Have you ever preached about something and still fall victim to that same thing you are warning people from doing?
Self medication is something I detest so much probably because of the experience I have had with it but it is very funny to me how I still fell victim to it yesterday 12th of July 2021.
What is self medication? It is a term used to describe the actions of taking drugs without a doctor's prescription, it is a very common thing in the world today which sometimes has a good and mostly bad outcome. We many times feel like we are very conversant with drugs because it has been prescribed to us many times and when such cases come up again, we just get the drugs, and sometimes, we even prescribe them to people not knowing their medical conditions or history.
I was brought up with herbs which we call Agbo in my dialect and it made me lost interest in injection and drugs.
I remembered my first experience with injection as a teenager, it took five people to hold me down because I was wondering how a needle would go through my butt. I couldn't get my mind of this imaginary pain I was feeding my head but while I was struggling and screaming, the nurse said she had finished.
I stopped screaming and asked if that was all because I didn't know what it felt like.
Herbs are always very bitter but it doesn't bother me again and there some made with fruit that I love drinking very well.
The issue of self medication has complicated health issues for a lot of people especially in Africa where the health history of people can be hardly traced. People take the wrong drugs for an illness, the drug probably relieves them of the pain but the illness is not gone and when it strikes back, it comes back stronger.
I am familiar with two things attached to self medication which are very dangerous and can cause another thing to the body. They occur a lot with people who apply drugs without prescription:
Wrong dosage: I do refer to the wrong dosage as drug abuse because people take the wrong dose of drugs since it wasn't prescribed by any medical expert.
They end up taking more than they should have taken which sometimes can be very dangerous. Every drug has its dosage and time of use depending on age or previous health conditions but due to ignorance, people go on to use wrong doses at the wrong time and end up suffering from sometime else aside from the initial cause of taking the drug.
Allergies: I didn't know much about allergies until I was in secondary school and my mom always saw it as just a normal reaction. Not everyone can take just any drug but a lot of people are ignorant about the fact that they can be allergic to a particular drug due to the things put together to make the drugs.
For instance, I am allergic to Chloroquine. It causes serious itching for me that can last 3-4 days, and Aspirin because it makes my body swell. As a teenager, I experienced lots of swollen lips, nose and even my forehead sometimes gets big that I have to stay indoors for a whole day as a result of self medication because the hospital was no go area since my mom couldn't afford it but as I grew and learned about allergies, I made my mom understood the consequences of what we were practicing.
The post isn't just about drugs self medication because yesterday, I got to understand that even herbs can have bad effects if not taken properly which means it is not advisable to take some herbs when not prescribed.
I know this sounds weird because doctors don't prescribe herbs in the hospital, instead they give you drugs and injections. Here in Nigeria, we have doctors we refer to as trado-medical doctors who are experts with herbs and I have seen them do great works in rural areas that don't have enough hospitals.
They work like doctors, run tests before prescribing either drugs or herbs to you. In 2019, a friend of mine bought a roadside herb, and few minutes after drinking, he started growing rashes on his body. We quickly took him to a trado-medical hospital and they made us realize that he was allergic to something that was part of what they used in preparing the herb.
I hope it won't surprise you to know that the issue of self medication issue I had wasn't from drugs or injections, it was from herbs.
My Experience
Yesterday, I wasn't feeling comfortable and I thought I was having a pile because of the symptoms I was seeing but I was wrong even though I still don't know what's wrong with me.
I went out to get herbs because it usually uses to be the best cure for pile but things went wrong, I took the herb late in the evening and it made me purge through the night that I got very weak. I thought the night drama was all but it continued again in the morning and it got worse that I couldn't stand properly.
Many people who take herbs aren't aware that it can give the opposite results of what they want if taken wrongly or without consultation from a trado-medical doctor.
Please let us be aware that herbs can give us allergies and also be an overdose since we don't have a measurement for it.
Agree, our family also believes in herbs like that we called here in the Philippines as oregano plant for cough but we are also been very careful in using it like as to its contents or how many leaves should be used for every take for we don't know its effect also once taken more than or less than the exact dosage like that of a drugs or medicines if you take it without proper prescription by a doctor there's that chance that you will mis use it and prone to drug overdose. Let's just be very careful always and it still be better and safe to consult a doctor before taking any meds.