Coming from Europe, America is the country of FAST everything: fast food, fast fix, fast buck (casinos, Wall Street), fast cars, fast communications (cell phone, twitter, facebook etc.) fast shows...even Fast and Furious! Is this stemming from the American business adage: "Time is Money" or is more a byproduct of immediate gratification need with its corollary of laziness and gimme attitude? Both are not very sanitary for society in general.They eventually lead to a product like Exercise in a Bottle which hit the market a few years ago. You cannot get a better short-cut than this. It is not just disingenuous but also anti-physiological yet it did sell and probably still is.
Pill-popping is indeed quite epidemic in this country, as compared to the rest of the world. Even those who are not taking any medications manage to pop a couple of dozen vitamin pills a day. It is the fast fix mentality. There is a pill for just about everything, even lengthening one's penis (at least the Pharaos used weights for traction!). Often pills are taken to obliterate the side-effect of another pill, like anti-acids with anti-inflammatory medications or those quinquagenerians on testosterone need often to also take Arimidex (breast cancer pill that inhibits estrogen) to inhibit conversion of some of this testosterone into estrogen.
It is a thriving market. Pill-popping would probably be inocuous if it was not for the addictive quality of a number of these pills and the criminality related to them, i.e. narcotics, sioporifics, hallucinogens, anxiolytics, antidepressants, etc.
Whether it is from a doctor, a dentist, or from a "friend of a friend", Mr. & Mrs. Pillpopper ususally have an assortment of these addictive drugs stowed in their medicine cabinet at home. Pillpopper Junior gets a hold of them and brag to his friends. They do the same and soon a PHARM-PARTY (nothing to do with agriculture) gets organized where all the juniors dump in a large bowl their pill-catch of the day and they mix it up and sample nonchalantly. Best thing about it is that it cost nothing and it was prescribed by a doctor...how can it be bad for you? These pills are hard to swallow so they are often downed with the available alcohol (never mind the red label. The detailed label printed by the pharmacist had long divorced its contents).
This is somewhat satyrical and could be borderline comical if it was not so tragic. I heard several times now about the dumbing of society starting by the younger generation. I am sure pill-popping has a lot to do with it a long with increased obesity, lack of exercise, texting (with its uncanny abreviations), e-communications and iclouds. But look at the bright side: we maybe inventing a pill soon enough to reverse all this. Wouldn't that be cool? An anti-dumbing pill would even rival "Exercise in a bottle".
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