Nothing Galvanizes the Troops Like a Big Pharma Debate
Over at Feministe, Amanda W. got a whole lotta responses to a post she did saying meds were okay and people shoudn’t judge others who take them. She wrote:
People pull out the Scary Statistics about drug use, for this or that medical condition or this or that group of drugs, using those numbers to make a point about Big Pharma or to insist that the people taking that drug could just do some yoga and be like, totally cured of their debilitating depression!
As a society, we have a complex about this whole drug thing. We have no problem with modifying our brain’s regulation of certain chemicals streaming through our blood with the intent of altering this or that function when the thing doing the modifying is, say, food, or physical activity, or orgasm, or incense, or sun exposure, or, hey, sleep! But when you cut out the middle man people start getting all jumpy. ….
The medical and pharmaceutical fields are incredibly problematic industries. They do some seriously corrupt and scary stuff. They should most certainly be more strongly regulated; they are already founded on the concepts of capitalism and profit, which are hard to reconcile with help and aid to those in need, and then we go and give them a practically unlimited leash on which to roam, which, well, causes problems.
But you know what? All that shit doesn’t mean that the products of their deviance and manipulation don’t actually help actual people, right now.
I know how advertising works. I know that the path to riches in marketing rests upon creating a need and then providing a product or service to fill it. I’m not fucking stupid.
And I’m also not a fucking dupe.
It is possible to simultaneously loathe some of the things a person or group does while not stepping on the toes of millions of people who have actually derived benefit from the services of that person or group.
Because, fucking hell, people, my feet are damn well shattered at this point and you’re working your way up my shin.
Her stridency didn’t sit well with some of her readers, who left comments like this:
Did it ever occur to you, that perhaps people who are anti-medication are that way for legitimate reasons?
Rather than attempt to hone your psychic prowess (or lack thereof) and tell them what they’re thinking, how about ask?
Instead of assuming people who are anti-meds are these perfect, healthy people looking down on those that aren’t, figure that maybe these are people who understand the situation more intimately than you imagine?
I have what would be considered incredibly bad depression? Do I take Prozac? No. Fucking. Way.
Oh, but wait, how can this be? Someone WITH said condition, refusing said treatment? That sort of goes against your entire rant, doesn’t it?
Another commenter wrote:
For myself, I have an extreme distaste for medications, yes. I think Big Pharama, as you said, is corrupt. I think they feed us a lot of stuff we don’t really need and act as though it’s vital. I think they do things purposefully to undermine alternative treatments to various diseases and ailments.
… My perspective on this was formed early when I realized if I didn’t treat the symptoms of my yearly colds, but instead helped my body recover from them (vit C + echinecea and/or astralagus versus you know, Advil Cold) my infections were cut in MORE than HALF.
This early experience fueled an interest in learning more about medicine and the toxic chemicals in products I’d been led to believe were vital to my survival (toothpaste, shampoo, antiperspirant…) What I found is that Western medicine is gravely flawed in this regard. It is obsessed with symptoms instead of treatment of causes.
Having to take medication to sleep? To me that’s a strong reinforcement to the idea that we are becoming more and more a seriously over stressed people. That the demands of daily life are too high. It has certainly been shown that stress and sleep are related. I don’t have a problem necessarily with people treating their inability to sleep with meds (though before popping pills I’d rather smoke a bowl…) it’s that we’re having a harder time sleeping that worries ME.
There’s more — comments from people who feels their lives have been saved by meds, comments from people who think meds are bunkum. It’s an interesting discussion. I recommend it particularly after having received an email from a guy who only writes in all caps:
YOU ARE A FUCKING BIG PHARMA SHILL AND A LIAR.
STOP PERPETUATING PSYCHIATRY’S FUCKING MYTHS YOU FUCKING BITCH.
YOU HAVE NO FUCKING EVIDENCE YOU HAVE A FUCKING BRAIN DISEASE.
YOUR FUCKING ‘DISEASE’ WAS ‘DIAGNOSED’ WITH NO OBJECTIVE DIAGNOSTIC BIOTECHNOLOGY.
YOU ARE KILLING KIDS WITH YOUR FUCKING LIES.
I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF THEY ARE PAYING YOU, YOU ASTROTURFING TURD.
THE SOONER YOUR HYSTRIONICS AND NEUROTIC FUCKING DRAMATICS CAUSE YOU TO REALLY FUCK YOURSELF UP, THE BETTER.
I love this job.
liz | 10:51 AM | Uncategorized
My 2 cents worth: I agree with Amanda. To the anti-medication crowd, if they don’t like medicines, then don’t take them. THAT IS YOUR RIGHT. But you don’t have to come down on those of us who strongly believe we need them. THAT IS OUR RIGHT. We do live in America, for goodness sake.
A further comment: it is amazing how people think that some “natural” is less dangerous than something synthetic like pharmaceuticals. Arsenic, mercury, lead are natural, but you don’t see people freely consuming those. And ricin is natural. I would like to see the anti-meds people consume that.
I have a lot of compassion for people who have been hurt by Big Pharma. My close friend from high school is very much against me taking meds. She was put on antidepressants at an incredibly young age and I watched her try to destroy herself throughout high school, and watched her recover amazingly fast when she stopped taking them. So I can see where she’s coming from, but it still hurts when she tells me that the girl lying in bed for weeks on end is the “real me” and this state of mind where I can function is what I really need to be cured of. She can’t understand that the same drugs can affect us in completely different ways.
Telling someone with a mental illness that there is nothing wrong with them always feels like such a slap in the face to me.
My view on medicating for mental illness is quite simple. Because of Effexor, Lexapro, Remeron et al, I am able to live a (somewhat) dignified life. That is, I hold a job and pay a mortgage. Without them, I’d have to endure endless panic attacks, anxiety, and dizziness — and certainly would be unable to even get out of bed.
Dennis
THIS IS MY BRAIN OFF PHARMACEUTICALS, BITCH!
This is my brain on pharmaceuticals.
I also agree with Amanda. I have experienced the good and bad of medications: antidepressants that left a lasting effect on me, and mood stabilizers and antipsychotics that may very well have saved me. I am going my own way with my treatment, and think others should go their own ways. What I don’t understand is how something like this always seems to ignite the kind of hostility that it does.
Mr CAPS WRITER manages a rare combination of both denying the existence of mental illness while attempting to insult you by calling you mentally ill. Surely there must be a special prize for such a creative use of logical inconsistency?
For some reason — maybe because of the story involving you and “Mad Pride” in the NYT in May — this has come up again recently in a big way. Folks (including yours truly) have been fighting it out on the Times’ Well blog, pro- and anti-meds, since their mid-July “Voices of Bipolar” multimedia piece:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/the-voices-of-bipolar-disorder
I think Amanda is DEAD ON (all caps intentional). When someone like Amanda or me says medicine has helped them, and that it might (might — or might not) help other people, we do it in full knowledge of the horrible sins of Big Pharma in marketing, labeling and testing psychotropic medications that you, Philip Dawdy, Benedict Carey and others have exposed.
The anti-medication folks don’t seem to give us that credit. They also don’t seem to recognize that, if they’ve had “Snake Pit” experiences with meds, we can not only sympathize but empathize (since most ostensibly “pro-medication” folks, like myself, have had one dozen, two dozen, or even three dozen scrips since their diagnosis themselves).
But their attitude, particularly at the extremes of the movement and among its younger members, often strikes me as that of a peevish teen-ager — “If I’m not normal, that’s OK, because I never WANT to be normal anyway!!”
Oh yes you will. Oh yes you will.
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