In the United States, it’s peculiar that relatively useless pharmaceuticals with a low therapeutic index are heavily advertised, whereas actually useful pharmaceuticals are rarely mentioned at all.
absolutely. the degree to which amphetamines are pushed on children is insane. I was one such child ~16 years ago.
psychiatry in general is a pretty ridiculous field, at least as practiced here in the US. just yesterday I had my every-three-months checkup where I basically tell my psychiatrist everything is still going good, so can I have three more months' prescriptions of the thing you got me dependent on when I was a teenager, please. I was making some small talk about my life as per usual, talking about how work has been a bit stressful but that I've noticed I've become much better at handling work-related anxiety, compared to in the past, and she asked if I wanted to try any kind of prescription to help with it. it seems like the whole job is basically listening to people with issues and prescribing them pills to attempt to fix the problem. if a prescribed pill doesn't do anything after a certain amount of time, or has negative unintended effects, then oh shit stop taking it, let's try something else instead... another pill, of course, not any kind of counseling or literally any other kind of treatment at all, just more pills.
Curiously enough, there are some legitimate medical uses for nicotine, just as there are some legitimate medical uses for opiates and amphetamines.
> Colleen McBride, director of the cancer prevention, detection and control program at Duke University Medical Center... says there is a growing body of evidence that nicotine actually relieves some symptoms of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and appears to help those with severe depression focus.
The question is, to what extent are current medical uses of such substances actually necessary, i.e. to what extent has it all been about getting those sales numbers up?