People's reactions to medications are so varied that it's largely irrelevant to discuss. Drug X saved someone's life, while it made someone else feel like crap. A certain diet or supplement calmed John's stomach, but just made Jim poorer.
What does interest me is the more global stance that people take on medications, particularly psychoactive ones. Because people have romanticized and elevated the role of conscious thought over the more inaccessible mechanisms of the brain, there is a popular notion that psychology trumps biology, and that drugs used to modify our brain state are unnatural and wrong. What research seems to be indicating, however, is that conscious thought isn't the origin of, but rather the result of our chemical processes.
Being a programmer, I like to think of it all in terms of a computer. In this analogy, the physical brain is the hardware, the thought process is the software, and the output is conscious thought. If the hardware is defective, the output is always going to be disordered or absent, and no amount of programming is going to help it. This correlates to conditions like stroke or, in milder forms, autism, schizophrenia, OCD, etc. Hardware problems require physical intervention.
The next layer is the software, which roughly corresponds to the rules and connections our brains make regarding life as we grow up, such as proper etiquette for a dinner party, how to find food, or what to wear. Software relies on hardware for proper functioning, but can also be faulty itself. Being more abstract and flexible, however, software is more easily modified. Talk therapy is roughly analogous to debugging: analyzing output and attempting to find and replace the erroneous instructions.
The final layer is program output - our thoughts, and also inputs - our environment. At this level, we can't really fix any deeper problems by ourselves. We can evaluate our thoughts, within the ability afforded by our programming, and perhaps alter our inputs. Still, if an algorithm is wrong or there's an IRQ conflict, the output is going to be hosed, and we won't know it.
Most people don't have hardware problems, so the idea of a hard solution seems unnecessary to them, and rightfully so. Messing with the hardware might make things worse, so it should be avoided unless things are already "worse." The problem with arguing such issues is that people without real problems find it difficult to appreciate what such problems are like, and trivialize them. Because a broken brain is invisible, it's also less of a consideration to most people.
Software problems are more common, and what most people think of when they envision mental disorders. Everyone has some, but they're not immutable. Input problems are also obvious to people. A kid in an abusive home would be better off in a loving one.
This is all a bit fuzzy, but my point is that there are fundamentals of our behavior and mood that are out of our control, and that a broken machine cannot repair itself. Most importantly, our conscious minds aren't free agents that operate above the brain, but are instead created and constrained by the brain systems that give rise to them. A desire to eat or a fear of flying aren't inventions of the conscious mind, but artifacts of a brain that senses low blood sugar or has a hyperactive amygdala.
04 Jun 2007, 4:34 pm
