Quote:
Originally posted by castille,
My point is not all new ideas are good. This new concept of labelling people with various new diseases isn't exactly good. |
I completely agree with you that not all new ideas are good. Like I said...the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes. Some people are mis-diagnosed and don't need to be taking a pill. But some people do benefit and I'm a case in point.
I began to realize there was something not quite right with me back when I was about 9. I dealt with depression, extreme moodswings, and lack of energy just about every day of my life. It wasn't until I was around 20 that I started to earnestly try and "fix" myself. But no matter how hard I tried it was as if my very body was working against me. The harder I pushed with my intentions and desires to be better the harder my body and mind pushed back. About 2 years ago I decided to ask my doctor if I could try medication. This was a very big deal to me because I had always maintained that taking a pill would not solve anything. I was raised on the belief that it just takes "hard work and elbow grease". It took me about 9 months to realize how foolish that attitude was. Ask my family, or especially my wife, what I was like post-medication compared to now.
Where I had been putting forth tremendous amounts of effort to "think right" and "act right" and "have energy" before but always failed for years on end I now don't even really give it a thought...because my body isn't working against me and these things come to me naturally now, like they do for most people. This medication HAS NOT doped me up, dampened my personality, or turned me into a drone. This medication HAS provided me with a physiology that now works in harmony with and responds to my desires and efforts.
Do I still get angry? Yes. Do I still get frustrated? Yes. Do I still get depressed? Yes. Do I still get tired? Yes. But now these things happen to me like they do to most people. I don't have to deal with their crushing weight on a chronic, daily basis. I'm no longer consumed by confusion and a feeling that I should just die. To me, that was not living...that was a slow, agonizing suicide in which I made everyone around me miserable.
I don't think of myself as a stupid person. While pursuing my degree in Computer Science I fulfilled my science requirements by taking courses like Neuroscience, a field that studies exactly what we are talking about here. I know how these medicines interact with the brain, I truly appreciate just how complex our bodies are, and I've seen the physiological connections to psychological problems. In truth, the present-day medicines we take for these problems are rather archaic. They take a shotgun approach to fixing the problem. There are so many varialbes and unkowns that there just isn't much precision involved. So there is A LOT of room for error and variation in results. But they do work.
In the end it boils down to responsibility. We must realize that a lot of "mis-diagnosed" children simply have parents who don't want to be bothered with raising their kids and dealing with all the problems that go along with it. Like anything else, this gets abused because people don't think for themselves...they don't take the time to learn about what they are putting in their mouth or weigh the consequences of their actions.
I think I've gone on long enough. Thanks for the comments Castille!