Re: sighunctific rigger

Brendan McKennedy (suburbantourist@hotmail.com)
Sat, 04 Apr 1998 22:39:48 -0800 (PST) 

>We started out talking about treatment and medicine and what some 
doctors
>think, and we touched on what some of our subscribers (who mercifully 
have
>declined to speak) feel about treatment.  I like to think this is a 
subject
>that has strangled on its own vomit.  If it's not, it surely will.
>
>Has anyone else a comment to make on it?  Or are Scottie and I the only
>ones who have run into the brick walls of getting the brain to do what
>people think it's supposed to.


I've been reading this thread with much curiosity, my mouse finger 
itching toward the Reply button, but terrified of subscribers with 
experience on both sides of the 20mg pill.  

I had a friend who was on Prozac for a short time--a debacle, it was 
later revealed that his "therapist" wasn't actually someone who should 
have been writing prescriptions (i.e., a doctor)--and since then I've 
been terribly biased against medication.  I wrote a thesis paper on the 
negative affects of Prozac and the other SSRIs, and was shocked at the 
support I found.  I'm sort of a purist myself; I'm very squeamish about 
messing around with the brain when we know so very little about how it 
works, about the offstage drama (to use, unqualified, a term I just 
learned) we may be inflicting upon our population.  I am also scared of 
some of the vocabulary I've read while studying the topic--terms like 
"Better than normal".  Being a writer, a musician, and an amateur 
appreciater of all the arts, I don't like the idea of mussing about with 
any aspect of the Human Experience.  I've also responded in typical 
American mass hysteria fashion--along the lines of Salem, Joe McCarthy, 
et al--to the Soma fear...that pretty soon we'll all be popping some 
pill or other simply to flatten the beautiful ups and downs of life, and 
have found the odd example of Prozacville, U.S.A., where the town doctor 
prescribes Prozac to everyone who appears with any symptom, whether it 
be clinical depression or a skinned knee.

ON THE OTHER HAND...if there's one thing I've learned in the four years 
since my personal rift with Mother Church, it's to let everyone follow 
his or her bliss through whatever routes he or she chooses, as long as 
no one else is being hurt.  I used to try and spout my newfound basis 
for agnosticism to any slightly Christian peer who would sit the length, 
and the few times I succeeded in supplanting the much-need comfort of 
faith in people's lives, I was sorry.  More lately I've tried to resist 
the dorm philosopher's urge to lead the Brendan Revolution, and let 
everyone believe what makes them happy, only engaging in that argument 
when invited.  I've found the same to be true when it comes to 
psychological "problems" and the ways of dealing with them.  In the same 
way that Religion perhaps should not be seen as a terrible plague unless 
the Religious person finds him/herself unfulfilled, dissent on the 
social panel of psychology should only be seen as a "problem" when it 
unhappily disrupts the life of the person who is dealing with it, or the 
people around him/her.  Consider Vonnegut's Mr Rosewater, who was 
entirely happy despite what was deemed by everyone else in his 
environment as his Sickness.  We must remember that mental "health" is 
subjective, culturally defined, subculturally defined, and individually 
defined.

When it comes to medicating a problem when one is perceived by the 
individual, I for one have some ethical, Darwinist, and aesthetic 
objections.  Since I wrote that silly thesis, however, I've come in 
contact with not a few people who have begun to live their lives with 
some amount of satisfaction since they began taking whatever medication.  
It's up to the individual.  Whatever makes you happy, follow your bliss, 
as long as it doesn't disrupt my life or anyone else's.

Brendan

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