Prescription Drug Addiction Documentary Summary

After watching this documentary it’s very evident that there is an ongoing battle being faced by many Americans in the mental health field by the over diagnosis of conditions like depression, ADHD and bipolar etc. Also this documentary toughed upon the over prescribing of drugs and medication which tends to lead to addiction. Overall this documentary explored the issue of prescription drug abuse and also addiction. The documentary also revealed multiple reasons behind the pharmaceutical industry’s big influence on medication and drugs. What I seen after watching this documentary was how it exposed how the FDA, physicians and other contributors like the media are linked together to ensure that medical problems are properly treated by the use of prescribed drugs. Like we talked about in class over the semester there are effects of over prescribing psychotropic drugs in matters of mental and physical health which often can lead to overuse and drug abuse.
Something that I found
to be very interesting was that fact right at the start of the documentary which presented a shocking statistic about the over use of prescribed drugs. The film mentioned that “American represents 5% of the world’s population but consumes 50% of the world’s prescription pills”. Also according to the film Americans may not even be able to trust our own doctors, who in the end are influenced by the industry to recommend drugs that certain people don’t actually need and also may not be approved for a certain condition that they don’t even have.
The big take away from this documentary that I got was what gives pharmaceutical companies the significant sway over practitioners and at the same time treatment facilities when it is well evident like the documentary and many interviews said that their products are known to lead to Addiction and also drug abuse.
Also at the same we can’t forget to mention the devastating side effects and even death in some cases. One lady who was interviewed in the documentary shared that “it’s because those companies are very strategic in how they push their products on people, and the representatives that are hired to sell certain prescription drugs are often recruited based on appearance and also their marketing skills and those prescribing doctors are most often offered huge incentives”. Also at the same like the documentary mentioned and showed there are fancy advertisements that feature happy, glowing and perky individual’s attesting to the life-changing and overall health boosting benefits of that
drug.
In the end many of the interviewers agreed that it is an individual’s own responsibility to be alert and aware of what we are putting into our body’s, and at the same time we can’t allow ourselves to be a part of the deadly system that is being presented. Overall this documentary sparked an increase in awareness and dialogue on the subject, which in a nut shell resulted to inspiring change in the pharmaceutical drug field.