“Ooooooo, let’s all make fun of depressed people now!”
How fun!
Interesting to see that, while the numbers of people taking anti-depressants has increased severalfold in the past decade or so, there seem to be ever greater numbers of people feeling the elitist need to diminish the severity of the illnesses that indicate them.
Veddy interesting.
IIRC, SSRI’s (like paxil, prozac, and a nillion other such meds that have come into the market in the past ten years) work by preventing the brain from reabsorbing too much serotonin. Serotonin is one of the feel-good chemicals our bodies produce naturally. I guess the theory is that depressed people dno’t have enough of this.
Coincidentally (again, IIRC) serotonin is the chemical responsible for the lovely side effects of MDMA.
But taking anti-depressants does NOT make you feel like you’re on Ecstasy. Even if you take way too many of them. I do not know why this is.
What is social-anxiety disorder. Shyness? I dunno, maybe if you consider fear of going to the grocery store in case you might run into someone you know, or fear of running into anyone you know anywhere, or the complete inability to engage strangers in any sort of dialogue beyond that most neccessary for basic function (“fries, please”) to be “shyness.”
I personally feel that there are WAY too many anti-depressant=type meds prescribed in this country. It is a little ridiculous that they are being prescribed by GP’s and optometrists. And that they are being advertised on TV like breakfast cereal. But the pharmaceutical industry is first and foremost big business. Of course they’re gonna try and make a buck.
But let’s not forget that this stuff does legitimate good for a lot of people. It does good for people who have medical condition. Let’s not belittle them for things that they cannot control and we cannot understand.
