'Overmedicated' Society

[BeckaJo]

Maybe this isn't the right board, but I'm *bursting* right now.

I'm a grad student in Sociology. My entire department is left-leaning and on the granola side, so you can imagine what the general consensus about drugs is, right? Drugs are BAD unless you're taking them recreationally.

After yet another argument over how the pharmaceutical companies are EVILLLL and want to brainwash our children into consumerist zombies, I lost it. See, maybe the companies <i>aren't</i> in it to help people, maybe they do charge too much, maybe they are unfairly protected by the government. Sure, there are people who are prescribed the wrong drug and drugs are sometimes used as a band-aid cure for deeper problems.

BUT that doesn't mean the pain, and the anger, and the sadness and panic and spaciness and general dysfunctionality isn't REAL. These problems exist, and taking a pill helps sometimes - a lot of the times, if done properly. So this is what I said, more or less:

"Until you have stood suicide watch  because your brother tried to kill himself, until you have had to call the police becuase the full force of a friend's madness is too much to take, until you have collapsed in tears in public becuase the world would not stop looking at you, you have no right to say that the drugs are useless. I give thanks every morning for companies like Eli-Lilly becuase their products are the only things that keep my brother, my father, my sister, and me alive and functioning.

"Maybe I'm a sellout or a drug zombie or what have you, but I am at the very least alive."

[reddog]

YOU ROCK!!!!!!!

you go girl for saying that!!!  thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[Pastafarian]

the world makes so much more sense when viewed conspiratorially.  Your outburst is all part of a deeper plot hatched by big pharma to create a super army of sad, scatterbrained soldiers that are afraid to go outside.  See, it all makes sense now.