The perfect pill

523 Views 13 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Scattered, Apr 23, 2005

Monkeydust

Discussion Starter · Apr 13, 2005

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.

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Monkeydust

Discussion Starter · #10 · Apr 23, 2005

*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).

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Monkeydust

Discussion Starter · #13 · Apr 23, 2005

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

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