Saturday, June 17, 2006
Better Living Through Chemistry Really Is Better Living
Jodi at I Cite writes (commenting on Susie Bright's post on AlterNet):
First: yeah, it's a shame some of these medicines inhibit sexual desire, but it's a bigger shame that this issue is being framed as some kind of loss of existential authenticity. Susie Bright has the nerve to say "young people are being treated with this crap."
The "crap", as Bright calls it, and its fruitful adjustment to one's neurological plumbing, more often than not enhances life instead of diminishing it, especially for those who suffer from real neurotic disturbances. Those are the kind of anxiety disorders and mental illnesses that can't be mistaken for living in the Village, smoking pot, and listening to folk music while wondering how to be authentic and hoping a war will come along one can protest. In other words, cry about the abstractive eliminitivism of Kraepelin diagnoses all you want, the DSM IV is greater than the romanticism of pomo existence.
Now, of course there are real existential problems. And yes, authenticity requires passionate engagement with others and with the world. But many of these drugs help folks get to the stage where they can actually begin to live. Psycho-pharmacology isn't the enemy, and it bears little resemblance to Huxley's soma.
One last jab. Bright writes, "And what infuriates me is that young people are being treated with this crap as if their libidos were expendable." No good psychiatrist prescribes drugs thinking "Well, healthy sexual activity isn't such a big deal, so let's go for it!" The principle of triage comes into play in psychiatry as much as in the emergency room: you save what you can.
Happiness (or non-depression, non-anxiety) at the cost of desire. Living, persisting, but not desiring. What, then, is left? A terrain of drive, of continuing, circling, persisting in the cycles conducive to work and consumption, play and expenditure, part of contemporary communicative capitalism?Ok, time to pull out the vitriol. Let's end the 'psycho-pharmacology as whipping boy' routine so many pomos have fallen in love with. Sorry Jodi, I love your blog but I gotta speak my mind here.
First: yeah, it's a shame some of these medicines inhibit sexual desire, but it's a bigger shame that this issue is being framed as some kind of loss of existential authenticity. Susie Bright has the nerve to say "young people are being treated with this crap."The "crap", as Bright calls it, and its fruitful adjustment to one's neurological plumbing, more often than not enhances life instead of diminishing it, especially for those who suffer from real neurotic disturbances. Those are the kind of anxiety disorders and mental illnesses that can't be mistaken for living in the Village, smoking pot, and listening to folk music while wondering how to be authentic and hoping a war will come along one can protest. In other words, cry about the abstractive eliminitivism of Kraepelin diagnoses all you want, the DSM IV is greater than the romanticism of pomo existence.
Now, of course there are real existential problems. And yes, authenticity requires passionate engagement with others and with the world. But many of these drugs help folks get to the stage where they can actually begin to live. Psycho-pharmacology isn't the enemy, and it bears little resemblance to Huxley's soma.
One last jab. Bright writes, "And what infuriates me is that young people are being treated with this crap as if their libidos were expendable." No good psychiatrist prescribes drugs thinking "Well, healthy sexual activity isn't such a big deal, so let's go for it!" The principle of triage comes into play in psychiatry as much as in the emergency room: you save what you can.
Comments:
<< Home
I agree to a point. I think there are two sides of this that are both wrong. The first, which you have accurately diagnosed, is the side which simply denies any real illness. Call it the Tom Cruise camp - they believe there is never any situation in which drugs would be helpful. The other side, however, can be just as dangerous. It is the side that is too anxious to see everything as a chemical imbalance that drugs will fix quicker than real work.
I had a real problem with panic attacks and my doctor prescribed Xanax for me with the intention I would start taking it and could then work on my panic attacks. We had not, however, even tried working on this without first resorting to drugs (he was a medical doctor, not a psychiatrist). It turns out, that a couple hours of online research and some real effort on my part to learn and exercise some ways of coping pretty much fixed the problem without any chemical intervention.
The other facet of this side of the equation we can't deny is the culture of drug companies and doctors. While I am a staunch capitalist, the amount of perks and attention doctors receive from drug reps create at best a bias towards thinking of chemical intervention first, and at worst an all out abandonment of the less glamorous hard work. I don't know, however, if psychiatrists are as heavily marketed to, so perhaps they are better in their judgments than normal physicians.
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this.....
Post a Comment
I had a real problem with panic attacks and my doctor prescribed Xanax for me with the intention I would start taking it and could then work on my panic attacks. We had not, however, even tried working on this without first resorting to drugs (he was a medical doctor, not a psychiatrist). It turns out, that a couple hours of online research and some real effort on my part to learn and exercise some ways of coping pretty much fixed the problem without any chemical intervention.
The other facet of this side of the equation we can't deny is the culture of drug companies and doctors. While I am a staunch capitalist, the amount of perks and attention doctors receive from drug reps create at best a bias towards thinking of chemical intervention first, and at worst an all out abandonment of the less glamorous hard work. I don't know, however, if psychiatrists are as heavily marketed to, so perhaps they are better in their judgments than normal physicians.
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this.....
# posted by 
: 8:28 AM
: 8:28 AM << Home
