The title of this post comes from a piece a classmate of mine wrote back when I was in school. I thought it was really clever, so of course I’m going to steal it here because I have never been one for clever titles. Quite honestly, I don’t remember much about the piece in question other than it was about his and his relatives’ battle with drugs (legal or not). I found it rang personal and true, though I didn’t realize the scope of how true it was until I read this article. As you read this blog, you’ll realize that I don’t react to things as soon as they occur or as soon as they are apparent. I don’t wish to offer gut reactions, as effective as they may be. I need time for things to sink in. Back to your regularly scheduled post.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that there is a drug for everything. That guy who can’t get his dick hard for his wife? We’ve got a pill for that! The dumbass who doesn’t know enough to put the cheeseburger down? Got you covered! Too lazy to force an aspirin down your throat? Apply directly to forehead! Apply directly to forehead! Apply directly to forehead! (Forgive me for being late on that.) All the ads for all those drugs upset me, but none as much as what is mentioned in the article above.
George Carlin talks about the “continued pussification of the American” in one of his bits; far be it from me to confuse a comedy routine with reality, but when I read that anti-depressants are the number one prescribed drug in America, it’s quite hard to know where one ends and the other begins.
(Yes, Carlin fans, I know he was talking about strictly males in his rant. Please don’t nitpick here.)
I am not trying to deny the existence of depression. I realize that for some people, this is a serious disease. If you’re sitting in your basement, listening to The Cure and rolling the chamber of a revolver while contemplating pulling the trigger… Xanax may be right for you. This is not where I have a problem. Where I have a problem with is people who are prescribed these drugs who, to me, just can’t deal with they every-day ups and downs of life.
I cannot claim to know what’s going through the head of every person who is prescribed Lexapro or Prozac. But when anti-depressants are the most prescribed drug in the country, it tells me there is something seriously wrong with people, and it goes beyond giving them a pill for their troubles.
Are those people - that to me don’t need it - better off living in a drug-induced haze? Perhaps. But isn’t there a little light that goes off inside some of you that says, “Hey that’s not natural!” For Christ’s sake, life sucks. Maybe there’s a reason it sucks for you, and it’s not because you haven’t had your meds today. Apparently, the doctors in this country have been reading Aldous Huxley’s masterwork Brave New World, and they decided that it was a really great idea. (Without reading the ending, of course.)
“A gramme is better than a damn” is repeated throughout the book, and it reflects the mindset of the people in Huxley’s apparent utopia. Hey, why be sad when you can take a pill? “BECAUSE THAT’S LIFE YOU FUCKING MORON!” I screamed inside myself when I read it for the first time at 17 years of age. I never thought at that time that life would imitate art so succinctly. By the way, the lead character ended up killing himself because he couldn’t deal with the perfection of the society. I’ll patiently wait for the day when that starts happening.
You may be wondering what gives me the right to attack these poor people who just want to get on with their day-to-day lives, and if a drug helps them then so be it. Maybe I don’t have the right. After all, I do consume a copious amount of liquor and beer, and sometimes the reason for it is merely to escape. I deal with booze, they deal with drugs. What’s it to me, right? The difference is after the booze is gone – and I do stop drinking, believe it or not – I still have to take life as it comes. Not that people who take anti-depressants don’t have to deal, but somehow I think Paxil is a little easier to deal with than a hangover.
To say that I don’t complain about how much my life sucks would be a lie. I whine and I bitch and I moan all the time. Just the other day I had a long conversation with my best friend; it was me waxing philosophical about how not normal I am, among other things.
“But what’s normal,” he asked.
All I’ve been told my adult life – by people and through books and movies and music – is that there is no such thing as normal. With the doctors in this country, and their willing drug-consuming patients, I think we’re getting closer and close to defining what “normal” is. Some who are reading this (or who may know me, which is one in the same, really) may say that I’m just a sad, bitter man who actually needs the drugs that I am raging against. I’ll concede that point. But as it stands I can deal with my shortcomings by simply living my life, shitty as I believe it to be at times. Can you?
2 comments:
See here's the thing that you don't get. Anti-depressants, while over prescribed do serve a legit medical purpose. If someone is slitting their wrists on a daily basis, threatening to pull the trigger in front of their 5 year old kid or shaking every minute of the god damn day when they just want to function, it is necessary. Look into the bod chemistry of these people, neurons are misfiring and more importantly their bran has little, if any, seretonin. That's what "anti-depressants" do, most of them. They heighten seretonin receptors in the brain because in those of us who are "depressed" they aren't functioning normally. I mean your suggesting that people just "deal with life" is bordering on Darwinwism to an extreme. Let's just take away cane's from people with broken legs, glasses from people who cant see, and not give anti-biotics to people with infections. Because, afterall, that's "real life".
"I realize that for some people, this is a serious disease. If you’re sitting in your basement, listening to The Cure and rolling the chamber of a revolver while contemplating pulling the trigger… Xanax may be right for you. This is not where I have a problem. "
Isn't that basically saying what you're saying? I phrased it sarcastically, sure, but other than that I realize there are people that need those drugs.
I was more trying to attack the general prescrption-happy nature of medicine in this country, with anti-depressants in general because of that article.
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