When I first began my philosophical study of American drug attitudes seven years ago, I was actually afraid to broach the topic of antidepressants, because I did not want to alienate myself from the 1 in 4 American women who take a psychiatric medicine every day of their life. 1 I soon realized, however, that a critique of the psychiatric pill mill was crucial to a critique of American drug attitudes. It is, in fact, highly revealing that we are a country that hates drugs and yet one in which we actually encourage all obstreperous individuals in our lives to "take their meds." Mothers who think that they hate drugs, actually encourage their kids to take their meds. The only way to make sense of this striking hypocrisy is to assume that those who say such things actually believe that there is a qualitative difference between "meds" and "drugs," and this is simply not true. While there has long been a PR campaign afoot to imply that antidepressants work "scientifically" while "drugs" merely treat the "symptoms," this has turned out to be a lie. As Noam Shpancer pointed out in Psychology Today in 2022, "we don't know why antidepressants work,"2 to which I would add, we don't know that they DO work, if by "work" we mean to empower uses rather than to sedate them and render them satisfied with a subpar status quo.
"This is why I consider antidepressants to be creepy."
Even if we were to insist, in spite of the evidence or lack thereof, that antidepressants do work scientifically (whatever that means), this would immediately raise the question, "What do we mean by 'work'?" Do we mean that the antidepressant user is becoming the person that they wish to be with their use, or do we mean that the user is becoming the person that the pharmaceutical companies and government think that they SHOULD be in a profit-driven American society? This is why I consider antidepressants to be creepy. These are drugs that go straight to the brain to irreversibly muck about with brain chemistry. These are also drugs for which dependency is a feature, not a bug. This means that users are signing up to experience life, for the rest of their life, in the way that pharmaceutical companies assume that they SHOULD experience life. There will be no ecstasy, therefore, no help getting outside the box of one's internal scripts. Those who wish to live large are out of luck. We must be contented with the paltry serving of happiness that the government and Big Pharma consider it safe to dish out to us.
And what about this idea that it is wrong to treat the symptoms? That is simply not true. Of course, that statement has some meaning when it comes to physical illnesses. If you've got, heaven forbid, cancer of the throat, you should not try to treat it by merely sucking on cough drops. But when it comes to problems with mood and mentation, it is far better to treat the symptoms than to irreversibly modify brain chemistry in one particular way based on the theories of a financially-motivated biochemical determinist working for a pharmaceutical company. If a given symptomatic intervention does not help, you can try another. If the Big Pharma drug fails, you're stuck on it for life. Besides, there are extended benefits to "treating the symptoms." If I smoke opium on a weekend to better appreciate, say, an opera, it does far more than give me what Drug Warriors would pejoratively describe as a temporary "high" (a state of being, by the way, which could just as easily be described as "a feeling of spiritual transcendence"). The benefits of such use extend throughout the week, since I look forward to that weekend of opium smoking, and even materialists will grudgingly admit that a state of positive anticipation contributes to psychological well-being.
Finally, the idea that we can figure out "the real reason" for our depression is presumptuous. Science looks for easy answers. But only God him or herself could know, let alone tease apart, all the factors that result in our attitudes as human beings and then rank them as to their deterministic value in any particular case. Besides, it is crazy to start casting about for explanations for depression without first dealing with the gorilla in the room, the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that can inspire and elate. This is why it is so frustrating to perform any research on these subjects. Almost every single medical pundit completely ignores the fact that drug prohibition has specifically outlawed those drugs that inspire and elate. In other words, it has specifically outlawed all drugs that could help the depressed. So when a psychiatrist like Gabriel Maté tells me I am suffering from inner pain, I say, "Well, yes, I'm sure that is true, but that is really changing the subject. First, let's re-legalize Mother Nature and then let me decide if I still even feel the need to be discussing my life with you in the first place!"
"Don't tell ME what's nece! I tell YOU what's nece!"
I actually said something of the kind to my last psychiatrist and he subsequently "fired me" as a patient. (I'm sure it had nothing to do with my previous complaint via the Sentara Customer Service Hotline about the recent failure of the clinic to fill my prescription in a timely manner.) I had always been told that one should be perfectly honest with their psychiatrist about the way that they feel; how else were they going to help you, after all, right? But apparently that does not apply to patients who feel that the psychiatric status quo has turned them into a ward of the healthcare state. That's a belief that you're not supposed to have. Well, at least the doctor in question did not pathologize my heresy and seek to have me committed as being literally insane. It's ironic, though: after 40 years of humbly deferring to the medical system, I finally got up the courage to tell my psychiatrist what I really thought about this disempowering rigamarole, and I was rewarded for my frankness by being, as it were, kicked out on the street.
How dare I? I was the patient, after all. What did I know about such things?
I was reminded of the scene in "High Anxiety" when Dr. Thorndyke questions the need for psychiatric sessions to deal with his fear of heights.
DR. THORNDYKE: But, Professor, is it really nece--
PROFESSOR LILLOMAN: It IS "nece"! I know what is "nece"! Don't tell ME what's "nece," I tell YOU what's "nece."
Key Takeaways:
Meds are drugs.
It is not wrong to treat the symptoms when it comes to mood and mentation.
Only a god could know the real reason for our mental states.
There can be no intelligent discussion of antidepressants without a discussion of the drug prohibition which made those pills the only game in town for the depressed.
Clearly a millennia's worth of positive use of coca by the Peruvian Indians means nothing to the FDA. Proof must show up under a microscope.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
No drug causes addiction after one use. From this fact alone, it follows that even drugs like meth and crack and Fentanyl can be used wisely -- on an intermittent basis.
Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.
The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.
American businesses judge people, not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their digestive systems.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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