An alarming number of people taking prescription drugs are dying from overdoses.

Deaths from medication mistakes at home, like actor Heath Ledger's accidental overdose, rose dramatically during the past two decades, an analysis of U.S. death certificates finds.

The authors blame soaring home use of prescription painkillers and other potent drugs, which 25 years ago were given mainly inside hospitals.

"The amount of medical supervision is going down and the amount of responsibility put on the patient's shoulders is going up," said lead author David P. Phillips of the University of California, San Diego.

The findings, based on nearly 50 million U.S. death certificates, are published in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. Of those, more than 224,000 involved fatal medication errors, including overdoses and mixing prescription drugs with alcohol or street drugs. Yahoo News Link

Medical Marijuana is a much safer alternative than all these toxic pills. If I was fully compliant with my doctors prescriptions to make me well, I would be taking the following medicine:

Fluoxetine (anti-depressant)
Desiperamine (nerve pain, anti-depressant)
Xalatan (glaucoma)
Imitrex (migraines)
Tramadol (painkiller)
Tizanidine (muscle relaxant)
Celebrex ( osteo-arthritis)
Zyrtec (allergies)
Hydrocodenone ( pain killers)
Fosomax (osteoperosis)

or I could toke cannabis, legally, and not worry about the toxic mix of drugs I have ben prescribed. This is a no brainer to me.

I entered these prescriptions into a drug interaction database LINK and the results are alarming.

The Interaction between desipramine - fluoxetine SEVERE
desipramine - tramadol SEVERE
fluoxetine - tramadol SEVERE
fluoxetine - Imitrex SEVERE
hydrocodone - tramadol SEVERE
tramadol - Celebrex MODERATE
desipramine - hydrocodone MODERATE
desipramine - tizanidine MODERATE
desipramine - Celebrex MODERATE
fluoxetine - tizanidine MODERATE
fluoxetine - Celebrex MODERATE
hydrocodone - tizanidine MODERATE
hydrocodone - Celebrex MODERATE
tramadol - tizanidine MODERATE
tizanidine - Imitrex MODERATE