mack, I apologize if I didn't make it clear that my mother's doctor has always prescribed her plenty of opiates, sleeping pills, anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. More than many health care professionals feel comfortable with, which is why they keep trying to undermine him.

As my mother's doctor says about my mother "She is on enough medication nightly to sink a ship".

Is he prescribing all these medications because it is good for my mother? No. Is he doing it as a routine matter with his other patients? No. He is doing it, because he is doing his best to help a disabled, obese, elderly woman who suffers from depression, COPD, and neuropathy (related to her disability that has made her wheel chair and bed bound for the past 5 years), and has been institutionalized in a nursing home for 5 years, to sleep and be as pain free as possible.

The horror stories surrounding the maltreatment of elderly women by the medical establishment are indicative of the type of care either you (if you are a woman) or your mother, aunt, partner, sister, etc will likely receive before they die. Race and class status are also mitigating factors, as daylia points out so succinctly.

And mack, I'm not dissing you. I think you are doing a great job in the thread trying to grapple with the thorny issues being raised here.

SueB, I used to wonder about that stuff too. But I realize now that there are just as many judgmental people who embrace magical thinking, be it of an organized religious nature, or a New Age one. I've heard organized religion believers say the same sorts of things as you have heard from your acquaintances. Only religious believers tend to put it in terms of you being punished for your sinfulness, slothfulness, whatever. Same diff, IMO.

I am on the same page as Daylia for the most part. Energy is energy. The problem stems from the value judgments placed upon the use of energy that are rooted in our cultural belief systems.