This article will attempt to explain why the consumption of psychotropic medications is increasing in Western societies. To do so, rather than trying to gain insight into this question in the usual, somewhat classic manner (i.e., by questioning the boundaries between the normal and the pathological), we will instead approach it by analyzing some of the mechanisms that today put medication at the centre of our daily lives. In this article, I argue that the «success» of psychotropic medications can be seen as an epiphenomenon of the success of medications in general. After deconstructing some of the postulates or «myths» on which studies of psychotropic medication use are too often based, I will offer explanations at several levels for the «success» of medications in contemporary Western societies by identifying the threefold «obsession» that has arisen around body, health, and risk.