Posted by Tomatheus on July 19, 2012, at 20:47:03
In reply to Re: Correcting an Imbalance or getting high?, posted by huxley on July 19, 2012, at 19:28:17
Huxley,
Thank you for your reply. I basically agree with much of what you wrote, although my choice of words might be different from yours in some instances. I would agree with you that psychiatric patients are using drugs to change their state, but I would say that from a symptomatic point of view, we're trying to change our state from being unhealthy and dysfunctional to being healthy and functional. That doesn't mean that reducing the severity of symptoms necessarily corrects the underlying cause of the symptoms or even that we always achieve our goal of feeling more mentally healthy, but mental wellness is the goal with psychopharmacology. Usually when I think of someone getting high, I think of that person being symptom free to begin with (which may not always be accurate) and then creating what one might consider to be "symptoms" that weren't previously present (such as an altered perception of reality). In other words, mental wellness does not seem to be the goal of getting high. That's not to say that there can't be any overlap, like for instance, that street drugs can't be used for medicinal purposes, including the treatment of mental disorders. And both users of street drugs and patients taking psychiatric drugs are trying to change their mental states with substances, as you pointed out. But I think that where treating a psychiatric condition with medications differs from getting high is with the goals of the two practices.
Tomatheus
Dx: schizoaffective disorder
Taking Abilify and 6 supplements
tomatheus.blogspot.com
poster:Tomatheus
thread:1021755
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120718/msgs/1021808.html