Coming from a woman who has been through all that shit since 1999, my take on antidepressant pills is generally:
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
So my escape from depression has been a lifestyle of vigorous outdoor exercise & healthy food & sunshine. While still participating in the modern rat race to survive. Gotta work fucking hard to rise above society’s ills.
Because I firmly believe that epidemic depression is the result of society valuing capitalism above human wellness. Society at large does not give a fuck about anybody’s human wellness.
So in a society where we have to sacrifice our own wellness to earn money to survive, I fight hard to preserve my own human wellness.
Exercise. Nutritious food. Sunshine.
Refusing to work oneself into illness is a radical act and an effective form of protest. Call in and take a health day whenever you can.
No paywall: https://archive.is/vvLd4
I wish people could take the time to link archived versions of paywalled articles instead so sites that try to force me to remove my internet condom get the loss in traffic they deserve… Guess ill do it myself
Dumb name, I’ve had a friend refer to them as happy pills which makes more sense - crazy pills are supposed to make you feel like you’re going crazy (see Zoolander).
I mean, people getting rid of the stereotypical shame of antidepressants is a very good thing…
Not just for them, all of society benefits when they take their medication. And “influencers” being open about it helps their listeners take it if they need it to.
Like, even if you think “influencers” and their listeners are “crazy”, them taking prescribed antidepressants is a good thing.
Complaining about this gives the same vibes as republicans complaining about kids being treated for autism. If there’s no treatment, it doesn’t mean they don’t need it, it’s just hiding the problem.
I just don’t see how any of this is dystopian, but the article was paywalled. So maybe it got to that part later.
Bypass paywalls clean still works great. You just have to install an older version of Firefox first to install it and then upgrade because newer versions block the install process.
I will say it would be interesting to view the study they’re basing their “only 15% of people taking antidepressants actually benefit” stat from. It says the study looks at other studies from 1979-2016. In the last decade we have started using genetic testing with these drugs in order to better match people with the ones that will work for them. I’m not sure if using a study that stopped looking before we improved the process of matching a drug with the people it will work for is worth much more than a grain of salt.
I keep coming back to the thought that anti-depressants and the mass-adaptation of therapy – both of which are designed to pacify clients – are the reason that the Western world has gotten so bad with such little push-back.
In the past, Major Revolutions broke out over shortages of food and infringements of freedom (like the French and American Revolutions). And today, just the president of South Korea declaring martial law got the streets flooded on no notice. Hong Kong had massive resistance movements over the CCP censoring their media; Yet the USA has been declining for decades and people mostly let it happen. Yes there were protests – Occupy Wall Street, the Veteran anti-war movements, and yesterday’s No Kings protests – but we are facing state-sanctioned mass-terrorism, and now have Gestapo “secret agents” storming our streets; and people largely let it happen.
Looking at the proponents of targeted violence the USA has seen: Kirk’s killer, Tim Robinson, was a Mormon from Utah ; they’ve got religion and don’t believe in therapy. Trump’s attempted assassins were a young Republican man who realized Trump was a part of the international pedo ring; and two different elderly guys. Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, supposedly had many grievances with the healthcare system. These are all profiles that make me believe they’d largely reject therapy.
Meanwhile in spaces branded “progressive”, following the script on mental health seems to be the norm. One of the ways spaces are deemed progressive is by “acknowledging mental health”, which mainly means encouraging therapy and copy-pasting a bunch of disclaimers. Of course, the bigger picture of their movements are to improve the system, which would improve our mental health; but it feels like the “ask for help” virtue-signaling around mental health is far more prevalent than argument that “Yeah, you should feel that way. We shouldn’t put up with this shit any longer.”
I’m not making any broad call-to-action here. I’m just trying to dissect the idea that has baffled me for years: How the system could be pushed this far. How fascist politicians and greedy corporations alike could make the system this bad, and people continue to tolerate it. How feminists and the queer community could be this visible, and yet as fascists declare war on them I’ve hardly heard any calls for violence. Yet alt-right teenagers go out and attempt to blow up pretty cheerleaders because they can’t get laid; burn down houses of politicians they don’t like; randomly assault trans women on the street. What empowers them, and why are we so passive?
My take on antidepressant pills is generally:
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
My escape from depression has been a lifestyle of vigorous outdoor exercise & healthy food & sunshine. While still participating in the modern rat race to survive. Gotta work fucking hard to rise above society’s ills.
Because I firmly believe that epidemic depression is the result of society valuing capitalism above human wellness. Society at large does not give a fuck about anybody’s human wellness.
So in a world where we have to sacrifice our own wellness to earn money to survive, I fight hard to preserve my own human wellness.
Exercise. Nutritious food. Sunshine.
This is basically one of the core arguments of HyperNormalisation, that post-collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has become too complex to change, so the West has kept itself stable through managed outcomes, predicting and avoiding risk. Anti-depressants are thus used to stabilise and manage emotions of individuals, pacifying them in the face of civilisational collapse
Thank you for sharing this with me. I hadn’t heard of this theory or the documentary. As I read, this is everything I’ve been seeing; just people being ushered from work to home, shutting themselves off from the world to do meaningless busywork.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation#A_Cautionary_Tale Donald Trump jumpscare lol
For me, this documentary was the missing piece when trying to answer: “why does it seem like, in most liberal democracies, despite the revolving door of governments and parties in power, nothing changes”.
I don’t think antidepressants or therapy are to blame. It’s propaganda that’s to blame. Americans are flooded with propaganda to an extreme degree and to a large extent, they believe it.
Your explanation only covers one side, those who are satisfied by the status quo. The argument is about people who aren’t, for which the commenter made the observation that people who undergo therapy and take medications are less likely to violently fight the system that they hate.
I think that even people who are dissatisfied are affected by it, because they also have propaganda affecting their ideas of how to make things better.
For example, a large part of MAGA’s appeal is blaming people’s problems on immigrants and promising to do something about them.
Others simply think that there is nothing that they can do, or that only certain types of resistance are acceptable.
Honestly it’s a strong contender. I would add to that what Gene Sharp calls the “atomization” of society, the destruction of “third places” and community organizations in favor of producer-to-consumer mass media. A lot of the revolutions of the past started in beerhalls and coffee shops. We don’t have that. We have Facebook. A lot of people are upset, but we don’t feel like it’s too much we can do about it, we just feel bad and helpless.
Ooh definitely. Everything from childhood is so structured: Structured youth sports; Structured socialization through social media; Structured dating with algorithmic match-ups; Even applying for jobs now is largely done through apps. Every system feels so obfuscated and de-personalized. As Gen Z growing up in the 21st century, the internet was the only place I could actually meet people, but for the last decade those spaces have been restricted by major corporations and inflicted with this “Protect the Kids” surveillance mania.
It feels like independence and social freedom have just been forgotten. I’m genuinely worried that young USAmericans do not understand the value of autonomy and anonymity, because they’ve grown up in a world with everything structured and surveilled – and have grown used to funneled from station-to-station, even outside of school and work. It’s hard to form a revolution movement when the masses have had a mixture of learned helplessness and “hustle culture” ingrained in them.
There’s a dating app, and a social media app, but no “Revolution” app. ChatGPT isn’t designed to suggest violence to you, but it can post a hotline copline that can tell you to go to a hospital. There are social media posts for BetterHelp and “Hims”/“Hers” (mentioned in article), while the posts calling for bricks in windows get suppressed, shadow-banned, or outright blasted. The more I think about this, the more I realize how vital that internet control was.
There’s a dating app, and a social media app, but no “Revolution” app.
Hey I just had a great business idea I would like to tell you about
put on App Store aaaaand it’s gone. And Google’s blocking it on Android.
We’ll just call it “Not a Revolution” App. Like Elon Musk with the flamethrowers.
You’ve got a point here
