1st responders


 

Like the police, fire or ambulance services, these ubiquitous medications perform the role of  first responders to our modern maladies.

In this latest series, Gekko comments on the expectation that all of society’s ills can be fixed with a simple chemical intervention. Whatever the issue - be it our failing body or agonised mind - it can be eased with a nicely packaged and readily available antidote.

 

Yet in our haste to alleviate the symptoms do we look beyond the convenience and transitory relief offered by the latest ‘cure-all’?

 

Who is challenging the wisdom of medical practitioners; who prescribe without adequate regard for the physical and psychological dependencies they are feeding?

 

When did we start to accept the myth, perpetuated by corporate pharmaceutical giants, that we need to be “fixed”? After all, no-one gets rich if we’re all content with what we have.

 

Or have we really created a world so torturous that we need to anaesthetise ourselves just to survive?