In the first part of this article [https://www.nairaland.com/3575711/dangers-self-medication], we talked about what drugs are, what they do and why it’s important to take only the right amount as prescribed by your Doctor or Pharmacist. Let’s talk a litte bit more about prescriptions.

Do you know that it is a crime for a person, not licensed to prescribe drugs, to do so? Yes, that includes those times when you prescribe for yourself and your family members even though you are not a licensed Doctor or Pharmacist.

Do you know why it is a crime? As we discussed in Part 1, All drugs have the potential to be poisonous and even kill if taken incorrectly. Drug availability is tightly regulated and based on this can be separated into 2 broad groups:

A. Relatively safe drugs that you can legally obtain “over the counter” such as paracetamol, antimalarials and nutritional supplements.

B. Drugs which are very dangerous if not carefully prescribed, administered and monitored by a trained Doctor or Pharmacist. These are “controlled drugs” and it is illegal to obtain them without a recent, signed and verified prescription from a licensed Doctor. Examples include drugs used for the treatment of cancer, drugs likely to be abused or which will become addictive and drugs that are only safe within a very narrow dosage range.

Taking a drug incorrectly doesn’t just mean taking the wrong amount. Taking a drug in the wrong WAY is also dangerous. If your doctor prescribes a medicated cream for instance and you decide you’d prefer to take the tablets (after all, it’s the same drug, abi?), you may be seriously harming yourself in the process. A doctor might decide to choose a particular way to give you a drug to limit any negative effects it might have on you. For instance, he or she may decide giving you a drug to inhale or apply to your skin will be safer than giving you a formulation that you take by mouth or inject. In the same vein, a specific formulation may be preferred because it will be more effective at treating a specific condition.
Sometimes, even taking the correct amount of a drug suitable for treating a particular condition, at the right time and in the right way can cause harm. All the things that can happen in this scenario fall under what is called Adverse drug reactions. The side effects we mentioned before are one thing that can occur. A person may also have an unknown (or known) allergy to a particular drug and be harmed, sometimes very seriously, even though they are taking it correctly. Problems may also arise from taking a combination of drugs which, when used TOGETHER, are harmful.
So why is self-medication wrong? I’m sure, from everything we’ve already mentioned, you are beginning to see why. However, for emphasis, I’ll outline some of these things again.

1. When you have symptoms, the best you can do if you’re not a trained medical professional is assume you have this or that. Your assumption may or may not be correct but in most cases, it isn’t. Even if your assumption is correct you do not have the training and knowledge to CORRECTLY treat the condition. Even if you had similar symptoms before for which you were treated before using certain drugs prescribed by a Doctor, what makes you think you have the same condition now? The process of making a diagnosis is complex and Doctors spend many years learning and mastering it.

2. Adverse effects may arise while you are taking particular drugs and they can sometimes be severe enough to put you in the hospital or worse. A trained health professional who is licensed to prescribe medications will have knowledge of these possible outcomes and take steps to stop them from happening. They have specific knowledge that enables them to analyse benefit and risk of taking different drugs, and come up with the optimal combination and dosage for your unique need.

3. Some medications are more poisonous than others and are only safe for use within a narrow dosage range. Unfortunately, quite a few of these drugs can easily be obtained without proper prescriptions in this country and too many people have died as a result. Simply looking up drugs on the internet and then going out to obtain them is an all too common and extremely dangerous practice.

4. Over time inappropriate use of medications, especially antibiotics and antimalarials, takes a DISASTROUS toll on healthcare in the form of Drug resistance. This is especially important in the treatment of infections. Let’s say everytime you have a fever or cough, you take an antimalarial or antibiotic. You don’t confirm that you actually have a condition that warrants taking these drugs or whether you are even truly sick at all. You just take them. Not just that, you also take dosages of these drugs which are much lower than normal or fail to take them for the correct period of time. Down the line, the infections we use these drugs to treat become resistant to the drugs we normally use to get rid of them because of these practices. This is drug resistance. Drug resistance is so important that we will dedicate an entire article to discussing it along with the super infections that result from it.

5. A lot of times we take drugs even though there is absolutely no medical reason to do so.


In summary, please see your doctor about ALL your health concerns so that the appropriate treatment can be prescribed for you. It is up to us to ensure we and our children remain healthy. Let’s nip this bad practice in the bud by changing our behaviour and advising others to do the right thing.

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