Why Every Medicine Has Hundreds of Side Effects
- Madhukar Dama
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
A Realistic Explanation for the Ordinary Indian
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🧠 1. The Human Body is Not a Machine
Everything in your body is connected—your brain, gut, hormones, immunity, and even emotions.
When a chemical is pushed into one part, the others react too.
Example: You take a painkiller for your knees. It reduces pain but may damage your stomach lining, slow your digestion, or even affect your sleep.
Modern medicine often treats one symptom but forgets the rest of the system.
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💊 2. Medicines are Single-Minded Chemicals
Most medicines are made to control or suppress something, not to heal it from the root.
They are not interested in balance, only in “numbers”—lower the BP, reduce the sugar, stop the cough.
But the body heals through rest, repair, digestion, and deep balance—not through control.
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🧬 3. Everyone Reacts Differently
You are not a lab rat. You're a living person.
The same medicine can help one person and harm another.
Age, weight, sleep, emotions, food habits, and even weather affect how your body responds.
So drug companies have to list every possible reaction seen in tests—rashes, headaches, liver damage, and hundreds more—even if some happen in 1 out of 10,000 cases.
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📃 4. The Side Effect List is a Legal Cover
Most people don’t know:
The long list of side effects you see in medicine leaflets is not to help you—it’s to protect the company.
If you get a problem, they’ll say: “It was written. You should have read it.”
No ordinary Indian reads a 20-page medicine leaflet written in English. So the system is rigged.
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🔄 5. One Pill Leads to Five More
This is the real story behind most chronic patients:
1. You take a pill for BP →
2. It causes fatigue →
3. You’re given a B12 injection →
4. That causes constipation →
5. You're given a laxative →
6. That damages your gut flora →
7. You get acid reflux →
8. Another pill.
This is not healing. This is a trap.
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🧪 6. Animal Testing ≠ Real Humans
Many drugs are tested first on rats and dogs, then on a small group of healthy people.
But real patients in India are malnourished, overworked, sleep-deprived, or elderly.
Their bodies react very differently.
A medicine that “worked well in trials” can fail badly in the real world.
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⚠️ 7. No One Tracks Side Effects in India
In countries like the US, people can report drug reactions easily.
In India, most people just go to another doctor—or take another pill.
So side effects remain hidden, under the carpet.
Even doctors may not take the patient seriously when they say, “My knees started hurting after this medicine.”
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💊 8. Long-Term Use is Dangerous
Many pills are meant to be taken for life—BP, diabetes, cholesterol, thyroid, acidity.
But the body gets used to the chemical, and the real problem often gets worse inside.
You become a customer for life—not a healed person.
Liver damage, kidney overload, poor sleep, mental fog, and digestion problems become the side effects of long-term “treatment.”
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🛑 9. Most People Don't Need So Many Pills
If people were taught to:
Eat simple, home-cooked meals
Sleep well
Walk every day
Take castor oil packs or natural therapies
Avoid emotional drama
Fast on Ekadashi or weekly
Use fermented foods like ambali, buttermilk, idli
…most would never even need 90% of their medicines.
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🧘 10. But What About Life-Saving Drugs?
Yes—some drugs save lives:
Anesthesia for surgery
Antibiotics in severe infections
Insulin in Type-1 diabetes
Emergency care after accidents
We’re not against science. We’re against abuse, blind trust, and lifelong dependence.
Modern medicine is powerful—but it’s not holy.
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🎯 11. The Real Healing is Always Within
No drug, surgery, or treatment can replace the body's own intelligence.
If we support that inner doctor with rest, nutrition, oil therapy, breath, patience, and clean living, most diseases reverse slowly and deeply.
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🔚 Final Truth: The Side Effect is Not an Accident
Side effects are not bad luck.
They are your body’s way of saying:
“This is not how I wanted to heal.”
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✅ Suggestions for You
Keep a medicine diary. Note down any change—digestion, sleep, mood, hair loss, dryness—when taking any new pill.
Discuss all medicines with a trusted doctor, not the chemist.
Explore safe natural therapies when possible.
If you’re on 5+ pills, ask what you can safely reduce over time.
💊 "This Pill, That Pill"
A slow burn poem on side effects, control, and healing
– in the Indian body, in the Indian life
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this pill makes your pressure drop,
but your knees feel like borrowed wood.
your mouth dries.
you forget names.
you stop shitting like a man.
the doctor calls it “normal.”
the chemist smiles, cuts the strip,
hands you one more—
for the thing the first one broke.
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you had a headache.
now you have
four medicines,
a bitter tongue,
and a drawer that smells like chemicals and death.
you were not sick.
you were tired.
you were sad.
you were lost.
but medicine doesn't care for poetry—
only for numbers and force.
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they said
"this will control your sugar."
but it also kills your morning wood,
guts your belly bacteria,
and whispers at your liver:
“die slowly, friend, die professionally.”
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you look at the leaflet.
22 pages.
each sentence in perfect English.
neatly printed warnings:
“vomiting. dizziness. depression. infertility. suicidal thoughts.”
the legal team calls it precaution.
you call it a curse you didn’t choose.
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there's an old man in Gulbarga,
he used to take two pills.
now he takes twelve.
they call it progress.
he calls it quiet punishment for trusting too long.
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your grandmother never went to school,
but she knew when to fast,
how to boil neem leaves,
how to rest when her body asked.
she died on her own terms.
no side effects.
just old age, done well.
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but you—
you live on pills.
BP. thyroid. acidity. cholesterol. mood.
the medicine shelf is taller than your gods.
the prescription is longer than your shopping list.
and still,
you don't feel well.
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the ayurveda guy says "detox."
the yoga teacher says "breathe."
the old uncle says “just walk.”
the mother says “stop eating like an idiot.”
but you listen to the specialist
who charges ₹700 for five minutes,
and gives you one more branded pill
to numb the thing that aches
inside your tired chest.
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they never tested this pill
on people who skip meals to feed their kids,
on women who cook on wood fires,
on men who chew tobacco in silence,
on boys who drink Sprite as breakfast.
but they sell it here.
they sell it fast.
and when it breaks something—
they sell you something else.
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your body is not a bloody spreadsheet.
your breath is not a lab result.
your soul does not fit into a pharma rep’s Excel file.
and yet,
they have turned healing into a vending machine.
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the pill doesn’t ask how you sleep.
the pill doesn’t ask what you eat.
the pill doesn’t ask who broke your heart.
it just pushes.
shoves.
commands.
and when you crack under it,
they blame you.
not the system.
not the shortcut.
not the sick science of suppressing life.
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but somewhere in a village,
a man sits under neem shade.
he rubs warm castor oil on his belly.
his daughter brings him fermented rice.
his son climbs trees.
his wife fasts on Ekadashi.
no one takes pills.
no one needs to.
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he healed without controlling.
he slowed down.
he listened.
and his body whispered:
“thank you.”
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you don’t need ten pills.
you need ten days of rest.
ten spoons of ghee.
ten deep breaths.
ten quiet mornings with your damn phone switched off.
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medicine is not evil.
but healing was never meant
to be patented.
to be manufactured.
to come with fine print in seven fonts.
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the side effect is not an accident.
it is the cost of ignoring your own wisdom.
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so tonight,
before you pop another tablet for sleep,
ask yourself:
what if the side effect
was never in the pill—
but in the life
that made you need it?
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– madhukar, in the spirit of Bukowski & the slow death of shortcuts
