Sunday 17 July 2011

What the fuck?: antidepressants

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/opinion/sunday/10antidepressants.html?pagewanted=all

I'm actually pretty tired but I'll have a quick rant. So antidepressants
were originally designed to treat severe depression? Back in the
biomedical model days and with the problems created by the asylum system
the wisdom to understand misery was lost. Psychologists were just as bad
as psychiatrists because they rarely went through the experience. They
rarely had the understanding which came from being severely miserable or
experiencing "locked in" depression or whatever it's called.

These people are external observers of the human condition. They learn
from books rather than life experience, sort of like someone who's shit
at their job. To understand the human condition they need to try the
drugs and go through the experiences.

The problem is they can't live another person's life. They can only live
their own. Their conditioning and the requirements of their conditioning
made them think that every one should think like a mental health
researcher or professional. Everyone must behave in ways which are
similar to how 'successful' people had to behave. Anything else was as
illness.

What is severe depression? What does it feel like? An author like
Dorothy Rowe might have more understanding than a psychiatrists or
psychologist who's read a thousand papers.

She may be able to communicate what the suffering is like? But what
about the guy I didn't get to know when I was on holiday in Perth? He
was living in a youth hostel and was drinking himself to death. His
fiancee had dumped him or cheated on him just before their wedding. I
assume he'd gotten all his money together, moved to the youth hostel
where he drank and drank and drank. He'd been there for about 11 months
if I remember right. By the time I met him he was drinking methylated
spirits. I wish I'd helped him more but a friend managed to get him to
talk at least.

No research paper explained what he was going through but I know what it
feels like to drink to salve the pain of an aching heart. And, by god,
if a person needed to do that to salve their broken heart then fair
fucking play. It has been a standard self treatment for misery for
gwenerations. There are other alternatives for people with a broken
heart but the drugs bender has been a stalwart for many, many generations.

It works too. Eventually time heals everything. Or almost everything.

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"