It seems these days there is a pill for every health problem imaginable. Even for problems that can be imagined, thanks to carefully crafted commercials made by the drug industry. Popping pills for our troubles perfectly encapsulates our easy-way-out culture. Most people can't see the big picture unfortunately, perhaps they can only see a glimmer of false light at the end of the drug culture tunnel.
Well feast your eyes on this brand new play and maybe you can catch a ray of sunlight not created in a pharmaceutical lab. "Distortion" is making its primiere at the Mark Taper Theater in Los Angeles. The play sets out to show our society that maybe, just maybe, pills aren't always the answer.
From The Huffington Post:
The madness of the pill-popping phenomenon is nicely summed up in this exchange from the play:
Doctor: People with untreated ADD are three times more likely to abuse drugs. Mama: And by "untreated" you mean --? Doctor: Unmedicated. Mama: So, if my son takes a drug, he's less likely to take...drugs?And later, the Doctor has this to say about the potential side effects of Ritalin: "The most common are loss of appetite, delayed growth, and insomnia, but we can always add another drug like Clonidine to help the insomnia. Some children develop tics, but we can add a little Tenex to control that."Paging Joseph Heller!
The play also effectively raises a mirror to the parents in the crowd, forcing us to question how much our Blackberry-and-cell-phone-driven, multi-tasking, media overloaded ways are impacting our kids. As Rita Wilson's character puts it at the end of the play: "What if the best thing I can give my son for Attention Deficit Disorder is my... attention?"
To be fair, the play does balance the issue out by saying that drugs can help where they are needed. However the amount of drugs that are dispensed today, especially for our children is highly out of whack. Every parent facing a 'disorderly' child should see this play and ask themselves if the pills are really worth it.
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