We fear the worst, expect the worst, thus invite the worst and the result is that we are becoming a nation of weaklings and hypochondriacs, a self-medicating society inca pable of distinguishing between casual, everyday symptoms and those that require profes sional attention. Somewhere in our early education we become addicted to the notion that pain means sickness. We fail to learn that pain is the body’s way of informing the mind that we are do ing something wrong, not necessarily that something is wrong. We don’t understand that pain may be telling us that we are eating too much or the wrong things; or that we are smoking too much or drinking too much or that there is too much emotional congestion in our lives that we are being worn down by having to cope daily with overcrowded streets and highways, the pounding noise of garbage grinders, or the cosmic distance between the en trance to the airport and the departure gate. We get the message of pain all wrong. Instead o addressing ourselves to the cause, we become pushovers for pills, driving the pain un derground and inviting it to return with increased authority.