[Monkeydust]

Sorry to disappoint anyone sitting hopefully in their seats reading this, but no I'm not about to post a link to breaking news revealing that the perfect cure for mental illness has been found.

This thread's entirely hypothetical, but I nevertheless think it's an issue worth discussing. Enough rambling.

We know that Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa and so on aren't "perfect drugs" - they don't work for all, they have annoying side-effects and they probably don't taste all that good if you accidentally fail to swallow them; I wouldn't know I haven't tried.

But let's suppose that, hypothetically speaking, someone were to find the "perfect pill". Let's say that anyone who took this would feel great. It would eliminate depression, anxiety, depersonalization - hell, while it's doing that let's let it eliminate paranoia, fatigue, unconfidence, everything. Even if someone had deep-seated psychological roots for their illness, this would work. Sure it wouldn't remedy the underlying emotional "inner-conflicts", but it would make the person feel "as if" it had.

Now, if this were the case - if someone were to invent this "miracle drug" and if, furthermore, it could be made available to all - would we be justified in taking it? If not, why not? Would there be anything "wrong" with "cheating" life, and making yourself feel artificially good?

I'll leave my own thoughts till later.

Monkeydust.

 

[g-funk]

Basically, what are the implications of us all walking about in total ecstasy? Often pondered this myself.

no answer, i'm afraid just thought I'd agree!

Actually, I do have one answer, Efexor, if not swallowed 1st try and lingers for more than a billionth of a second in your mouth, tastes like
acid, dog poo and more acid.

 

[person3]

No, I guess not.

But for right now...

WE are the perfect pills. And once we learn to accept, respect, love, and care for ourSELVES we will be cured.

We are the perfect pills. We just haven't accepted that yet.

 

[maria]

I've been obsessed with this superhuman idea, that every person should find who they really are and develop themselves into the most perfect version of themselves. So far I haven't found a singe example of this, so it's just in my head and besides is too exhausting an idea. All people just seem so sad and unhappy but when I ask them, they say they're just fine. So I'm just projecting my own feelings onto everyone else. But anyway, I think it'd be good thing if everyone could use their full potential without becoming emotionless machines and without losing creativity so there'd still be space for depression and anxiety, which occasionally are completely normal states of mind. But it just seems many people have something which stops them from being who they are and they worry about all kind of futile things and believe they are right doing so. So, if people could be made to lose these hindrances with a pill, I don't see anything wrong with it. ( Maybe I'm just preprogrammed by Zoloft).

 

[Scattered]

It wouldn't be "wrong" to take the perfect pill. Its a matter of whether or not you choose to live in a fantasy or face reality. A perfect pill isnt going to remove hindrances, its going to completely overshadow them by sucking you into a synthetic chemical reality. I'm more concerned about the potential harmful uses of such a drug by those in power. It would be a simple thing to medicate everyone to the point that they no longer resist and accept their positions in society regardless of whether or not they're being exploited. A bunch of smiling zombies on happy pills, being led around like sheep, I think thats the result of the perfect pill.

 

[maria]

It wouldn't be "wrong" to take the perfect pill. Its a matter of whether or not you choose to live in a fantasy or face reality.

Well "the perfect pill" does sound like stuff in some scifi comic , but the idea of psychiatric medication making all people into happy mindless zombies is old fashioned. And if there was a pill to cure dp 100 % I'm sure everyone would take it. My current reality isn't real, and neither is the world view of say a depressed person, so I don't see anything wrong with interfiring it with medication. Only a few people gain mental balance during their life even if they were supposedly "normal". If there was a safe pill to help them to achieve this balance I'd accept it, and to me a perfect pill is just a highly improved version of current drugs, which already help many people. I don't understand why some won't accept that these meds actually can work and be irreplaceable (when nothing else works).

 

[Scattered]

The perfect pill that is being described is one that covers up the symptoms and causes of mental illness. Its a pill that will make all your worries go away regardless of your life style. You could be starving to death with a smile on your face as your body slowly shuts down until you die. This is the type of "Perfect pill" that we're talking about. This pill would ELIMINATE all negative personality attributes as monkey said. There would be NO sadness, depression, anxiety, or any other emotions deemed inhibitory to a purely pleasurable state of mind. This pill will not help someone to achieve "balance" it will completely throw off the balance by eliminating any remotely negative thought processes. Under the inlfuence of such a pill a person would only be able to experience the world through rose tinted glasses. So in essence you wold be a zombie. There would be no impetus for positive world change or to hold people responsible for misuse of power. Nobody would do anything because nobody would care.

This isn't an attack on psychiatric medication because it is a purely hypothetical situation. Sure, in my own opinion and off the main topic, psychiatric medication works for some people. I'm more concerned about drug companies that market these medications as if every joe blow should automatically be medicated if hes feeling a bit anxious or depressed. Not to mention the unofficial perks that doctors get for perscribing medication. Or the fact that drug companies try to withhold negative information pertaining to their products. I mean things like vioxx and celebrex are ridiculous. They'll kill the pain indefinately after you have a heart attack and aren't alive to experience it. I think this is pure business to these companies. Try to get as many people as possible on your medication and make as much profit as you can.

 

[Martinelv]

Soma. That sounded like the perfect pill to me. (See Brave New World)

And let's face it, if they did discover a pill that made you blissfully happy without any side effects, our governments would instantly make it illegal.

 

[Depersonalized]

There is no cure for what can not be cured and there is no save for what can not be saved. Some one said here that depresonalization once started melts into your brain, I believe that is a true statement. It becomes our lives and we just need to accept it and try to live by its rules.

 

[Monkeydust]

*yawn*

What a pile of nonesense.

DP does not "melt your brain". Neither is it something that we cannot recover from; a great many people have recovered from it, and several more have it sufficiently under control to the point that it doesn't bother them too much.

Inevitably, much of this talk of "doom and gloom" actually becomes a self-fulfilling prohesy. If you truly believe that you're hopeless and your brain's destined to "melt away", then you're not going to make that active effort to really try and get better.

Believe me - DP in itself will not melt your brain. Thinking it can, however, will not do you any good whatsoever.

(Oh, and by the way, this thread was inended to be a purely hypothetical one).

 

[Scattered]

Nonsense to some extent. Whats really nonsense, however, is when people expect that ingrained behavioral patterns are simply going to vanish either with medication or positive thinking. Sure this is something that can be brought under control but if you're not ready to perhaps deal with it for the rest of your life, then maybe you should start preparing just in case.

Depersonalized didn't say that DP would "melt your brain." He said that DP melts into your brain, which seems to be just another way of saying that this is a state of mind that people get used to and are unable to get out of. It might be good advice to try to get used to being this way because expecting to recover completely from this is unrealistic.

 

[Depersonalized]

I am not saying that you can not get rid of the symptoms (like not feeling your body), however something else changes in you, the way you see things and that can not be changed back.

 

[Monkeydust]

No one here, least of all me, is saying that all your problems will simply vanish with a "bit of medication here" and a bit of "positive thinking there". Not one person have I seen to be belittling the issue in this manner.

Yet, at the same time, your contention that you and the rest of us never will or are unlikely to "get over" this is entirely unhelpful.

The fact is that many people have recovered, and that, on this basis - for some of us at least - it is at least possible to recover. But nobody has miraculously got better by saying "we're fucked, so let's give up". That evidently does not work.

So why should we do it? Surely it makes rational sense to at least try to change? Surely if, as you say, this becomes "ingrained", it doesn't make sense to ingrain it any further by espousing with inordinate pessimism?

I, for one, in the last two months, have really made an effort to recover. I realized that what I was doing was not working, and made an attempt to change - even if it felt easier to simply "give up", as may here seem to be doing.

Am I fully recovered? No, not yet. But I have made a great deal of progress, and I feel better these days than I have since my DP began. I think that I will be able to overcome this, or otherwise reduce it to a manageable level.

You can call me "unrealistic" as much as you like; when all is said and done, however, I believe that making a genuine effort and taking practical steps to get better is a better road to recovery than descending into pessimism.

If you think there's some truth in what I'm saying, then I strongly urge you not to give up. We cannot expect things to change if we ourselves are not first willing to change.

All the best,
Monkeydust

 

[Scattered]

Sure you can get it down to a manageable level. I'm not suggesting that we're all on the slow road to insanity. I'm simply saying this or other aspects of our personality have been formed over time and are here to stay. Its worth making an effort to get it under control. I just think people should adjust their expectations so as to not get dissapointed if they find that the feelings they have tend stay with them.