand
different reasons why these things could be happening. The patient could be lazy, they could be
drunk a lot, they could be cheating on their spouse, they could have a chemical
imbalance, they could have a brain tumor, they could be possessed, they could
be running from God and on and on and on. So what does the doctor do? The exact same thing almost every singe
time. Prescribe Cymbalta, Lexapro,
Lithium, Xanax, Zoloft, Prozac, Wellbutrin.
And prescribe them in multiple forms and high doses. Doctors now days have these prescriptions in
quick draw holsters. I actually went to
challenge a local clinic about this and they threatened to call the
police. The doctor has a bunch of these
prescriptions written up in advance and he would just fill in the patients
name. I told them to call the police
because I was pretty sure that was against the law. Anyway.
If you have a first name and a last name you are a candidate to take
some of these meds as far as some of them are concerned. Most of my clients are on these drugs AND
they were never tested for anything.
WHAT?!?! That’s right. The doctors that prescribed them did not run
one single test on their patients before giving them these drugs.
This is wrong on soooo many
levels that I hardly know where to start.
First of all, some of these chemicals are narcotic based and even the
ones that are not are very addictive.
Why in the world would you give someone a very addictive controlled
substance when you do not know what is wrong with them? Now I know that the prescribers love to say
that these drugs are not addictive. If
you read some of the “official websites” of many of these drugs they say things
like, “Zoloft is a non-addictive chemical supplement for the brain. It can be VERY DIFFICULT to come off of and
extreme caution should be used to not hurt the patient in trying to wean them
from a long term use of the drug as it creates a false need for the substance.
“ EXCUSE ME? The statement basically says that it is not
addictive but you have to be very careful with it because it acts addictive and
the patient will get addicted to it.
This might as well have been written by a Hillary Clinton press agent.
The next problem that I see
is this. They rarely give you one low
dose of one chemical and try it for a couple weeks and adjust it a little. If that doesn’t seem to work then take you
off of that one and try a low dose of a different one…..OH NO. My client that I counseled with this morning
was put on THREE of these chemicals at the same time within minutes of meeting
a doctor for the first time. When I
researched the chemicals I found that two of them specifically advise to not be
mixed with each other. Yes, a doctor, at
a clinic gave my client a dangerous mix of drugs after meeting him for just a
few minutes and it took me less that one minute to find out that they weren’t
supposed to be used together.
Doctors are just people
too. What they think, what they believe,
what they are going through in their own personal lives will affect them just
like everybody else. If a doctor does
not believe in God, that will take certain possible causes to the problem out
of his or her mind. If they completely
accept all Freudian thought, that will take certain causes off the table. And so on.
For example: One of the most abused diagnosis that I am
seeing over and over again is the diagnosis of Bi-polar. Doctors love this diagnosis. Why?
Because it cannot be proven for one thing. There is no bi-polar test. The diagnosis of bi-polar is ALWAYS a
guess. It may be a hypothesis (an
EDUCATED guess), it may be more accurate in some cases, but it is still a
guess. Most doctors feel like they are
accurately reading the symptoms. Let me
tell you my problem with making such a guess so often and so willy nilly. There are hundreds of things that can be
going on in a man or woman’s life that will have the exact same symptoms as
bi-polar would and giving these drugs to those people will only make them a thousand
times worse. Many SINS have the exact
same symptoms as bi-polar. Bi-polar is
the new fangled term for the old “disease” called Manic-Depression. In other words, your moods would swing way
too high and then way too low to be able to function correctly.
If someone cheated on their
spouse, that would cause the exact same symptoms as bi-polar. The high of the physical rush of the sexual
encounter would be way too high to deal with correctly and then immediately
there would come a ‘dealing with the conscience” that would cause grief for
doing something so terrible to the one you were supposed to love.
If someone stole something it
could cause the exact same symptoms as bi-polar. The thrill of attaining that thing that you
weren’t supposed to have and then the extreme fear and anxiety of wondering if
you are going to get caught. The
diagnosing and dispensing of these extremely sensitive drugs do not take any of
these kinds of things into account.
I actually had a client just
2 years ago that went through this exact scenario. The client was committing continual horrible
sin. They went to the doctor, was
prescribed a horrific cocktail of dangerous mind altering drugs, received
counseling at HMA, ended up admitting the sin and praying and getting
forgiveness from God, spouse and children.
Ended up not needing the drugs.
Dropped off of 3 of them but had to go to a detox center and drug
treatment program to get off of the 4th one.
I AM NOT SAYING THAT IF YOU
HAVE THESE TYPES OF PROBLEMS THAT IT IS AUTOMATICALLY BECAUSE YOU ARE SINNING. I am saying that there are too many other
things that it could be for these folks to be passing this stuff out like
candy.
What if it is God trying your
faith? What if it is the Devil attacking
your mind? Drugs cannot fix either one
of those. Only prayer, faith and
dedication to Christ can.
Yet another problem I have
about these drugs and the way they are prescribed. Doctors and medical groups get “paid extra”
for writing these prescriptions. Does
anybody really believe that if you get paid 1,000.00 for doing your job or 1,500.00
for doing your job plus recommending some product, that a lot of people won’t
start recommending that product more? Of
all the idiotic things that congress HAS taken up, why haven’t they looked into
that one?
Perhaps everyone is jumping
up and down about the drug epidemic in America because the medical field,
(second only to The Federal Government in how many people it employs in
America) is driving the addiction rate higher and higher by flooding the
streets of America with addictive substances that lead to worse
substances. It has been said for almost
50 years in America that “marijuana is the gateway drug”. Not anymore friend. Prescription drugs are the gateway
drugs. I’m not even talking about pain
killers either. I’m talking supposed
ant-depressants.
Perhaps one way to slow the
addiction rate in America is to stop the gigantic drug companies from
supplementing the pay of our doctors for dispensing more addictive and
controlled substances without proof of need.
I’ll give you a couple of personal examples about this. My wife has taken hardly a pill in her
life. A handful of Tylenol maybe in the
last 30 years. But every time she has to
go see a doctor about something, she comes out with a handful of
prescriptions. I saw a doctor just the
other day and they asked me if I wanted a prescription for Hydrocodone. A very abused and controlled substance. I said, “No, I am not even in any pain.” They wrote me one anyway. INSANITY!
A final note for now. I have been working the streets of Tulsa for
over a decade and dealing mostly with addicts and the ultra poor. If you think for one second that these
“anti-depressants” aren’t driving the addiction rate of society, you better
think again. Let’s just take one of
these drugs for a final example.
Xanax. It is so popular on the
streets I have to ask the young homeless guys and gang members that I talk to
regularly what the new terminology is for it.
Xanax is the chemical company name for the drug. By every few days I hear it referred to on
the street as “Bars”, “Ladders”, “Footballs”, “Benzo”, “Flight” and
“Helicopters”. While you are thinking
about why there are so many “cool” and coded street names for a drug that
supposedly never makes it to the street, think about this. In generic form, one Xanax pill costs about
25 cents as a prescription. But I can
introduce you to a dozen young people that live in the shelters of Tulsa that
pay between 4 and 10 dollars a piece for them every day. If I’m doing the math correctly that would be
a 4,000% markup. WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!
I want to repeat that I do
NOT believe that every doctor is bad or every sick person is a sinner and I am
not trying to diagnose anyone or convince you to not take medicine. But I am saying that enough is enough. I am seeing people every week now that are
all jacked up on so many dangerous drugs that are handed out at the expense of
the tax payer, the family unit, the ministry, society as a whole and even at
the jeopardy of the human soul at times.
God bless you and please pray for us at HMA.
To learn more about us, visit
HolinessMissionsToAmerica.com
Your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett
Your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett
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