Medication

I have a writing problem, for once I have too many things I want to talk about. So much topical stuff, pipeline protests, the president, religion, the DNC election, it's all worth a post of it's own and I had a hard time making up my mind. I finally did though.

Which is why I am talking about depression again.

Well, mental health stuff in general, or rather medication for same. I have never medicated for mental health issues, but there have been periods in my life when that might have been a decent option, I never pursued them mostly because of being in denial about having any problems in the first place. That said probably half of my friends and family do use them, and those are just the ones I know for sure, could be a lot more.

This isn't a post about overmedicating, I think that is mostly bunk outside of ADHD medication prescribed to the very young, and perhaps various painkillers, but the brain pills for the most part seem to be appropriately used, this is mostly anecdotal I admit, based as it is on my observations of the people in my life, but I think it is fair to say that without medication, there would be at least three friends and family that probably wouldn't be in my life today.

Point is I am a fan.

What saddens me is the idea that may people have, even those on medication that is helping them, that they are somehow less because their brain doesn't work the way it should, that because they need the assistance of pharmacology they are weak. I could say the usual platitudes about being strong despite, or even because of, their difference, or that if you catch the flu you take meds, and that is no different, and those things may not exactly be wrong, but they aren't right either, let's be honest here, depression, anxiety, and any other issue are not the same as the flu, the flu doesn't make you want to kill yourself as one notable difference, hyperbole aside. The other being that flus go away and mental illness doesn't exactly.

I will say that I think medication is pretty hardcore, and a perfect example of human nature at it's best.

Our defining characteristic as a species seems to be that when we find something unacceptable we do something about it, this is a problem when say, the thing we find unacceptable is the existence of Jews, or all those black people not working for free, but it's also inspiring when that is turned towards survival and inequality, when we decide that you know what? Screw England, we are making our own country, or if we see a place that is so inhospitable that nothing lives there and think to ourselves "This will not do" and spit in the face of reason to build sprawling cities full of millions of people.

It's a mixed bag, but it has led to the ability to tell your misbehaving brain to fuck right off, it doesn't want to make the right chemicals in the right amounts? Well screw you you are getting them anyway brain, and we'll keep it up until you get the idea, forever if necessary.  Because we won't even let our own biology get in the way of doing what we want.

So much of what we as a species does is a mixed bag, this one thing though is unequivocally good, I don't just want mental illness treatment to be accepted, I want it to be something people are proud of, I want, when someone asks somebody else why they take a pill every day, the answer to be "Because I choose how to exist, not a piece of malfunctioning equipment in my head."

So that's where I am at right now, I'll talk about the big depressing issues another day, today is for this, and that is good enough at the moment.