All doctors have had the experience of patients coming into their office with a bag full of prescription bottles — many of which they had been taking for years, if not decades.

And most of us have marveled how many patients say that these expensive and often dangerous medications didn’t improve their condition at all.

When I began exploring the long list of complications and side effects of commonly used medications, I was alarmed to find that many of the complications were associated with severe injury or even death.

In fact, several comprehensive studies have shown that anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 people die each year from complications caused by their medications. And that’s not allergic reactions or overdosing — it’s from taking them as prescribed.

That is completely unacceptable. It means that in the last 10 years, 1 million to 3 million have died from prescription drug use. That’s more Americans than were killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined.

I once met a pharmacologist who was an expert on drug related deaths. He had conducted studies comparing complications from natural treatments to those from prescription drugs.

He told me that natural compounds rarely resulted in death, and most of the complications that did occur were minor. The very opposite was true of prescription drugs.

Yet most scare stories spread by defenders of the drug industry point to scattered reports of a handful of complications caused by natural compounds. And those compounds were quickly removed from use.

Meanwhile, they ignore the hundreds of thousands of serious complications and deaths caused by prescription drugs.

For example, one of the leading causes of liver failure leading to liver transplant is damage caused by acetaminophen (Tylenol). In addition, the commonly used pain medications called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) can cause severe damage to the kidneys, liver, and the stomach.

Many antidepressants are associated with increased incidence of suicide, homicidal thoughts, and actual homicides.

Chemotherapy drugs can and do cause cancer.

Some blood thinners can cause deadly bone marrow suppression.