Pharmaceutical Prejudice

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Prozac made me feel overstimulated and wildly angry...and then I got suicidal and tried to overdose on it. All within just 2-3 weeks of taking it.

Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are interesting topics. As well as pharmacogenomics.

I hope you get into pharmacological research eventually, Steel Maiden. You'd be good at it.

Thank you.

He may not perceive himself as crippled, or at least not as crippled as you may perceive him to be.

And different people weigh the pros and cons differently. Moving may, to him, be a much smaller thing than taking medication -- the fact that for you moving would be a way bigger thing than taking medication doesn't change that. Everyone is different. It's his life and his experience you're talking about, so he is the only person who can ever know whether or not taking medication truly is harder or a bigger deal for him than taking medication.

I would not assume he was "avoiding the problem" just because he rejected your proposed solution. Perhaps if there was a solution he was more comfortable with, he would try it.



That's not necessarily a fair comparison -- high blood pressure medication may not have an affect on a person's mental state (not saying it never would, there are medicines used for both lowering blood pressure and dealing with neurological problems, like guanfacine .... anything that changes your body chemistry can have an effect on your mind), but psychoactive drugs are specifically designed to have such effects.

A person's mental state is often connected in some way to their sense of self, whereas their blood pressure likely isn't. So for some people it's a different thing to take a medication to deliberately change your mental state than it is to take a medication to change something else (even if the latter might end up having an unanticipated affect on your mental state.....probably any unintended psychoactive effect would be just one of many side effects you'd be hoping to not experience, if you wanted only to change your blood pressure and were perfectly happy with your mental state the way it was).

Last edited by animalcrackers on 26 Jul 2016, 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is what I am curious about, animalcrackers, where is the boundary between self and chemistry?

There have been doctrinaire opponents of psychiatry, such as Thomas Szasz, of whom Wikipedia states, "Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not real in the sense that cancers are real." I think he has done as much harm to progress in treating mental illness as Andrew Wakefield has done to eliminating communicable disease.

It's as misguided to state no one needs meds, as to state they can cure everything. The respectable practitioner and researcher acknowledges both perspectives and the fallibility, as well as the hope, of modern medicine. And the patient who wants to make a sensible choice needs to be equally broad-minded.

I am terrified of centipedes. I would be searching the house too. They're the only thing I'm really afraid of other than spiders.

Should a person move if they're afraid of centipedes? Well, it depends on how bad the infestation is. If it's just a few centipedes and it's a one time thing, then, no, they shouldn't move. But if there's a ton of them and they just won't go away, yeah, I would honestly move.

Good thing the only pests I've had a problem with are mice and ants. I'm not afraid of either. Even after having seven mice in the house and an endless army of ants on the kitchen counters. It really bothered me that I had to use mouse traps. They usually kill the mice, which makes me feel horribly guilty. The ants? Nothing kills them. They seem to think they live here too. Those ants better be careful or I'm going to start naming them.

Last edited by RabidFox on 26 Jul 2016, 8:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What about the stigma of mental illness.

You made a lot of good points animalcrackers, well said.

And another reason it's not a fair comparison is because high blood pressure can kill. Getting up in the middle of the night to kill centipedes does not have a high mortality rate.

But going with the comparison, people who take medications like blood pressure medicine are usually advised to make lifestyle changes too. If the place they lived in was causing them stress, the doctor might suggest that they move.

Tenormin, a popular beta blocker for controlling high blood pressure, may also control anxiety--it is sometimes used to combat stage fright. It is also illegal for some athletes to use--you can't use it if you are an Olympic Archer.

Well, I am not belittling my roommate's phobia. He was really in quite a state and I don't think he slept in his room last night.
His experience is an example of a mental issue effecting a person's life. That's why I mention him.

I am still puzzled as to where the actual self begins and where one's chemistry is in need of modification. I wonder if in 100 years everyone will be chemically optimized to be the best they can be.

I don't think he could get away with such nonsense now that science has become more informed about the brain.


Do you mean that if you take medication then you are admitting that you are ill and are open to stigmatization?

There are such things as bug exterminators.

If the centipedes in questions were actually real then her roommate should call the Orkin man.

If they aren't real then her room mate should call his shrink to refill his perscriptions.

My father was always against me being on medication. I think the whole "zombie" thing was the reason why. I think some people have an opposition due to the stigma about mental illness and people who take medication for it as well as some people who might be in denial about needing help and seeing if medication can help them. I know not all people react well to medication. I've been on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication since I was seven years old and have reacted well to most of my medications, I only had issues with a couple. The problem for me is that I build up a tolerance for them and then they stop working for me.

Yes, but sometimes no matter what you do, bugs just keep coming back and coming back. I've had poison sprayed several times both in and outside. It didn't work. Then some exterminators came to the house and sprayed, and it still didn't work.

But I wouldn't move over ants. It's a bit creepy sometimes, but I don't find them scary like centipedes.

I can't even stand the word. Cen-ti-pedes. I have found them inside my house a few times. I always freak out and have somebody else kill them.

American centipedes can be pretty huge and some of them can give you a nasty sting. They creep me out. Some of the legs came off one that I killed, and they were still moving. Personally I wouldn't flee the house but I'd want the problem fixing.

It's a hard decision, whether or not to go for psych meds when things get very rough. Moving house isn't easy, and could have unintended consequences. I'm sure in some cases people benefit from them, but I also see a lot of disadvantages. They can have serious side effects, they quite often don't work, people sometimes get parked on them for years as an "easy" option. The primary problem is not the lack of psych meds in a person's body, and I hope people would normally look for better solutions and only use such medications as a last resort. Ultimately it's up to the person concerned to make their own decision of course, as long as they're not a danger to others. It's not up to me to sit in judgment.