Stop Taking Homeopathy
This is a true story. A few years ago I fell down and I hurt my ankle really badly. Like I had to call my mom and say "can you pick me up from my apartment cause I can't even walk".
And so she picked me up, took me back to my parent's house. And when I was there, she gave me this medicine, this thing I was supposed to rub on my ankle And it was this ointment that she had used on me when I was a kid, and I got hurt. She'd rub it on me; it smelled really nice.
And I remember it was, like, after she put that on me, I felt a lot better And so, here I was much older. But now she was rubbing this thing on my ankle and I'm thinking, oh this smells nice, this is gonna help me. And I'm looking at the bottle. And it said on there "homeopathic".
That word was in that, on the label somewhere. And now I knew what that word meant. It basically meant that there was nothing in this ointment that was actually gonna make me feel better. Nothing. It was all in my head.
It had always been in my head. But my mom, she genuinely believed it was going to help me. And for the longest time, so did I This sort of "medicine" exists for everything. Headaches, arthritis, even ADHD. And its all fake. Here's how homeopathy works.
They take a supposed active ingredient; like a mineral or an herb. And then they mix it in to a lot of water. And they stir the thing. And then they take that mixture, and take a little bit of it, and put it in even mor water. And mix it.
And then they take a little bit of that and put it in even more water. And they keep doing this. Eventually the ratio of that actual ingredient is to the water is, like, a raindrop compared to all the oceans of the world. It's nothing.
It's not enough to have an impact on you. In fact, the more diluted it is, the more useless it is. Some homeopaths will tell you that the water has a memory of the active ingredient. As it affects all the water that it touches. Which is just not true.
Have you ever been to the beach and you see a kid, like a mile away peeing in the water? And you're, like, that's disgusting. I'm glad it's happening there because it won't affect me over here. Now imagine just one drop of that.
And homeopaths are saying "it doesn't matter if it happens over a mile away. Its totally going to infest the water that you're in". Get it. It just doesn't work that way. Now the people who sell this medicine to you, they make it look real. I mean, the packaging is really nice.
The bottles look legitimate. The pills look like they're real pills. But it's just a placebo. A very expensive placebo by the way. People in the US spend about three billion dollars a year on this fake medicine. Now why do they buy it?
Well, sometimes it's cheaper than real medicine. And people who take it will tell you, they swear to you, that it totally works. Because they don't understand science. And they believe anecdotes over evidence.
You could literally swallow a whole bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills and you would be OK. People have actually done this as a demonstration of how useless this "medicine" is. Yeah, you could try it yourself and you would see nothing would happen.
Just make sure that it is actually homeopathic, otherwise you're in for a world of trouble. Now maybe you're thinking. "Who cares, if it makes you feel better, even in your head, isn't that the point. Isn't that OK? Why is this such a big deal?"
The problem is that there are so many people out there who use homeopathic medicine instead of going to a real doctor and getting real medicine, that could actually help them. You know, my ankle was gonna get better over time.
But what if the problem was a lot more serious? If you're taking homeopathic medicine for an infection or cancer. Or swine flu; yeah, that actually happened. You're making the problem much worse And you're putting yourself in danger by not getting real help.
You may be putting other people in danger. And you're throwing your money away too. Walgreens and CVS sell these medicines, by the way.
Even though they don't actually help There have been people who started online petitions to get them to take this stuff off the shelves.
But it hasn't worked. You should know better, though. So, if you see this stuff, don't use it. And if you see anyone using this stuff try telling them its bullshit.
Not that telling them will actually do anything. When I pointed out to my mom that this medicine was homeopathic, and it was actually not going to do anything, she just told me to shut up and keep rubbing it on my ankle.
But at least I know not to take this stuff seriously.
Hemant Mehta
My name is Hemant Mehta, and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com…
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