Letters to the Editor
blunderdog
Published Letters: 526 Editor's Choice: 10
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@ AKA
[Read the article: Girls' suicide rates soar]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Perhaps you don't remember it, but I do remember television and magazine advertising for Prozac and Paxil and the big emphasis was that they were non-addictive. To the average person, non-addictive means they can quit at any time. This is simply not the case. People need to begin to be as skeptical about drug advertising as they are cosmetic ads."
If you're taking your cues about medical advice from TV ads, it's no surprise you were vulnerable to terrible care.
As I said, I'm sorry you received terrible MH care back in the day. It happens to tons of people, and I AM quite familiar with how. (I've had tons of wretched experiences when I couldn't afford health care and was being forced to jump through hoops for the "free" hospital so I could continue to get subsidized care.)
OK, it sucks, it was a bad experience, and you had the opportunity to learn something from it. You learned that Big Pharma is to blame. I understand that and totally agree that Big Pharma ain't our friends, and we have to go into ANY transaction with them with our eyes on the prize, and not just humbly submit to the "medical industry" with regards to our own healthcare.
What *I* learned from my experiences with crappy healthcare is that I'd better take a serious personal interest in this stuff, ESPECIALLY when I'm tweaking around with the functioning of my own *mind*.
To quote Frank Zappa (RIP, thanks to the shitty healthcare HE received, despite every possible material advantage): "Get a second opinion."
Of course you couldn't afford a second opinion at the time. In that case, you could have researched the details of what "they" were doing to you.
I would mention also that "non-addictive" doesn't mean "no withdrawal symptoms." It's sad that marketers can get away with using medical jargon in their advertising, because as you mention, the consensus understanding of the phrase "non-addictive" isn't the same as the medical definition.
I'm all for rescinding the privilege of advertising for prescription drugs. When the law which banned that practice was changed, lots of concerned citizens argued against it and said it was a bad idea, myself included, to start marketing prescription drugs. Would that we lived in a somewhat more participatory democracy, where the public actually had some direct input into these decisions.
All of this ranges far afield of the original point, about girls' suicide rate changing over the past few years. It would be nice to get some actual data on THAT, wouldn't it?
It may very well be that girls are more likely to receive poor MH care, and if that's the case, that's a good fact for us (as a society) to learn so that we can try to prevent it.
There's nothing controversial about the notion that the SSRIs are pretty terrific drugs when properly administered, that's for sure. Millions of people benefit tremendously from the technology. The number of people who benefit is far greater than the number of people who suffer ill-effects as a result of their poor care.
Let's not lose sight of the baby in the bathwater for the trees of the forest or whatever. A simple position in the propaganda wars about a subject that's not at all simple is part of the problem.
(Last paragraph of previous post: reference to my having mistakenly attributed someone else's words to you back in the "Gray Rape" thread.)
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Well, Since you Mention...
[Read the article: Girls' suicide rates soar]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"These same men would not call 14-year-old boys who shoot their brains out or hang themselves spoiled brats." --Donna Darko
Not spoiled brats, no. They're all a buncha sniveling closet-fags who never learned to play sports.
(Donna, I joke like this 'cause of the tone of your posts. You take those guys too seriously. Seriously.)
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Emotion
[Read the article: Killing her softly with his song]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Obama supporters seem to base their support on feelings and emotions not on substance." --chrissyx
So what? That's what "won" the past four elections, isn't it? And two of those elections resulted in a decent President.
Who would you pick as the "substantive" candidate, anyway?
(PS: if cfung is, as you acknowledge, the "expert"--you might just thank him for informing you. He's not condescending to you, and hey, he knows more than you do. I'd suggest that you'd be saying what you meant with less likelihood of being misinterpreted by using a more commonly understood phrase than "talking story.")
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Surely SOMEONE Can Put Up...
[Read the article: The D.C. establishment versus American public opinion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's time, folks. Our ability as _citizens_ to influence the actions of the US government has diminished to the point where we are not functioning democratically.
This happens from time to time, and it's never been the end of the republic before. It needn't be the end this time either.
There's something that people can do. And it'll be viewed as insane by all the "serious" people, but it's been done before to good effect.
Stop paying taxes.
As the law stands, any legal wage earner can ask an employer for a simple little form called a "W-4." It's a form that adjusts your claimed deductions for tax withholding purposes. "Taxes withheld," are, of course, the dollars that this current government never lets you SEE.
Not everyone has the courage to stand up for their convictions like this, but if 50,000 people do, or, bless my heart, 150,000, I feel pretty confident in saying that Congress and Beltway pundits and the MSM and the Right-wing noise machine and the IRS and the Treasury and The Fed and just about every godforsaken interest group that has anything to do with who's running the show...
...well, they'll NOTICE.
It's up to us, folks, and we need to get the right person elected in '08, but it's a sad sorry shame if We the People are as complacent as the enablers who permitted the policies of the past 7 years.
And if this is all too impossible, well, hell...then it's true that the American public is ruled by its fear, and you may as well shave, sterilize, and destroy all of us, because the Great Experiment is about at an end.