making sense of the chaos

famously, in 1995 i changed my double major, flipping psychology to my minor because i had avoided all three statistics courses you needed and so i would be in college for three more semesters and i wanted my mom to see me graduate…

…i graduated in may of 1995. she passed in february of 1996. i have no regrets.

i further had no regrets because even back then i could see the troubling direction modern psychology was going, and it could be summed up in the four word title of an article i read at the time…

better living through chemistry

which, not coincidentally, is the name of an excellent electronic album from 1996, but never mind that now…

humans evolve and adapt and part of that is our tolerances. so it makes sense that now that it’s been (gulp) thirty plus years since i graduated college, that humans have developed more of a tolerance to their psych meds that were developed back then and only slightly tweaked since, in the grand scheme of things.

but the other day we saw an ad for a new medication that surprised me – it’s not an anti-depressant, it’s basically an anti-depressant BOOSTER in case your depression is resistant to your anti-depressant.

huh?

it ain’t broke – just throw a pill at it!

it’s actually not for that – it’s an anti-psychotic designed to help with schizophrenia and major forms of bi-polar disorder. but that wasn’t mentioned in the ad – just the “booster” quality. i guess higher dosages of antidepressants are bad? i just remember one of the universal possible side effects of most major antidepressants is…wait for it…depression. which is to say there’s a good chance you go to all these appointments, pay all this money, poison all your systems, and guess what…your life still sucks!

just smoke weed…you know what’s in it, and you know where it’ll take you…plus, there’s snacks. lots of snacks.