When healing becomes another product on the shelf, who really wins?
What’s something 100% legal that gives off massive ‘this should be illegal’ vibes?
Allowing corporations to advertise pharmaceuticals directly to consumers.
When you stop and really think about it, it’s bizarre. Somewhere along the way, we normalized the idea that an evening of television or a peaceful subway ride would be peppered with smiling actors whispering about diseases you never knew you had, followed by an endless list of terrifying side effects — all wrapped up in music soft enough to soothe your anxiety about it.
Instead of doctors advising patients based on medical necessity, we created a world where patients come into offices requesting prescriptions they’ve seen glamorized on TV, as if picking an item off a menu. Medication is powerful. It alters chemistry, changes bodies, rewrites futures. It’s not the same as a new shampoo or the latest phone — yet it’s marketed with the same emotional hooks: “This will make your life better. This will fix you.”
The truly unsettling part is how much trust we place in these messages without realizing how deeply profit-driven they are. The goal isn’t healing. It’s revenue.
When you allow billion-dollar companies to commodify health and sell complex, potent interventions like luxury goods, you quietly shift the sacredness of healing into the slippery hands of advertising. And even though it’s legal, it feels deeply, profoundly wrong — because it is.
Some things should never have been sold to us like candy.
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