(no subject)
I probably should not bother, but I am going to warn you anyway. I've got some rambling thoughts I am about to put down about our culture of victims and happy drugs. Some of you are going to take things I say here very personally, and I'd rather not piss you off. So, if my making comments about the sheer numbers of people all "suffering from depression" in our culture is going to make you feel I am demeaning your personal experience in any way, don't read what comes after the cut. (Oh, yeah, I should warn you that it is quite long. Get a cup of coffee or tea before you start.)
Alleviating pain; or, the more things change, the less we know.
So, a surprisingly large percentage of the people I know are currently, or recently have been, taking mind altering drugs to alleviate the pain of their daily lives. The large majority of them are doing this under a doctor's care. And most of them disparage so-called "druggies", who are self-medicating, if you know what I mean. And I got to thinking. Is it just that people with depression, ADD, OCD, Asperger's Syndrome, Anxiety, usw tend to hang out with each other; so, the fact that I know a few means that I know a lot? Or, is it really true that so many Americans are currently under treatment for some mental issue? In a completely unscientific survey, common wisdom seems to point to the latter.
Most of the people I know who are suffering from one of these disorders have also told me that they know this because their doctor mentioned they might have them. Even more commonly, they just read about the disorder in question somewhere and feel like the description fits them. It is not unusual for someone to tell me something along the lines of 'I'm thinking of taking $FOO for my $BAR" and then the next time I see them they tell me they've got a presription for $FOO from their doctor. I recall well knowing people in college who took their first abnormal psychology class only to feel like every weird syndrome and mental malady sort of described them. I used to read a USENET group for "survivors" of sexual abuse and more than half of the people posting regularly there claimed to have Multiple Personality Disorder, or whatever they're calling it these days. It's almost like we want to be sick.
Not surprising, I suppose. A lot of religions do this, but Judeo-Christian tradition for sure beats original sin, sins of the father, etc. into its followers. Even though many of the folks I know are not Christian, Western culture has had a couple thousand years of it telling us we are all fundementally broken and only something outside ourselves can "fix" us.
The thing is, I've had a look at the diagnostic descriptions of many of these disorders and syndromes in places like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and there are a couple things which almost always send up red flags for me. One is that the disorder is almost always rare. There have been vanishingly few confirmed diagnoses of MPD, in the history of psychology and psychiatry as sciences. Certainly, small compared to the total population of the United States. And the other red flag is that most of these disorders are serious enough that people suffering from them cannot function in society. Yet all the people I know are functioning fine. Nay, they generally have large and thriving social circles. They spend more time doing things with other people than I do, and aren't having any problems holding down a day job.
Now, I know, that is the whole point of treatment, right? Fair enough. I am just dismayed by the number of people I know who are getting treatment who were functioning fine before treatment. And I know even more people who are self-diagnosed, and then went and found a doctor who would agree with them. And, I don't mean that as a statement against them. They did not say to themselves they were going to go out and find a doctor who agreed with them. I believe these people where experiencing actual mental discomfort, and even anguish, and did what I would have done -- they listened to themselves and their feelings and when one doctor didn't do the same, they sought another who would. After all, doctors are not infallible and if you know you are in pain it is the right thing to do to find relief.
Or, at least, I was dismayed. Not anymore. What I was thinking was sort of along the lines of: but, what is it in our lives which is so bad that we're all experiencing so much pain? Are we just a bunch fo wimps and at the first sign of any twinge of pain we run for the medicine cabinet? And I was answering: yes, yes we are. I heard an author speaking on the radio about how our entertainment media, especially televison, has infantilized [sic] us. We are all just a bunch of children. We look around, eyes greedy for the next shiny thing to entertain us, unable to take joy in doing work, in the day we have before us, in anything that doesn't loudly grab our attention as obvious entertainment. And, I was nodding along thinking that this could also speak to my questions about why we're taking so many drugs to alleviate mental anguish. Adults would understand that sometimes you feel bad, and sometimes you feel good, and sometimes you don't feel much of anything. Adults would understand that we are not entitled to joy, the world is not here to provide it, and we make our own bliss. Wouldn't they?
Well, yeah. I still think that's part of it. But, I think my big mistake was in believing that we're somehow worse about this now than we've ever been. I don't think we can blame this on TV or movies or RockNRoll or any other boogeyman. If you think about it, this seeking out of quick fixes to unhappiness, discomfort, and pain is inherent in humans and has been for a long time. It's not even the quickness of the fix we are looking for. It is the feeling that we are in control, that we are effecting change in the situation.
Previously, we might have turned to religion of some form. If we were raised in a culture with voodoo and we were unhappy because our boss was a prick and we spend ten hours a day at work so this has a significant impact on our lives, we might have gone to a mamaloa who would give us a grisgris we could use against our boss. Through this we would be doing something to remove the prickness of our boss. And, even if the boss kept being a prick, then we would know that he had a stronger mamaloa; but we would also know that we had done something, we'd taken action. And that leaves things open for the possibility of other action we could take.
I think this brings up an important point. We're not even looking to remove the pain, just to assuage it. The measures we seek as relief often do not give us true relief, by our own accounting. Catholicism offers ritual in this life, paradise in the next one. Paxil does not remove the pain; it makes it easier to take. But, they do offer us a feeling that we are doing something, that we can do something, that we have some control over our surroundings. The current state of affairs is nothing new, it seems. TV is not making us worse. We are not all becoming a bunch of whiney-babies. We always have been.
And all of this brings me to the one thing which is still nagging at me. It is not interesting that we are seeking relief from mental anguish in such numbers; it appears we've been doing this for quite some time now. But, it is very interesting that the way in which we are doing this is by drugging ourselves insensate. It's not that ritual drugs are anything new. Human cultures have incorporated a wide pharmacopoeia into ritual use throughout time. From woad to whatever that white powder is that the Polynesians blow up each other's noses, there is a long tradition of ritual drug use. And, ritual drug use is exactly what we have today. We take these pills as voodoo, as symbols, as tiny proofs that we have control over the things which cause us pain.
The Polynesians, Celts, Maori, etc., have/had two things going for them, though. They never employed brain chemistry altering substances in anything like the quantities we do. And, let's face it, we should know better. We have the science to both have a decent idea of what these drugs do, and also a very good idea of what we don't know about what they are doing. Some of these drugs are lifetime affairs. Pregnant women are taking them. We give them to children. What the hell are we thinking?
In addition, it seems notable that, previously, our symbolic acts were symbolic. We prayed. We practiced voodoo. We divined. All of these things are symbolic ways of affecting, or predicting, our surroundings. But these drugs actually change us. We may have felt better after writing pain's name in charcoal on a pieace of wood and throwing it into the fire; but, these drugs physically change the way we feel. So, maybe we've upped the ante after all.
Ok. I guess this indicates it's about time I dusted off Szasz's Ceremonial Chemistry and actually read it. I've been meaning to for years, and I love Szasz, and I know that book's all about this. This is just intellectual masturbation; it's time to actually force the grey matter to do some work....
Alleviating pain; or, the more things change, the less we know.
So, a surprisingly large percentage of the people I know are currently, or recently have been, taking mind altering drugs to alleviate the pain of their daily lives. The large majority of them are doing this under a doctor's care. And most of them disparage so-called "druggies", who are self-medicating, if you know what I mean. And I got to thinking. Is it just that people with depression, ADD, OCD, Asperger's Syndrome, Anxiety, usw tend to hang out with each other; so, the fact that I know a few means that I know a lot? Or, is it really true that so many Americans are currently under treatment for some mental issue? In a completely unscientific survey, common wisdom seems to point to the latter.
Most of the people I know who are suffering from one of these disorders have also told me that they know this because their doctor mentioned they might have them. Even more commonly, they just read about the disorder in question somewhere and feel like the description fits them. It is not unusual for someone to tell me something along the lines of 'I'm thinking of taking $FOO for my $BAR" and then the next time I see them they tell me they've got a presription for $FOO from their doctor. I recall well knowing people in college who took their first abnormal psychology class only to feel like every weird syndrome and mental malady sort of described them. I used to read a USENET group for "survivors" of sexual abuse and more than half of the people posting regularly there claimed to have Multiple Personality Disorder, or whatever they're calling it these days. It's almost like we want to be sick.
Not surprising, I suppose. A lot of religions do this, but Judeo-Christian tradition for sure beats original sin, sins of the father, etc. into its followers. Even though many of the folks I know are not Christian, Western culture has had a couple thousand years of it telling us we are all fundementally broken and only something outside ourselves can "fix" us.
The thing is, I've had a look at the diagnostic descriptions of many of these disorders and syndromes in places like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and there are a couple things which almost always send up red flags for me. One is that the disorder is almost always rare. There have been vanishingly few confirmed diagnoses of MPD, in the history of psychology and psychiatry as sciences. Certainly, small compared to the total population of the United States. And the other red flag is that most of these disorders are serious enough that people suffering from them cannot function in society. Yet all the people I know are functioning fine. Nay, they generally have large and thriving social circles. They spend more time doing things with other people than I do, and aren't having any problems holding down a day job.
Now, I know, that is the whole point of treatment, right? Fair enough. I am just dismayed by the number of people I know who are getting treatment who were functioning fine before treatment. And I know even more people who are self-diagnosed, and then went and found a doctor who would agree with them. And, I don't mean that as a statement against them. They did not say to themselves they were going to go out and find a doctor who agreed with them. I believe these people where experiencing actual mental discomfort, and even anguish, and did what I would have done -- they listened to themselves and their feelings and when one doctor didn't do the same, they sought another who would. After all, doctors are not infallible and if you know you are in pain it is the right thing to do to find relief.
Or, at least, I was dismayed. Not anymore. What I was thinking was sort of along the lines of: but, what is it in our lives which is so bad that we're all experiencing so much pain? Are we just a bunch fo wimps and at the first sign of any twinge of pain we run for the medicine cabinet? And I was answering: yes, yes we are. I heard an author speaking on the radio about how our entertainment media, especially televison, has infantilized [sic] us. We are all just a bunch of children. We look around, eyes greedy for the next shiny thing to entertain us, unable to take joy in doing work, in the day we have before us, in anything that doesn't loudly grab our attention as obvious entertainment. And, I was nodding along thinking that this could also speak to my questions about why we're taking so many drugs to alleviate mental anguish. Adults would understand that sometimes you feel bad, and sometimes you feel good, and sometimes you don't feel much of anything. Adults would understand that we are not entitled to joy, the world is not here to provide it, and we make our own bliss. Wouldn't they?
Well, yeah. I still think that's part of it. But, I think my big mistake was in believing that we're somehow worse about this now than we've ever been. I don't think we can blame this on TV or movies or RockNRoll or any other boogeyman. If you think about it, this seeking out of quick fixes to unhappiness, discomfort, and pain is inherent in humans and has been for a long time. It's not even the quickness of the fix we are looking for. It is the feeling that we are in control, that we are effecting change in the situation.
Previously, we might have turned to religion of some form. If we were raised in a culture with voodoo and we were unhappy because our boss was a prick and we spend ten hours a day at work so this has a significant impact on our lives, we might have gone to a mamaloa who would give us a grisgris we could use against our boss. Through this we would be doing something to remove the prickness of our boss. And, even if the boss kept being a prick, then we would know that he had a stronger mamaloa; but we would also know that we had done something, we'd taken action. And that leaves things open for the possibility of other action we could take.
I think this brings up an important point. We're not even looking to remove the pain, just to assuage it. The measures we seek as relief often do not give us true relief, by our own accounting. Catholicism offers ritual in this life, paradise in the next one. Paxil does not remove the pain; it makes it easier to take. But, they do offer us a feeling that we are doing something, that we can do something, that we have some control over our surroundings. The current state of affairs is nothing new, it seems. TV is not making us worse. We are not all becoming a bunch of whiney-babies. We always have been.
And all of this brings me to the one thing which is still nagging at me. It is not interesting that we are seeking relief from mental anguish in such numbers; it appears we've been doing this for quite some time now. But, it is very interesting that the way in which we are doing this is by drugging ourselves insensate. It's not that ritual drugs are anything new. Human cultures have incorporated a wide pharmacopoeia into ritual use throughout time. From woad to whatever that white powder is that the Polynesians blow up each other's noses, there is a long tradition of ritual drug use. And, ritual drug use is exactly what we have today. We take these pills as voodoo, as symbols, as tiny proofs that we have control over the things which cause us pain.
The Polynesians, Celts, Maori, etc., have/had two things going for them, though. They never employed brain chemistry altering substances in anything like the quantities we do. And, let's face it, we should know better. We have the science to both have a decent idea of what these drugs do, and also a very good idea of what we don't know about what they are doing. Some of these drugs are lifetime affairs. Pregnant women are taking them. We give them to children. What the hell are we thinking?
In addition, it seems notable that, previously, our symbolic acts were symbolic. We prayed. We practiced voodoo. We divined. All of these things are symbolic ways of affecting, or predicting, our surroundings. But these drugs actually change us. We may have felt better after writing pain's name in charcoal on a pieace of wood and throwing it into the fire; but, these drugs physically change the way we feel. So, maybe we've upped the ante after all.
Ok. I guess this indicates it's about time I dusted off Szasz's Ceremonial Chemistry and actually read it. I've been meaning to for years, and I love Szasz, and I know that book's all about this. This is just intellectual masturbation; it's time to actually force the grey matter to do some work....