Another week, another rant. This week's topic is an easy target, but one I personally feel rather strongly about - namely, the overmedicating of America.
It's gotten to the point where if any little thing is going wrong in one's life, the appropriate response is to seek medication for it, rather than identifying the problem and dealing with it from there. My own personal experience with such medication has left me practically unable to take aspirin. I was diagnosed with ADD (who wasn't?) and Ritalin was prescribed. I didn't like the way it made me feel. Things that I normally would have found howlingly funny were greeted with a sort of "grow up" attitude on my part. Recently, a friend told me that she thought at the time that I was still bitchy, but no longer funny. I got off the Ritalin - the only person who claimed to notice a difference in my ability to concentrate was my mother - and went back to being me. I'd rather have a sense of humor and be disorganized than be an anal-retentive bitch.
Which brings me to my main point. I can't imagine that the people I know - all of whom, trust me, know my feelings on this one - who are taking mood altering medication feel any better than they have in the past. In fact, it seems like they feel worse. I don't know why they continue to take the medicine, except that everyone in America is saying that they should. Let's take a look at this behavior, shall we? I feel bad about my life, which may or may not suck - but I'm willing to bet that Paul Allen and Bill Gates don't take these medications - and I decide that the informed response is to take a pill. I shouldn't work on the elements of my life that need work. These drugs remove personal responsibility. This should come as no surprise, in a country where the phrase "personal responsibility" is up there with "emaciated crack whore", but it still disturbs me deeply. I mean, let's consider the future here, class.
The medication culture of this country tells people that they should just let their situational awareness atrophy. I mean, I know when I start getting depressed that I need to clean my house up. That's it. That simple act makes me feel massively better, and the longer I put off the cleaning, the worse I feel, the harder it gets. Ergo, I clean my house. If I placed all the responsibility for my feelings on this little pill, I not only would assume that the pill would make me feel okay, but that my failure to feel better could be blamed on the pill. There would be no impetus for me to examine what is happening to me and around me. I wouldn't know my own cure.
And why not? Because I am such an altruistic spirit that I believe in making doctors and drug companies rich at the expense of my soul, the price of my humanity. I mean, if I can't even identify what makes me feel good or bad, I'm no longer human. And I'm not up on my research, but I'd be willing to bet that unawareness of oneself is a mark of at best the lower order mammals.
Those ads for Paxel that are aimed at socially shy children worry the fuck out of me. How long is it before we're seeing the sort of behavior found in This Perfect Day or practically any other future story? We are creating a race of sheep. Children who watch their parents turn to legalized drugs do not grow up to be children who believe in other solutions. Children who watch their parents get dictated to by housing communities about the color of their houses are not children who can make their own decisions. Everything that adults do affects them - why are we doing what we do?
That's my theory, anyway. And it's 100% drug free. If you can't deal with your life, do you really think that pharmaceutical companies are interested in helping? Or is it possible that they're just hoping to make the mortgage paper on their insanely expensive properties this month?
Medically unclassifiable and unwilling,
Channon