Poll: would you be alive without pharmaceuticals?

As a kid I've had blood poisoning and pneumonia a couple times each, so if no antibiotics were available then I would have been toast. Now taking low dose meds for blood pressure and cholesterol. Have extra meds for a year and antibiotics are not a problem since I get them from the local feed store. Wife is not taking anything and I think that after SHTF I would not need mine with the extra physical activity taking care of the blood pressure and the lack of fatty foods fixing the cholesterol problem.

 

Well the one time I died(drowned when I was almost 5. Not near drowning, I was actually clinically dead for 20 minutes or so), it was CPR not medicine that brought me back. I did have pneumonia bad enough in that same year to be in the hospital and I think I was on antibiotics then, don't remember that hospital stay. That was before my mother did her own research and found that herbal remedies are much safer for my bad immune system, never been really sick since started taking them around 20years ago, except for when I got whooping cough a few years back, and didn't need drugs for that either. Only 'pharmaceuticals' I take is ibuprofen when I do too much, and my back complains about it. I wouldn't even need that if not for a car accident in 2006 that did something to my back. As for the dental issues, cloves and tea tree oil are a big help. And you don't need a prescription for them...yet!

P.S. My mother tried to tell me I had some brain damage from the drowning, but if she wanted me to believe that, she shouldn't have taken me to a family reunion a few years later...

 

If you lump inoculations and antibiotics in there with pharmaceuticals then yes. When thirteen my stepmother contracted polio and died some months later. I had several shots in the series prior to that point but went into the same symptoms about the same time as my stepmother. The difference was I got very sick but recovered without harm several days later. Doctor said it was the shots that saved my life.

Between injuries, operations and infections I am quite certain my life has been saved by medicines known as pharmaceuticals.

 

I probably wouldn't have made it past the 4th grade, Had pneumonia and then acute appendicitis wasn't out of the hospital for more than a week or two then went right back in. Had to be back around '63 or so.

As for right now, I'd be blind due to the glacoma, I'm taking two kinds of eye drops and had to have holes drilled into one eye with a laser.

 

tryi to kick the ab habit, cured my last sinus infection with hp and devils club. I also drink outa open streams on occasion(maybe twice a week) immunity through exposure and all. Had giardia 5 years ago it sucked huge but I learned a bit . you can build up an imunity

 

@munchy how can you build an immunity to a parasite? It's outside the bloodstream. One might be able to treat an infestation but it's like saying building an immunity to ticks. I'm confused about what you are stating here.

 

Back in my smoking days, I averaged an upper respiratory infection per year. Strangely enough, since I quit smoking (8.5 years tobacco free now! ), I haven't had a single URI. Pretty much needed antibiotics for every one of them, though.
Disregarding that, I haven't really had any major medical conditions come up, other than the occasional need for stitches.

However, many people (myself included) suffer from genetic predisposition to high blood pressure and high cholesterol. When you stop and think about it, the "good old days", when people were considered old at 60, and ancient at 70, with most dying in their 50's, was probably due, in good part, to high blood pressure and/or cholesterol. Even my own grandfather, who I never met, died in his early 50's, with hardening of the arteries (cholesterol problem), and heart attacks in his later years, and no doubt could have lived a longer life if he'd had some of the pharmaceuticals (and a bypass operation for the aneurism he died from) we enjoy today.