I think my dad is addicted to taking pills. The sad part is, I don’t think he even realizes it.
Growing up, one thing that was always normal in our house was seeing my dad swallow drugs. There was always one illness or another he believed he needed to treat. Headache, body pain, stress, stomach discomfort, fever, I mean there was always a pill for something. As a kid, I didn’t think much of it as I thought adults took medicine all the time.
But now that I’m older and still watching the same pattern, only worse, I’m beginning to realize this goes beyond simply taking medication. It feels like some sort of dependency.
In my house, my siblings and I absolutely hate taking drugs. Whenever we fall ill to the point where we have to see a doctor or pharmacist and drugs are prescribed to us, the moment we start feeling okay, we abandon the medication somewhere in our rooms and move on with life. Terrible habit, honestly, but we do it a lot.
My dad, however, sees abandoned drugs as some sort of personal offense. Whenever he walks into our rooms and finds unused medication lying around, he picks them up and takes them himself. According to him, he doesn’t like seeing drugs go to waste. Then he calls us ungrateful for wasting money. At first, it used to sound funny but now, it honestly scares me.
I remember one time my brother fell from a one-story building and landed badly on his back. He lost consciousness and had to be taken to the hospital. After he was discharged, he was prescribed medication for recovery. My brother took the drugs for a while, felt better, then abandoned the rest like he usually does.
My dad found them. Despite not having any symptoms or medical reason to take those drugs, he started using them himself. Morning without food, evening again, consistently, until everything finished. That was the moment I started realizing this wasn’t normal behavior anymore.
Now things have gotten worse. My dad has taken so many antibiotics over the years that they barely work effectively on him anymore. What would normally help a normal person recover quickly barely does anything for him. Most times when he falls seriously ill now, regular medication from a pharmacy doesn’t work. He ends up needing stronger hospital-grade drugs before his body responds and that terrifies me.
Because I think this is how dependency on something forms. It doesn’t always begin the way we assume it. It starts with one pill for a headache, another for body pain, something for stress, something to sleep better, something for just in case. Then over the years, your body becomes so used to constantly receiving medication that living without it starts to feel abnormal.
I tried bringing it up with him recently, but he dismissed me almost immediately. According to him, he’s getting older and his body reacts differently now, so of course he needs medication more often. Part of that may be true because aging comes with health challenges. But what worries me is his habit of taking drugs that were never prescribed to him in the first place. That can’t be healthy.
The hardest part is knowing there’s very little I and my siblings can do. My dad is extremely dogmatic about things he believes in. Suggesting therapy or medical counseling would probably be seen as disrespectful or unnecessary. He genuinely doesn’t think there’s a problem but I worry anyway. Because when sickness worsens or when people die, they are not always the ones who carry the heaviest burden of pain. It’s the people who love them. The ones left behind to grieve, panic, and wonder if they could have done more.
Now that’s why this scares me so much. It’s not just because of the pills, but because watching someone I love slowly harm himself while refusing help has made me feel helpless in the most exhausting way possible.
Images are mine
