Willy Trolove: Be quiet about your pills while I deal to the spiders

Advances in medical science are numerous and commonly enjoyed. They are so numerous and commonly enjoyed that sometimes it seems almost everyone is on some kind of medication.

It has almost got to the stage where you need to be popping pills just to be socially relevant.

Even the most normal, everyday people are taking powerful prescription drugs when there doesn't appear to be much wrong with them, except for their taste in Indonesian wall hangings.

That's the thing about health problems - appearances are deceiving, symptoms are not always obvious. Just because someone looks fine doesn't mean that they are. Just because you haven't met their multiple personalities doesn't mean that they don't have any. Sometimes it's the fittest and healthiest people who call in sick on the Friday morning before a long weekend.

We shouldn't be surprised that so many people are on medication, given the variety available. There are pills for low blood pressure and high cholesterol. There are pills for back pain and arthritis. There are pills that make you crave doughnuts less and want vegetables more. There are sleeping pills, wake-me-up pills and keep-me-going-until-I-drop pills.

There are drugs that turn you on and drugs that turn you off. There are drugs that encourage a particular appendage to stand up at a useful angle when it fails to provide the friendly service it was designed for.

There are medicines that ease anxiety and prevent paranoia. There are medicines that lift depression and cure shyness. There are medicines that stop you seeing giant vampire spiders relentlessly marching towards you across the patio.

The important thing to remember about all these medications is that there is nothing wrong with taking them. People are different. People have problems. For many, life is painful, uncomfortable or filled with an irrational fear of vacuum cleaners. If medical science can relieve that pain, provide some comfort and inspire people to vacuum the house without being nagged repeatedly by their partners beforehand, then surely that is a good thing.

But what is not such a good thing is that medication no longer seems to be a private and personal matter. Instead, in our increasingly me-centred society, people who are on medication feel the need to tell everyone about this in great detail, even when nobody is in the slightest bit interested.

"Oh," they say, in a loud voice during a lull in the conversation, "I can't drink alcohol/eat pink food/laugh at jokes/lift heavy objects because of my medication."

At which point you are obliged to ask what medication they are taking, and pretend to be sympathetic, while they blather on for the next half an hour about their allergy to oxygen or their unremitting constipation.

It wasn't always like this. Not so long ago people were modest and self-effacing. They kept their illnesses to themselves. They would rather suffer in silence than share personal details about their health.

"I'm a box of birds," they would say, as they clutched their heart in a death grip. "It's just a little indigestion," they would declare, as paramedics loaded them into the ambulance. "I've never felt better," they would state, as the undertaker measured them for a coffin.

And if they were taking medication, the last thing they would do was reveal it, even to people who needed to know.

"You're having a seizure!" you'd point out. "Do you have any medication?" "Oh no," they'd reply, foaming at the mouth. "Not medication. Just a few little vitamin pills."

And while they writhed on the floor and started to turn blue, they would add "Regular exercise and a well-balanced diet - that's all you need for a long and healthy life".

Those days are gone. The pragmatic stoicism once known as a stiff upper lip is today seen as foolish self-delusion.

But it's not too late. We can still learn from the past. All it takes is for people to be slightly more embarrassed about their health problems, and slightly more reluctant to talk about their medication in public. Shyness, particularly concerning personal health, is not difficult to master, and in this day and age perhaps we should see it as a virtue to be encouraged, rather than a disorder to be cured.

So, please, if you are taking medication, you don't need to tell me. You can assume that I feel sorry for you without having to burden me with the details. Because, to be honest with you, I have far more important things to worry about.

Like these giant vampire spiders relentlessly marching towards me across the patio.