Self-medication is growing global phenomenon that has been traditionally defined as an individual action of taking medication or medical treatment without prescription. However this view has fallen short to the contemporary phenomenon that goes beyond self-care and it is increasingly associated to mass consumption induced by advertising. In that sense, this paper introduces definitions and explanatory theories of self-medication offered by scientific literature, and it offers a new hypothesis on self-medication as individual consumption behavior explained by a simple causal cognitive positioning of drug action, facilitated by marketing and advertising of drugs. We conclude by showing the importance of increase the consumer education about the risk of self-medication explained by the complexity of drug action in the organism.
