Pomp

SirenSpeak,

I was going to address the anti-depressant issue from the medical perspective, but Bree beat me to it. On the same topic, why is it preferable to address depression through "real" treatment (by which I assume you mean therapy) rather than pharmaceutical treatment? Do you view this as a moral question, or a pragmatic question, or what?

Duck!

That's easy to say if you don't suffer from serious mental illness. I had an old flatmate with manic depression. Therapy got him nowhere and it was only after he was prescribed lithium that he was able to resume a normal life. To see someone swing from suicidal lows where they don't go outside for days or weeks on end apart from to pick up their unemployment benefit up to obnoxious highs where no-one else can put up with their insane behaviour is no fun when it's a good friend of yours. I've no doubt he was a serious suicide risk when at a low and a he was certainly a danger to himself and others when at a high.

Mankind will indeed continue to survive without anti-depressant drugs. Many individuals will not however.


Duck!

Megatron

Geez, guys... wow, I'm impressed.

Koy, echidna, and livius:
<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

I think you three hit every aspect of the issue right on the head... especially in the distinction between use and abuse and the immorality of current drug laws (and the hypocrisy of certain drugs being illegal while others are not...)

[tangent]
I hope everyone (I know some of you definitely did) caught on to why I excluded marijuana from the main subject of the OP: I am of the belief that the laws against marijuana possession and use are irrelevant to its effects (which are less damaging than either alcohol or tobacco) and a direct cause of the damage a strong hemp industry could do existing industries. (Another topic.)
[/tangent]

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A few things:

RE: LadyShea's MDMA post and christ-on-a-stick's response regarding education:

Remember the sex education threads, and how more sex education (and education regarding pregnancy and STD's) has been so well linked to the dramatically low (in comparison to the USA) teen pregnancy and STD rates in Europe?

Applied to your posts, it makes the exact same statment: Education is always the best answer!

I definitely agree that there is a link here, and increased education, rather than repression of drug use would lead to less overdosing and abuse... and not to mention, a significant drop in drug-related crime. For an example, go to Amsterdam, where many of the drugs that are illegal here have been decriminalized. (I'll see what I can do about getting some figures in that regard, however, even without concrete statistics, I can hazard a guess that they have a significantly lower drug-related death rate due to the education involved.)

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I'd mention something about the use of pharmaceuticals against mental disorders (nice hijack, guys... ), but I think Bree, christ-on-a-stick, and Duck of Death are handling that quite well...

I do know, however, that my aunt would probably not be sane without the medicines she has been taking for the past 10 years to help her manic depression.

...more to come as I think of it.

MassAtheist

I'm sorry I missed a lot of this discussion last night, but I'd like to chime in on the prozac/depression issue. There are absolutely cases where mdeication is the only method to help someone with depression. I know several people who are on various medications (prozac, zanex, etc) who could not function without these (or similar) medications.

That said, I believe that many of these drugs, especially ritilin (sp?), are over-prescribed. Along these lines, ADHD is a real disorder, but ADD is over-diagnosed because of the way it is diagnosed (a simple checklist).

I think this may be what SirenSpeak is trying to get at. Americans, culturally, have become over-dependent on prescription drugs. We use them for a "quick fix" to our problems instead of addressing the real issues. That is, instead of talking through problems with our spouses/children, we take a prozac pill and assume that everything is better.

This type of drug abuse is, IMHO, far more dangerous than illegal drug abuse because it is very easy for the abuser to hide his/her use. Many times the abuse is not detected until the person "snaps", with little or no warning.

Pseudonymph

I can see what you all mean about how antidepressants have helped people. And I'm always glad to see someone come out of a rough bout with depression successfully. I guess I dont have any place to say whether or not these drugs are right for anyone else.

I just know, that, having been prescribed them several times myself, and never taking them, that I believe people actually CAN come out of these times in life, without drugs. Certainly not everyone, but the psyhciatrists(wrong spelling) that prescribe them as if they were candy, need to rethink the postion they have.

The number of people that take these medicines, I believe is no where NEAR equal to the number of people that actually need them.

A friend of mines OB/GYN actually prescribed her prozac....!??! For what?? I never really asked, but c'mon.
Thats another point I wish to make. Regular doctors are prescribing these medicines too, when they are probably not fully qualified to do so.

^Mass Atheist- Yes actually, you did get my whole direction and point. IF you are TRULY manic depressant, and you REALLY have a chemical inbalance...then these drugs may be able to help you. If that is your case then i HOPE they help you.

PB, I realize that you werent making an argument. I guessI'm not familiar with some of the terminology here. I just observed that when everyone is drinking it seems to make the social setting easier.

I'v also found that I can just designate myself the "driver" and everyone is actually then GLAD to have me there. heh... I always take a TON of people home. And I feel good that I can do that without makng anyone else feel guilty. You know"aw man, I guess I wont drink tonight just so I can drive."

Thanks again all for your observations and comments!

three4jump

Like Siren, I am one of those strange people for whom drugs have never been appealing. When I was in high school, there was not a single person I knew who did not smoke pot, and I would have to just pass the joint along and hope people wouldn’t notice too much if I wasn’t taking any myself. Inevitably, someone would catch me not smoking pot, and try to humiliate me for being too straight. I ended up solving that problem by not going to parties much. Now that I’m older, I am often in situations where I’m supposed to like alcohol, and I am often viewed askance when I decline a beer. My question for those who feel that social pressure, in the form of laws, should not be applied to them to get them to stop using drugs: how can you then turn around and apply social pressure—approval and disapproval in social settings is often much more powerful than laws—to get people to use drugs. Saying that 99 percent of art and literature was created with the help of drugs is mostly likely inaccurate, but even if it is true, why not respect Siren’s daring experimental stance of creating art without drugs?

Not taking drugs is not immoral. Not taking drugs is not going to hurt anyone. Not taking drugs should be socially acceptable to drug users and abusers, and they should allow non-users to interact with them socially without making them feel like wimps or that they are narrow-minded or they have been brainwashed by society.

Malaclypse the Younger

SirenSpeak

A respectable position, especially since you have indicated that you have no medical expertise or education.

Certainly. IIRC drug therapy is useful in about 1/3 of cases of depression. Talk therapy is useful in about 1/3 of of cases. And 1/3 unfortunately cannot be helped at all. Unfortunately, it is not possible AFAIK to determine in which category a patient will fall without actually trying the possible solutions.

FYI: psychiatrists

Having some experience with psychiatric care, this assertion seems false. It is my experience that physicians and psychiatrists do not generally prescribe anti-depressant medication "like candy"--I have never met a physician who had a jar of Prozac on her desk!.

Rather, it is known that drug therapy can cure depression. Therefore, if a patient presents with depression, it is reasonable to prescribe medication, monitor the effects and see if it works in the specific instance. Something has to be tried first. Physicians are indeed somewhat biased towards drug therapy, but this bias is reasonable given the enormous success of drug therapy in general.

Of course doctors are human, fallible and sometimes incompetent. &lt;shrugs&gt; This is characteristic of all human endeavors. I think it is better to look at specific instances and correct them, rather than making unsupported (and false) blanket assertions.

Unfortunately you offer us no reason to believe that this is anything but your personal, uneducated opinion.

Again, without knowing the details of your friend's medical condition or symptoms, it is not possible to form any opinion about this instance. C'mon what? Ask non professionals to evaluate a medical decision with no facts whatsoever?

Again, you have established no argument to determine what doctors are or are not qualified to do. Many diseases are directly treatable by general practicioners or primary-care physicians. There is no a priori reason why depression should not be one of these diseases.

And it should be noted that you do not have the expertise nor do you make a objective argument to make any evaluation as whether or not drugs are specifically or generally medically warranted. You appear to offer only your admittedly unexpert and non-medically-educated opinion.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: Malaclypse the Younger ]</p>

livius drusus

I'm sorry that you've had bad experiences with peer pressure, but nobody in this thread is recommending mandatory drug use. Sadly, the world is full of control freaks who fear that someone who doesn't participate in Y is judging them for doing Y, so they have an investment in making everyone in sight do Y.

Speaking for myself, a double dose of Ex-lax couldn't make me give a shit about anyone else's drug habits (or sex life, or philosophical bent, or favorite color). I just wish the government would pay me the same courtesy.

Kachana

I've never really got this type of statement:

How does altering your state of mind due to alcohol differ in principle from going on a rollercoaster ride, dimming the lights, watching a scary movie, listening to your faviourite music, exercising as it makes you feel good, eating sweets (candy) and so on? If you wanted to watch a scary movie and decided to watch it at night rather on a suny day with the curtains open, why would you feel the need to take these steps to alter your mindset? I see no qualitative difference as far as altering one's mind goes in the actions you might take above to heighten enjoyment of a situation and my drinking some alcohol to hieghten my enjoyment of a situation.

The factors that would get me to think seriously about any type of drug or alcohol would be medical ones or considerations of the behaviour it might cause me to engage in, but whenever I hear the 'I just enjoy life without having to alter my mind' type of argument, it makes me think 'do you really'?

Viti

My OB/GYN is more or less my primary care physician. When I was in last week and obviously under stress we talked for almost an hour. We agreed that I was probably not in need of antidepressants, but certainly he would be qualified to prescribe them. He knows me better than any other doctor...if I need antibiotics or whatever I go to a huge facility and see a different doctor each time, they don't know me at all.