Posted by avid abulia on July 31, 2003, at 0:24:23
In reply to Re: Would like everyone's opinion...., posted by zalle on July 30, 2003, at 21:39:38
I gotta agree with you there, zalle... i've been told that I'm emotionally labile, rely on a few close friends, and have self-aggressive tendencies because I've got Geschwinn's syndrome cuz I got hit upside the head real hard (don't even know if I spelled that "Geschwinn" right, though) ... but part of "Geschwinn's syndrome" is deepened cognitive responses, hypergraphia, and hyper-religiousity, and since when was it a mental illness to think too much, write/draw a lot, and have the occasional non-psychotic transcendental experience? And, irregardless of whether it is a mental illness or not, how can it be seperated from my environment (a skinhead wielding a metal bar) from my biology (everything on my side of the border between my scalp and the bar upon impact)?
Additionally, i've been anorexic for most of my life, supposedly started because of sexual abuse when I was in pre-school... but pedophilia is a mental illness, and most of us here agree that mental illnesses have a biological component, so was it my environment or someone else's biology that started this? Or, alternatively, did I just up and decide at the age of 3, "Well, this whole "eating" scene is getting a bit dull, I think i'll just quit wasting my time on it." Where does self-determinism come into play here, if at all?
I've also been told that depression must be a biological disorder because there are effective biological treatments... well, there are some pretty convincing data that ethyl alcohol is a pretty darn effective treatment for sobriety, so that must be a biological disorder as well! I've been told that my tic disorder is genetic, because I have a cousin that has it too... okay, so what gene is it located on? Tic disorder could have virtually any other mental disorder substituted in its place in that question... okay, so my cousin has Tourette's syndrome too... all that says to me is that it is familial, not that it is genetic. Who knows, maybe our grandma or granddad had a latent infection that was passed down the generations to us, two people who happen to develop an environmental trigger (in this case, we both have early onset eating disorders, so maybe malnutrition leading to suppressed immunity?) and get full-blown Tourette's syndrome. Now here's this other fascinating familial link: I got some e-mail from my dad today, apparently he typed it out on his computer, and here I am typing away myself!
Basically, i think there is no really true answer to this question... but I do think it was true what Zalle said in their post, that pharmas are making us feel like we must be chemically altered so that we can be normal, which apparently has been well-characterized by science but I have as yet been unable to find what the diagnostic criteria are for "normal" ... and the people who have been chemically altered will often gladly elaborate on how right the pharmas were... sort of like how drunk people at parties always want to get the shy one drunk, too.
I think, to a large extent, Zalle is also correct that we are kept safely medicated to keep us more manageable... I mean, over half of the United States prison system is on daily prescribed psychotropic drug regimens.
But I can't complain too much, i like the effects of my anticonvulsants. Like with SOMA in "Brave New World" I can wake up the next day without so much as a headache or a dogma!
How is it that that song by the Germs went?
"Just a pill and a dream/ A sill and a scheme/ It's a suicide machine... "
~AA
poster:avid abulia
thread:246712
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030728/msgs/246912.html