Posted by chujoe on May 6, 2010, at 6:10:42
In reply to Lou's reply- » chujoe, posted by Lou Pilder on May 5, 2010, at 21:30:32
Lou, we put "foreign substances" into our brains every time we eat a candy bar or take a vitamin. We change our brain chemistry by meditating or exercising, etc. Human beings have been experimenting with this stuff for thousands of years. I'm not saying that some stuff isn't bad for you, it's just that I don't understand your particular focus on psych meds. Have you ever taken them? (Sorry if you've answered this before -- just direct me to the thread.)
I'll grant you that psych meds are probably over prescribed in the US and that some people would do better with psychotherapy or CBT or biofeedback, etc. But I'd argue just as strongly that there are times when psych meds are absolutely appropriate and beneficial. I speak here from my own experience and the experience of close friends who might not have made it back from madness without some of those drugs.
Maybe if we lived in Eden we wouldn't need the drugs -- we'd have lots of time to lie around and recover our balance, we'd live in loving extended families, the animals would comfort us, and we'd drink fresh water from the stream. But we don't live in Eden; we live in a society in which we're expected to get up and go to work or school every day and to "be productive." So we drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, have a martini, etc. We medicate ourselves in order to be the selves we are expected to be and which we expect ourselves to be. A hundred years ago, when all this became too much -- if we were lucky enough to be middle or upper class -- we'd have a "nervous breakdown" and retire to a dimly lit room at home or in an asylum until we felt able to face the world again. (If you were working class, or poor, a hundred years ago, you just drank more, smoked more, self-medicated more & since you couldn't afford the quiet room, you solved the problem eventually by dying, sometimes sooner, sometimes later.)
Sorry. I didn't intend to write a treatise on the history of madness. I just think that the kind of purity you apparently seek (I may misunderstand) is not obtainable and that we are left to do the best we can. I think it's useful to be aware of problems with various things we put in our bodies -- I stopped smoking 25 years ago, for instance, because there was clear evidence that the risks outweighed the benefits. And I'd stop taking a psych drug if it could be shown that the risks outweighed the benefits. In fact, I'd wager that the majority of people who post here, consciously or unconsciously, make a risk-benefit analysis every day -- Psychobabble is an information tool that helps people make that analysis. After which, many of us make the informed decision to take a particular drug or combination of drugs.
poster:chujoe
thread:946156
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100504/msgs/946520.html