Better Living through Chemistry?
Victoria Hardy
January 31, 2007
When I was a teenager in high school we all knew of the boy who stood in the back hall, selling joints from his Army overcoat. None of the kids I went to school with died of overdoses, there were the car wrecks and hunting accidents that seemed to take a kid a year out of my class, but no drug overdoses, I guess the world of drugs and kids have changed. When I was a kid pharmaceutical companies didn’t advertise on the television, either.
In high school I knew one kid who took regular, prescribed medication and it was for ulcers and despite the pot smoking I wonder if my generation was one of the last to be drug-free. “Better living through Chemistry” was a phrase I heard a lot in the late eighties and early nineties as pharmaceutical companies began making huge steps in behavior modification medicines, no longer just something confined to the dark halls of institutions and the carpeted floors of the psychiatric offices, but mass-marketed. The idea that we were not good enough as we were, swept our nation and family doctors began prescribing these pills like candy.
It seems we are a world full of socially disordered people, Prozac alone claims to have served over 54 million people worldwide and depression of one description or another is the malaise affecting us. We are medicating our children at unbelievable rates and it appears we have little interest in how that will translate into adulthood for those children; perhaps it is just easier for us if they slow down and take a chill-pill.
I have a radical idea, suppose we suffer depression because there is something inside of us that needs soothing or acknowledging. Perhaps going through depression is just part of the journey and we will come out on the other side a stronger, better person. Perhaps depression is a way our mind/body/spirit connection tells us something is in need of change or some hard fact in our life needs to be addressed. Perhaps taking the pills only stops our progression forward.
I recognize that this is a sensitive issue with many, but before the e-mails fill my inbox, let me clarify, I know depression, having buried my only child, I do, indeed, know depression. I also know that after I weaned myself off the pills the doctor had prescribed, the pain of that loss was still under the surface, seething, I hadn’t stepped forward; I had only delayed the pain. Sometimes all you can do is take a deep breath and allow yourself to feel what ails you. Living life means there are ups and downs, good and bad, heart swelling moments and heart breaking moments, isn’t that what makes it complete? Isn’t that how we learn to be better people? Isn’t that how we grow into wise old sages?
As pharmaceutical companies advertise on the television daily, just another business attempting to sell us things we do not need, we should ask ourselves if they are truly interested in what is best for us, or if the bottom line is just that, a monetary endeavor. And as new drugs are released and quickly mass marketed, it seems just a short time before the ambulance chasing attorneys are marketing their services for those who were injured by the pharmaceutical companies. It appears to be a vicious cycle and nowhere in that scheme do we come out the benefactor, only the victim.
In high school I knew one kid who took regular, prescribed medication and it was for ulcers and despite the pot smoking I wonder if my generation was one of the last to be drug-free. “Better living through Chemistry” was a phrase I heard a lot in the late eighties and early nineties as pharmaceutical companies began making huge steps in behavior modification medicines, no longer just something confined to the dark halls of institutions and the carpeted floors of the psychiatric offices, but mass-marketed. The idea that we were not good enough as we were, swept our nation and family doctors began prescribing these pills like candy.
It seems we are a world full of socially disordered people, Prozac alone claims to have served over 54 million people worldwide and depression of one description or another is the malaise affecting us. We are medicating our children at unbelievable rates and it appears we have little interest in how that will translate into adulthood for those children; perhaps it is just easier for us if they slow down and take a chill-pill.
I have a radical idea, suppose we suffer depression because there is something inside of us that needs soothing or acknowledging. Perhaps going through depression is just part of the journey and we will come out on the other side a stronger, better person. Perhaps depression is a way our mind/body/spirit connection tells us something is in need of change or some hard fact in our life needs to be addressed. Perhaps taking the pills only stops our progression forward.
I recognize that this is a sensitive issue with many, but before the e-mails fill my inbox, let me clarify, I know depression, having buried my only child, I do, indeed, know depression. I also know that after I weaned myself off the pills the doctor had prescribed, the pain of that loss was still under the surface, seething, I hadn’t stepped forward; I had only delayed the pain. Sometimes all you can do is take a deep breath and allow yourself to feel what ails you. Living life means there are ups and downs, good and bad, heart swelling moments and heart breaking moments, isn’t that what makes it complete? Isn’t that how we learn to be better people? Isn’t that how we grow into wise old sages?
As pharmaceutical companies advertise on the television daily, just another business attempting to sell us things we do not need, we should ask ourselves if they are truly interested in what is best for us, or if the bottom line is just that, a monetary endeavor. And as new drugs are released and quickly mass marketed, it seems just a short time before the ambulance chasing attorneys are marketing their services for those who were injured by the pharmaceutical companies. It appears to be a vicious cycle and nowhere in that scheme do we come out the benefactor, only the victim.
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