Posted by finelinebob on January 10, 2002, at 12:32:19
In reply to I don't know about you..., posted by Mr. Scott on January 9, 2002, at 21:15:35
> Maybe there just is no drug for a bad attitude.
Well, there's Soma, but I don't think Huxley ever got that past the FDA....
SSRIs were a disaster for me and my PDoc kept pushing them for 2.5 years, then we tried nortriptyline. Blasphemy, I guess, to admit in these times that my depression has little to do with seratonin blood levels....
I'm not so much resigned to taking meds as empowered, in a way ... maybe not by taking meds in and of itself, but of why they are needed. I'm not blind enough to think my actions or environment have no influence on my condition, but the biological implications of needing medication give me something real and legitimate to blame besides my "self".
The rationality and "medicalness" of pointing at biology is also a bit of a tool for me when confronting "normals" whose knowledge of an altered state of mind is limited to "better living through recreational chemistry." The notion of "neurological dysfunction" or "disorder" may not be comprehensible by most, but it carries a much different connotation than a "mental illness". I haven't been infected with some sort of irrationality virus, and some two-week prescription of a bug-killing drug plus my own autoimmune response is not going to make me all better.
Plus, the fact that Big Medicine understands what's happening in our brains so poorly, compared to the norm of medical understanding, gives me yet another target other than myself to rail against. [Doesn't matter that such railing is futile ... my self-deprecation doesn't do much good either!]
Anyway, I'm all for meds. As little as possible, as few as possible. Alternatives when available ... acupuncture is SO much more effective than Valium for me. I just wish the drug companies and doctors who spout the same mantra would get over the notion that these are short-term fixes with no need for a long-term fix for many, many people.
my two cents,
flb
poster:finelinebob
thread:89510
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020110/msgs/89588.html