Tranquilizers
leases sugar, giving a plentiful supply of energy to your muscles. Your entire nervous system shifts into high gear. It causes your senses of smell, hearing and sight to become sharpened and all your mental faculties to become razor-sharp. Your stepped-up nervous system also causes the large voluntary muscles of your legs, arms and torso to contract, readying for action. Doctors tells us when all these things are hap pening, you are experiencing normal tension. W e experience this kind of tension probably every day. And if we’re healthy, it doesn’t do a bit of harm. It’s simply our body’s way to meet life’s normal problems. To stuff ourselves with tranquilizers is to simply destroy our best defenses. W e ’re resorting to repression which is about the worst therapy possible. Tranquilizers in no way attack the problem at hand. And when the period of tran- quilization has passed the repressed problem has a way of rising up and hacking away at us with deadly results. This matter of facing up to reality is a fairly safe rule for every area of our life. I like the cartoon across the page. A lot of people are trying to repress the demands of God upon their lives. And we don’t have to use tranquilizers to do it either. There are many tried and honored methods of accomplishing this end. One basic rule-of-thumb runs something like this: ignore the reality of God. By doing this we repress all spiritual values. It’s somewhat akin to the old ostrich trick. Perhaps as some man reads this page he’d like to toss away his spiritual tranquilizer — what ever it is — and face squarely up to God’s demand upon his life. I f a man wants to he can. But he has to want to. Jesus Christ said, “ If anyone wills to do His will he shall understand the teaching. . . .” You can be willing to listen and to understand right now. Christ said, " I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. . . . I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” These are God’s words. We can do with them whatever we wish. END‘
U n t il fairly recently the badge of the up-and- coming young executive was an ulcer. Real or fancied. It was a genuine indication that the man was a real pusher. He was going places. But now science has once again come to man’s rescue. From the world’s pharmacology labs magic little pills tabbed tranquilizers are being manufactured (and swallowed) at an awesome rate. Now a man, whether he’s studying for a final exam or trying to close a mammoth business deal, can shed his tensions with a single gulp. No need to sweat out any big problem. Worry, it would seem, is for that uninformed individual who hasn’t yet tried tranquilizers. Surveys reveal that there’s hardly a doctor who won’t prescribe tranquilizers for anyone who simply asks for a prescription. In such countries as Japan a prescription isn’t needed and drug manufacturers are hard pressed to keep up with the demand. Some psychiatrists believe tranquilizers should come close to solving most of man’s emotional problems. Suicides, divorces, nervous breakdowns — just about any problem that can be even remotely blamed on tension — should all but be wiped out with the proper use of tranquilizers. But at least one sociologist has cast a gloomy shadow into this picture of sunny tranquility. His worry is that a nation that guzzled tranquilizers would stop caring what happened. A t this point a strong-armed politician could take over and run things pretty much as he pleased. Whether a politician could get this far or not is problematical. But one thing is dead certain. Tranquilizers are no long-run solution for any one. A few responsible medical men are voicing the opinion that the use of such drugs on anything but the smallest scale is sheer folly. The reasoning behind this is that man’s tension is a perfectly normal thing. And it’s beneficial. Take tension out of life and you remove the very force that makes it possible to do great things — to go through great sorrow. When you face a problem that creates normal tension your physical body responds immediately. Adrenalin pours into your bloodstream and your liver re
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The King's Business/June 1958
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