Do you want to lower your health care costs? Getting off prescription medications that aren't really needed may do just that. An added benefit could be that you also avoid being one of the 1.5 million people who are injured by prescription drug errors every year, or one of the hundreds of thousands who die. While there are some physical conditions that require medication, many do not, and it may be worth a call to a medically supervised drug detox program that can help you figure out how to get off drugs that aren't medically necessary.



Taking drugs is risky enough: The reason you see such long lists of side effects, contraindications, warnings and precautions is that the effect of any drug is, to a large degree, unpredictable. How your body reacts to the drug is dependent upon your DNA, your metabolism, what other substances you have in the body - including other drugs, vitamins, herbs and even food - and how the body is processing those substances.



Add to that the possibility of a being one of the 1.5 million people who go to a hospital because of medication errors, or the millions of others who just cope with the problem without medical help, and taking a drug that really isn't needed can become a life-threatening situation.



What are the common medication errors? Being prescribed the wrong drug or incorrect dosage are at the top of the list. Both can be fatal, as can drug combinations.



How does this affect health care costs? According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the extra medical costs for treating drug-related injuries amount to about $3.5 billion a year, and this is an estimate of the costs only in hospital settings. It does not include visits to the doctor, or the morgue. It also doesn't include lost wages or productivity. $3.5 billion could get a lot of people through drug detox and rehab.



Medication errors are preventable, but the best prevention is not taking the drugs in the first place. If your doctor suggests you take certain medications, find out from him if the medication will simple alleviate symptoms or will cure the problem. If it just treats symptoms, find out what you can do to actually improve the condition.



If you're already on a drug that you suspect or know is medically unnecessary, contact a medically supervised drug detox program facility to determine if there's a way to get off that drug safely so you can live a life free of the risk posed by drugs and drug errors. If enough people do drug detox and get healthy instead of taking more drugs, we may even lower our health care insurance premiums.