The report that a whopping 25.6 million U.S. adults (11 percent) are now on antidepressants seems to indicate more Americans have overwhelmingly come to the same conclusion as Adam and Eve after meeting the devil: life can be a pisser.
It's not just the 11 percent of us taking Prozac, Lexapro, Cymbalta and Ohshitohdear that leads to this conclusion. Another 64 percent of the population is on booze and six percent regularly risk prison for illegal drugs.
While many citizens occupy more than one category, I estimate of the 230 million adults in America, only about 25 percent of us go nose-to-nose with reality every day and night without first popping a pill, pouring a drink or smoking something funny.
I bring this up not to bring you down, but to suggest something is inherently wrong with this picture. Booze and bad drugs have always been with us, but the doubling of Americans on antidepressants in just four years says one of the following:
(1) Our coping mechanisms have been poorly engineered -- blame God, (2) life really is an overwhelming bitch -- back to the devil, or (3) the pharmaceutical companies are laughing at us all the way to the bank.
Pick window number 3.
By spending billions on clever and unrelenting advertising, the legal drug lords have convinced millions of Americans to ask their doctors if the slightest spike on their anxiety meters is something they should have to bear.
"Don't worry, be happy," the family doctors reply. And, with no more knowledge of psychiatry than you or I, they add one more name to the rolls of the drug-dependent.
I usually write for laughs, but I just couldn't find the humor in this one.
Well written and right on the nose!
Posted by: Sophia Fire | September 09, 2009 at 01:06 PM