I’ve been told that you just pass them through your digestive system like a seed by some and then that they are critical to your health by others.
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Some vitamins, such as vitamin C, your body can only use a certain amount and doesn’t store extra. If your diet is deficient in vitamin C, taking a pill can help, because it will provide all you need, and it won’t hurt, because the extra will just be excreted. Taking a megadose of vitamin C would just be a waste, because your body can only use so much, and taking ten times the regular amount just means more will be excreted.
Most multivitamins have reasonable doses of things that you probably get all you need from your diet, but if something is missing in your diet then the vitamin pill fills that gap and does no harm. Whether the expense is worthwhile to cover the small chance that you’re not getting enough is a decision you need to make yourself.
However, some medications interfere with some vitamins, and in those cases taking a megadose can help. I knew someone who had really bad chapped hands because of a medication she was taking, and her doctor put her on a super-high dose of something, and the problem went away. But that was explicitly on the advice of her doctor, she wasn’t just self-medicating.
Also: your body does store some vitamins, and megadoses of those can eventually make you sick from overdosing. I read a story some years ago about a child who died because of an overdose of vitamin A.
EDIT: /u/foo1235 has pointed out that overdoses of vitamin C can cause kidney stones. Your body will get rid of the excess, but you can overload the systems which do that.
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