Psychotropic drug abuse nowadays and the medication of life El abuso de los psicotrópicos en la actualidad ya la medicación de la vida

Abstract

The use of psychoactive drugs in Brazil and in the world has been growing in recent years, so that the term “medicalization of life” has become a routine expression, a tide, becoming a global public health problem. It is essential to investigate and question the therapeutic use of these substances, especially benzodiazepine anxiolytics, to promote the rational use of drugs. The present article of opinion aims to address some factors that may lead the living to resort to the use of psychoactive drugs as a form of anesthesia of their anguish. Historically, the pathologization of life is intricate with its medicalization, reinforcing the perception that the body is a machine that must be maintained at all costs in high performance, with immediate eradication of psychic suffering, without permission (or without the need?) of suffering, of dealing with anxieties or anguishes. Several mechanisms may be involved in this phenomenon, including the pharmaceutical industry and its various forms of (dis) information, since it doesn´t do exclusively marketing, but mainly subjectivities, inducing the perception that anxiolytics constitute magical objects covered by the glow of supposedly filling in the existential emptiness. Swimming against the tide, it is urgent to think public and educational policies that can go beyond the medicalizer and perpetuating model of the anesthesia of suffering.