I'll Drink to That

Cigarettes. Hot dogs. Alcohol. Cheddar cheese. Diet soda. Steak. Potato chips, packaged cookies, those giant bags of twirly licorice sticks.

Every day, we purposely ingest products known to harm us in some way. Many of these items have been heavily researched and consistently shown to contribute to cancer, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and other chronic illnesses and disease, the leading cause of death in this country. We consume these products to the point of needing prescription medication (which presents its own risks to our bodies), rehab, oxygen, chemotherapy, special care facilities, and, sometimes, funeral arrangements. These are all researched, known consequences of the materials we take in. And yet, we continue to incorporate the products regularly into our lives.

Every day.

So the fact that we are struggling to accept a vaccine that has been shown to save lives has me frustrated but not surprised. From birth, we are bombarded by advertising meant to benefit giant corporations and political agendas rather than our own physical systems. We drink the drink because we want to be cool. We smoke the smoke because it used to be cool. We backyard BBQ with our neighbors and friends, grilling up group 1 carcinogens known by names such as “brats,” “dogs,” and “burgers,” when they are really just dead animals full of hormones, medications, and disease. Let the good times roll! When we’re pining over our latest heartbreak, we turn to gallons of diabetes-producing chocolate chip cookie dough because we’ve been told (sold?) that will replace the love our hearts biologically crave.

We don’t care. We don’t care about our personal health. And we don’t care about the well-being of others.

Raise your hand if you have ever had to watch a family member shoot themselves in the belly with insulin while they kept a pantry stocked full of chips, white bread, cake mixes, and gallons of cow’s milk. Raise your hand if you ever had to listen to your mother beg for a cigarette while hooked up to an oxygen tank. Raise your hand if you’ve felt the pain of watching a loved one suffer from addiction to alcohol. Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand.

Some products should not exist. And yet, companies train us to desire them. We brag about using them, and we suffer the consequences. But our friends and family also suffer. Do we think about that? No, of course we don’t.

Anyway. Whatever.

This essay won’t change the fact that our American marketing, healthcare, and political systems are total clusterfucks and that advertising is mostly devoid of ethical messages. It won’t change the fact that we will continue to daily take into our bodies materials that are killing us, because we’ve been sold products designed to increase a company’s bottom line rather than those intended to build our personal health. And it won’t change the fact that many folks will continue to stubbornly insist on not getting vaccinated because … “bad stuff in that shit.” We’ve been sold that idea as well.

Raise your hand if you have ever watched a family member intubated, afraid to die.