I'm Dutch, but I grew up with many Americans around me. It always shocked to see the huge amount of pill-bottles in the bathrooms of my American friends, and how much part of daily life these things were.

Anti-bacterial wipes for everything, pills at the smallest sign of illness (even just the sniffles), copious use of sleeping aids, and so on.

In my upbringing (which was kind of 'typically' Dutch), we took medication as a last resort. Even painkillers were not something you took unless your headache was unusually bad.

I have no doubt that this is also changing in Holland, especially when it comes to prescription drugs for psychological issues, but in general it seems a bit healthier to me to allow the body to take care of itself when it can, rather than stuffing it with foreign bodies that often have all kinds of adverse side-effects.

This state of affairs often makes me think about how malleable societies really are, for both good and bad, and how much variation there is even within 'Western-European' nations.

I have noticed that too. It's pretty much standard that people take at least some prescription drugs regularly. Also the children of some friends know all the ins and outs of different pills. I don't think I ever had had a headache pill when I was the same age.

That's pretty shocking indeed. So what do these people think of their own med use? When I was on antipsychotics I couldn't wait to get off of them, and my psych was very supportive regarding that.