In Romania, the drug closet has become the new room. We have pharmacies at every corner, refrigerators filled with syrups and parents who put a nurofen in the palm at the first cough. On Reddit, strangers wonder, psychologists speak of collective anxiety, and statistics confirm.
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“If Romania would enter a psychotherapy office, it would sit on the couch, remove a handful of pills and say,” I don’t feel good, but I take something and pass. ” It is the symbolic image of a society that has been living for decades in a chronic state of anxiety and has found a simple reassuring mechanism: pharmacies at every corner and cabinets full of drugs ”, explains Clinical psychologist Laura Găvan for “Adevărul”.
The phenomenon is seen in the eyes of strangers. A French user wrote on Reddit Europe: “In Sibiu, where I live, there are 2-3 pharmacies on the same street. My Romanian friends take medicines for anything. Their refrigerators are full of pills and syrups. On television, most ads are for supplements. In France, this is forbidden. I would wait for a cold, but here three friends take a pill.”
Inherited anxiety
Laura Găvan explains: “Romania lives as a patient with generalized anxiety. Our history is a succession of shortcomings and crises: dictatorship, cold, transition, inflation, corruption, political instability. Each generation has learned that safety is illusory. The pill becomes the equivalent of a safety net, a magic object that promises control over fear. ”
The same explanation appears in the comments on Reddit. “During communism the drugs were rare and people kept whatever they found. Now I make supplies because I know how to live without ”, Write a user. Another confirms: “This type of treasure is real! And it does not even throw the pills when it expires.”
Profit, fear and self -medication
“Why are there so many pharmacies? Because they are profitable. If they weren’t, they would disappear,” notes a commentator.
Someone else, citing a press investigation, adds: “Pharmacists are paid as sales agents: minimum wage plus sales commission. This is how people get to buy as many products as possible.”
For Laura Găvan, the mechanism is psychological: “The pharmacy is the reassuring space, and the pill: chemical amulet. Instead of looking at causes: stress, burnout, lack of prevention, we choose the quick solution:” I take something and passes. “It is a mechanism of avoidance. In the short term it calms. In the long term, the disease remains.”
The Romanian case: between rule and improvisation
Another user describes: “Parents put your pills with strength and consider the bad doctor if they do not prescribe medicines. Antibiotics are taken for anything. Instead, people refuse vaccines.”
Laura Găvan confirms: “In Romania the rules exist, but they are negotiated. Antibiotics” are given without a recipe “, supplements are sold like candy, commercials to wonderful television.
Collective trauma
Another Reddit commentator notes: “It’s an East-European phenomenon, but in Romanians it is more pronounced. Doctors maintain this. You go for a belly pain and go with a list of 30 medicines.”
“Romania wears a collective trauma of lack, fear, insecurity. Pharmacies in every corner are the visible of this traumatic memory. Grandma gathered jars. Parents gather pills. The children grow up with the lesson:” We must be prepared for what is worse “,” explains Laura Găvan.
Between symptom and healing
Romania remains, in the psychologist’s vision, “The anxious patient in the waiting room: with the bag full of pills and with the hope that there is a quick treatment for everyday fear.”
“The essential question It is not “why do we have so many pharmacies”but “why we need them so much” “concludes Laura Găvan.
